Little girl begged me to buy her baby formula as she approached my motorcycle at midnight.

She couldn’t have been more than six, standing there in a dirty Frozen nightgown at a 24-hour gas station, clutching what looked like years of saved coins while tears carved clean lines through the dirt on her face.

I’d stopped for gas after a 400-mile ride, exhausted and wanting nothing more than to get home, but this little girl was shaking as she held out that pathetic bag of change toward me – the scary-looking biker she’d chosen to approach instead of the well-dressed couple pumping gas two pumps over.

“Please, mister,” she whispered, glancing nervously at a beat-up van parked in the shadows. “My baby brother hasn’t eaten since yesterday. They won’t sell to kids, but you look like someone who’d understand.”

I looked at that van, then at her bare feet on the cold concrete, then at the convenience store where the clerk was watching us with suspicion, and I knew something was terribly wrong.

“Where are your parents?” I asked gently, kneeling down to her level despite my bad knee screaming in protest.

Her eyes darted to the van again. “Sleeping. They’re… tired. Been tired for three days.”

Three days. My blood went cold. I knew what that meant in the world I’d grown up in before I got clean fifteen years ago.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Emily. Please, the formula. Jamie won’t stop crying and I don’t know what else to do.”

I stood up slowly, decision made. “Emily, I’m going to buy that formula. But I need you to wait right here by my bike. Can you do that?”

She nodded frantically, pressing the bag of quarters into my hands. I didn’t take it.

“Keep your money. I’ve got this.”

Inside the store, I grabbed formula, bottles, water, and as much ready-to-eat food as I could carry. The clerk, a young kid barely out of high school, watched nervously.

“That girl been here before?” I asked quietly.

“Past three nights,” he admitted. “Different people each time, begging for formula. Last night she tried to buy it herself but I couldn’t… I mean, policy says…”

“You turned away a child trying to buy baby formula?” My voice was dangerously low.

“I called CPS! They said without an address they couldn’t—”

I slammed cash on the counter and walked out. Emily was still by my bike, but now she was swaying on her feet, exhaustion clear.

“When did you last eat?” I asked.

“Tuesday, I think? Maybe Monday. I gave Jamie the last of the crackers.”

It was Thursday night. Or technically Friday morning now.

I handed her the formula and supplies. “Where’s Jamie?”

She looked at the van again, conflict clear on her face. “I’m not supposed to tell strangers.”

She said this and quickly ran. I was shocked and sensed something is wrong. So I followed her.

What I saw terrified and made me cry as the girl was