“Why?”

“Because the very worst thing you can do to my father, besides be me, is interrupt him during dinner. Better we see him tomorrow than disturb him while he’s shoving food into his fucking face.” Rebel holds out his hand. Such a strange thing to do. It’s as though being here, around Carl and his impeccable manners, has changed him slightly. I take his hand, feeling conflicted. This situation is bizarre, to say the least. I don’t remember the last time I felt this confused. A part of me wants to go back on my word and tell anyone who will listen that I’m here against my will. But another part of me is beginning to…is beginning to trust the man now guiding me up the wide staircase, toward god knows what.

He hasn’t hurt me.

He hasn’t lied to me as far as I can tell.

He hasn’t abused me in any way, aside from being incomprehensibly annoying when the mood takes him.

For the time being, and for the sake of my sanity, I’m choosing to believe that he’s still an honorable man. That after all of this is over and we’ve driven back to New Mexico, he will let me go.

Rebel doesn’t let go of my hand when we reach the top of the stairs. He walks briskly down a long, well-lit hallway that branches off to the left, hurrying, as though he doesn’t want to linger. I realize why when I look at the walls.

Photos of him. Everywhere.

Photos of him in a football uniform. Much younger. Unsmiling. Photos of him in a graduation gown, cap perfectly straight on his head. Still unsmiling. Another picture, with another diploma in his hand—I see the name of the institute printed on the mounting of the picture, and my head starts spinning. “Massachusetts Institute of Technology? You went to MIT?”

“I did,” he says. He doesn’t stop walking. The muscles in his jaw are jumping like crazy.

“Wow.” We pass more and more photos. Images of Rebel, sans his tattoos, shirtless and holding trophies, swimming trophies, still unsmiling. As we near the end of the hallway, the photos on the wall change dramatically. They’re not of Rebel the over-achiever. Rebel the sporting hero. They’re of Rebel the soldier. I try to slow, to look properly, but he tightens his grip, walking faster. “Will you—will you just stop!” I rip my hand free, backing up a few paces so I can look at the walls properly.

For some reason, my heart is hammering in my chest as I take it all in. The first picture of him is in a dress uniform, buttons shining brightly, hat placed firmly on his head. Unlike in his other pictures, there’s a quiet sense of pride lurking in those cool blue eyes of his. He looks so young. Just a baby. “How old are you here?” I whisper.

Rebel sighs, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. His expression is tired as he joins me in front of the photograph, his chest so close to my back I can feel the heat of him radiating into me. “Fifteen,” he says. “I went to a military school.”

“And how was that?”

He laughs a hard laugh. “Like winning a five-year-long trip to motherfucking Disneyland. The fun just never ended. They called me Duke. Seems, when your name ends in ‘the third’, you can’t really avoid that shit.” His voice is full of sarcasm, but I can hear something else in there, too. Hatred. He hated it there. So why, then, does he look so proud in his uniform? I want to ask, but we’re not there yet. He probably wouldn’t tell me.

I walk along, looking at the rest of the pictures. In each shot, he gets older, bigger, taller, stronger. That hardness develops in his eyes—not cruelty, but strength. A challenge to the outside world. The photos show images of him with a bunch of other men, always surrounded by other guys in uniform. Even frozen this way, trapped in some millisecond of the past, it’s clear they respected him. Gravitated toward him. There’s always an arm thrown over his shoulder. Someone grinning or laughing, pleased to be the guy standing next to him. I see Cade in nearly every single shot, no matter what the landscape in the background—from what must be training grounds at his school to actual army bases. And then…then to the desert.

“You didn’t just go to military school,” I say. “You signed up afterwards. You were deployed.” I turn to look at him. He doesn’t return my gaze—just stands there, staring at the history of his life, framed and hung on the walls of his father’s home. “Where did they send you?” I whisper.

“Afghanistan.” The word comes out flat. Devoid of any and all emotion. Rebel blinks, a visible shiver running through his body.

“And?” I need to know more. I never would have guessed he was in the army, but it makes sense. His club might as well be a military organization, after all. A military organization at war.

“And what? There is nothing else. I did two tours. I left and I didn’t look back. The end.” He takes hold of my hand again, this time not pulling me quite so determinedly, but drawing me away all the same.

“There is no the end on something like that, Rebel. The story’s never over. It becomes a part of you. There’s just what comes after.”

He narrows his eyes at me, opening the final door in the corridor—a room all on its own, separated from the others. “You seem to know a lot about ex-servicemen, Miss Sophia Letitia Marne. Did a couple of tours yourself, did you?”

“No. I was studying psychology before all of…this. We studied the way people’s perspectives on the world change when they were thrown into tense, dangerous situations and expected to fight. To put the welfare of others in front of their own.”

“Are you about to start spouting PTSD shit at me right now? Because if you are, you can fucking forget it.” He storms into the room beyond, leaving me standing out in the hallway. Seems I touched a raw nerve. I follow after him, taking in the huge room—clearly his old bedroom—one detail at a time. The place is flooded with the bloody red light of the sunset, pouring in through two walls worth of massive windows. In the center of the room, a huge bed, already made up, dominates the space. There’s not much else in here. A small bookshelf, filled with books. A walk-in closet at the far end of the room. A couple of shelves—

My eyes freeze on the shelves. Three of them, one on top of the other, a foot in between, and evenly spaced on them sit about fifteen snow globes. They’re just like the one I found on the desk back in Rebel’s cabin. I walk straight to them, my eyes skating over each one—Detroit, New York, London, Paris, Vancouver, Calgary, Switzerland, Wyoming. Niagara. Places mostly within the states, but from cities all over the world, too.

“What’s this?” I ask.

“My mother collected them from all the places she went to. I should have boxed them up years ago.” Rebel turns his back on the shelves, crossing the room to look out of the window. Huge, ancient trees choked with Kudzu fill the view beyond.

“Chicago. You have one from Chicago back at your cabin. Was that one of hers as well?”

Rebel remains facing out of the window, but I see his shoulders tense. “Yes.” Doesn’t seem like he’s planning on divulging the significance of that particular snow globe—why Chicago was important enough to take with him, while the others remained behind. I don’t ask, either. His mood is spiraling. First me prying into the army stuff, and now this… If I get too nosy, he’s liable to shut down altogether. My motives for learning as much about him as possible have morphed over the past few days. Originally, I wanted to know so I could tell the police when I eventually manage to report all of this to them. But now, I’m just interested. There’s a drive inside me to break the code that is this complicated, hard-headed, kind-of-annoying man. After the photos on the wall and the obvious love Carl has for him, I’m beginning to see beyond his tattoos and the razor blade-sharp look he carries in his eyes. Could he actually be a good guy?