A.N: My, this was long time coming. I never expected it to take that long and for that I apologize :) Hope you'll enjoy the new chapter.

Chile 4 (and call to Starling)

She remembered their capture as a murky dream sequence.

There was running. Hard ground dissolved into sand underfoot as she slipped and fell down the hillside. Blood, shockingly red, as she scraped half the skin off her palm trying to break the fall by grabbing on a jagged rock that was sticking out of the ground. Colors of the grass and trees all swirled together in a disorienting torrent of green when she heard Thea scream and realized she was no longer beside her.

She remembered helplessness.

Arms like steel wrapped around her and lifted her off her feet, dragging her away. No matter how hard she kicked, how desperately she trashed, she couldn't get free. The sky was traitorously tranquil above her. The blueness of the cloudless vastness nearly as terrifying as the strength that was binding her. She was screaming and there was no one to hear.

She remembered relief.

When she was tossed on the ground and there was Thea. Curled in a fetal position, but alive. Whole. Laurel forgot the sweat and dust, and dirt that stuck to her like another layer of clothing, as she rolled in the dried mud to get closer to Thea. Her hands were bound, her ankles as well. She couldn't have cared less how it looked. Laughter of their captors never reached her ears as she squirmed to get closer to Thea. She was nearly deaf with relief. Thea's name - her single obsessive thought, since she first had heard Thea scream and realized that she had lost her.

"Laurel?"

Green eyes snapped to meet Thea's gaze. Laurel swayed, falling forwards on her hands from where she was crouching behind large crates, an apology on her lips. After freeing herself and then Thea – they had unanimously decided that they needed to find out what was this place, and then leave as soon as possible. She hadn't meant to get lost in thought, but this simultaneously was the most real and unreal experience of her life.

Here she was – thousands of miles from Starling city. Kidnapped, once again. It wasn't her job, it wasn't her associations – it had to be something about her that seemed to invite such occasions. Once again, she was at the mercy of criminals. No, never again, she reminded herself. It was a mantra that she kept repeating. They had a plan, after all. She and Thea. They would find out what was going on here – what was so important that it warranted capture of three hikers out for a stroll. What had they stumbled upon? And then they would find Daniel, the satellite phone, call for help and get as far as possible from here. Laurel wasn't a victim. She had a plan.

They sneaked around a building. Though to call it a building was generous. It was a large shack with flimsy roof and flimsy walls of curved, old metal. They kneeled in the small bush that grew along the wall and peered inside the building through the rust holes in the wall. Laurel expected drugs. Perhaps guns. What she saw shocked her to the core. Thea pushed nearly her whole fist in her mouth to hide the gasp that escaped her.

In groups of ten, perhaps even fifteen, arranged in circles and shackled were human beings. Women, mainly, but also children – girls and boys. Laurel hazarded that the youngest she saw had to be a preschooler.

Laurel collapsed, her back against the wall. The people that had captured her and Thea weren't drug dealers or gun traders. They were human traffickers. It made a strange amount of sense – now she didn't have to wonder why they had been captured instead of executed on the spot. And she also realized that her previous plan was as good as gone now. And for a moment fear and sense of doom seemed crushing. Why her?

But when she turned her face to meet Thea's gaze she knew the answer. It wasn't just her. And however, terrifying the situation – there was no way she could just run and leave these people here to their fate. If it was just her and Thea, and Daniel (whom they still had to find) then it would be relatively easy to just hide out until the kidnappers were gone, until they were picked up by the police or the forest rangers, or anyone, but if they still followed that plan – nobody would ever hear of these people again. They would be long gone by the time cavalry arrived.

Laurel took a deep breath and nodded, decisively. She answered the question in Thea's eyes.

She had gone into law to protect people. To help those that couldn't help themselves. This wasn't that much of a stretch – at least, that's what she tried to tell herself, as she signaled to Thea, that they had to move away from here, behind the tree line that was at the back of the barn.

"We can't leave them here," Thea said, dropping on the ground behind a large bush. A small snake crawled over her hand where she was balancing herself against the ground and she nearly bit her tongue off, trying to hold off a startled scream.

"I'm not…," Laurel started then shook her head, and started again. It didn't matter what she wasn't sure of. "Have you seen Daniel?"

Thea quickly pulled her hand back from the ground and shook her head, "Maybe he's somewhere with them were we can't see."

Laurel pulled her lips in a thin line, full of doubt, "It's more likely he would have been thrown in with us." The unspoken conclusion being that – their guide was probably dead. Neither of them wanted to say it out loud. "They will notice we've escaped soon," Laurel said a moment later, her gaze watchful along the side of the building where they had sneaked around it. "Whatever we're going to do, we have to do it soon."

"They had to get here somehow," Thea continued. "I thought those trucks were for supplies, but…," now she realized their true purpose.

