Commodity by Shay Savage

statement.”
    “I wasn’t going to let them get to you.”
    “I know you were going to try, but…”  A shiver runs through me.  “Did you hear what he said?  What Hudson said when they took him away?  It was in the transcripts.”
    “Only that he threatened you.”
    “He said I was as good as dead.  It didn’t matter where I went or who I had around me.  They were going to find me, and when they did, I was going to die.  He didn’t even stop yelling when they dragged him off.   He was completely serious, and I believed him.”
    “He’s probably dead now,” Falk says.  “You don’t have to think about him anymore.”
    “It’s not that easy.”
    In the dark silence, I can hear Falk’s steady breathing along with my own.  There’s a crackle from the fire outside, and I imagine someone has added more wood to it though the voices have stopped.
    “Do you want to tell me about what happened?” Falk asks.
    I tense as memories begin to flash through my mind.  I shake my head sharply.
    “No,” I tell him.  “Not now.  Maybe someday.”
    “All right.”  He shifts, and I think he’s rolled from his back to his side.  “If you ever decide you want to, I’m here.”
    “Thanks.”  I’m not sure the time will ever come even though I’ve told the story a dozen times.  Falk said he had read up on me, so he probably knows most of it anyway.  I don’t know why he would want to hear more of it.
    “I asked for this assignment,” Falk suddenly admits.
    “You did?  Why?”
    “You impressed me.”
    “How so?”
    “Tyler Hudson is one of the most influential people in the country,” Falk says.  “I met him years ago when he first started working with government contracts.  I didn’t like him from the moment I saw him.  Everyone knew he was shifty, but no one ever stood up to him.  His money always talked louder than anything anyone ever said about him.  Then I heard about this young woman who found something, dug in, and reported it.  Then she didn’t just report it, but when he tried to take her out, she escaped and reported him again.  She had enough sense to go straight to the hospital and get his DNA collected.  She never backed down even though she knew her life was in danger.  That’s impressive, Hannah.”
    “It feels more stupid to me now.”
    “It wasn’t.  It was brave.  Incredibly fucking brave.  I haven’t heard of courage like that outside of combat.”
    “What else was I supposed to do?” I ask.  “Just let him get away with it?  I didn’t really think about who he was.  When I found the pictures…I couldn’t just let that happen, could I?”
    “A lot of people would.  In fact, a lot of people did.”
    “I saw their faces,” I say.  “I saw how scared they were in the pictures.  I knew what he planned to do to them.”
    “So did others.  He didn’t act alone.”
    “They all planned to profit from it.”
    “Do you really think they were the only ones who knew what was going on?”
    “No.”  I take a deep breath.  “I think there were others.  Jillian in accounting—she must have seen the discrepancies before I did.”
    “But you did something about it.”
    “When I was in college, I took a class in modern crisis.”  I stop for a moment and twist my fingers together underneath the edge of the sleeping bag, remembering.  “It was offered by the philosophy department.  I did a paper on human trafficking.  I talked to a family whose daughter had disappeared when they were traveling.  They never heard from her again, and it tore the family apart.  The couple got divorced, and their younger daughter ended up on drugs.  She even tried to kill herself.  That was all I could think about.  What if one of those girls had been her?  Not exactly her, but someone just like her.  All those girls got back to their families.”
    My body shudders, and I close my eyes.  The memories of the family— my family—flood back into my