The Mute Gold Rush Girl
Yanked off a roadside and taken to a remote mining settlement, college student Delia has spent four months chained inside a trailer as the mute "wife" of Holt Brackett, drugged, beaten and treated as property. When a mine collapse leaves Holt missing, his mother Verna and sister Piper move to sell her again - and Delia runs, straight into the wash bay of Wade, a rough haul driver who hides her, teaches her a private signal of two taps, a pause and one more, and slowly gives her back her voice. Wade, though, is not what he seems: a badge photo hidden in his medical kit ties him to an investigation into the freight routes that move people as cargo. As the family that owns her closes in and Emmett's operation hunts her as a witness, Delia stops hiding behind silence, keeps her own evidence and fights to take her name back - while Wade must choose between finishing the case and the woman he promised to bring out alive.