"Trucks will only get so far on this terrain," Laurel frowned. They had hiked for days. "They have to have some other way of getting out of here," she thought for a moment, "I'd bet an airplane. Something that will take them to the coast."

"Airplane? How could they get away with it? There have to be some radars and…," she immediately thought of how tightly air-traffic was controlled back home.

"Not if they fly low enough, and rare enough not to get noticed," Laurel replied. "And they probably have bribed a lot of people too," she had gone after cartels in court, she could imagine the web of lies and bribes that was spun to keep this location and its purpose secret from authorities.

Thea was silent for a moment. She'd lie if she said she wasn't scared. Any sensible person would be. But any other choice was unacceptable, "We're not leaving them here," she repeated her first words.

Laurel met her eyes, she saw the same trepidation in them that she felt, "No, we're not."

IKYWT

Meanwhile, Slade just walked out of the elevator in his penthouse when the echoing ding of the opening doors mixed with the old fashioned 32-polyphony ringtone that his smartphone had. He frowned when he saw the caller ID.

"Boss, boss, you there?" the connection was rough, the voice on the other side, even more so.

"What have I told you about calling me on this number?" Slade grimaced and pulled a hand through his hair, in an effort to calm the rising anger. It was far easier to get mad these days than climb back down from those moods. And he had already made sure that Oliver would be busy this night, so he couldn't even exercise his demons on that sorry excuse for a human being.

"It's just… It's just," the man on the other end stumbled upon his words, "we've run into a bit of a pickle."

"A pickle?" Slade clearly enunciated, unimpressed.

"There were these hikers who came across us. We nabbed them, but what do we do now?"

Slade inhaled noisily, his annoyance spiking, "Get rid of them."

"Because we thought, maybe we can… Some additional cash… But, I hear ya, I hear ya."

Slade ended the call before he had to listen to more of that. He threw the phone carelessly on the couch as he walked past it and went for the boxes that were stacked on his desk. Examining them were his favorite pastime these past few weeks. Everything in them was part of a puzzle that he tried to piece together.

He took the book from the top of the box and settled on the couch with it. It was inscribed – You may not have gone where I intended you to go, but may you get where you need to be, to Laurel from Mom. Slade rolled his eyes at the pretentious paraphrased quote. He wondered whether the woman who wrote the words had even read the story they came from or just fashioned the phrase to her own liking without bothering to find the original context.

He wasn't surprised that Laurel had chosen to throw this away.

Weeks ago, when he had checked Laurel's browser history on his laptop, he had been thoroughly amused to see that she had been looking into selling her apartment and moving. The thought that she couldn't get far enough from Oliver that she would even change her living place was utterly delightful. And too good of an opportunity to pass up. He had had his people watch her – for her own safety, considering her state, and to keep tabs – so he knew full well when she went away, with whom, and where.

He wasn't afraid that his plans would be disrupted with her being away – to be honest, he felt that absence from Starling City could only be good for her, and his plans weren't that time sensitive. He was more than capable of keeping Oliver on his toes and anxious in the meantime. He did not examine why exactly her well being was of importance within his plans.

So, he had let her go with that sister of Oliver's and graciously had distracted Queen to prevent him from following. The fact that it was good for Laurel and torturous for Oliver was only a bonus.

He had also bought the moving company that Laurel had contracted to clean out her place, and instead of actual employees – he had sent his people. Her possessions offered more of an insight into her than a file compiled from her professional activities ever could. The fact that one day she might feel that she had been hasty throwing everything away and could wish to reclaim something – was only a stray thought in his mind. After all, he still hadn't decided how long she would live – considering how he wanted to teach Oliver a lesson the kid would never forget.

Thinking of Oliver only made him angry. Slade put the book away lest he crush it in his spiking fury.

He tried to turn his mind to something else. And recalled the last report he had gotten on Laurel. His agent had reported that she and Thea Queen had left the resort they had been holed up for the past few weeks to do some nature exploration. "Nature exploration," Slade repeated in a whisper, brow furrowing. "It couldn't be..."

He dived for his phone. It took entirely too long for the call to connect, "If you lay a hand…"

"Boss!" the voice on the other end was breathless and surprised.

"Tell me," and don't you dare lie.

"They're gone," the man rasped, he was wringing his cap in his hands, but there was no way for Slade to know that. "They're just gone."

"You…," they were dead. The men – the whole operation – they were dead men as soon as Slade heard those words. He already started calculating how long it would take him to call an airstrike to burn that place off the face of the earth. He had friends in very high places. Oliver Queen had no idea.

"They escaped, sorry, boss," and while gut told him that the smart thing would have been to lie and tell that instead of escaping – the girls were dead, there was something so intimidating about his boss, that he could not lie even over the phone and half a world away.

Slade had forgotten how relief feels, so when he felt it wash over him, it nearly hurt. "Find them," he ordered, "And if there's a hair out of place on any of them, you will not like what I will do to you."