“Very well,” Niklas agrees with suppressed suspicion. “I will alert Safe House Twelve of your arrival. She will be waiting for you.”

And then the video feed goes dead.

I run my finger over a series of touch keys, breaking into the system through the backdoor. I choose a long series of commands, wiping the device clean of all evidence of correspondence and then crashing the system afterwards. I walk quietly past Sarai and take the iPad into the bathroom, cleaning my fingerprints from every square inch of it using what’s left of the alcohol from before. And then I drop the device into the back of the toilet.

I crawl into the bed by the window and lay on my back, looking up at the ceiling in the darkness.

“He doesn’t like me much. Does he?”

I’m quietly stunned that she managed to pretend to be sleeping without my knowing.

Was she pretending? Or am I becoming too unfocused because of her?

“No, he does not,” I answer without looking at her.

“But you do?”

The question stumps me.

She gets up from the bed and my head falls to the side to see her as she approaches. Not knowing what to do, unable to read her because I’m confused by her actions, I don’t speak. She lies down beside me. Her knees are drawn up and pressed together, her hands hidden between them, and she looks at me.

“You should get back into your own bed,” I say.

“I just want to sleep here. It’s not what you think. I’m just afraid.”

“You fear nothing,” I say, looking back up at the ceiling.

“You’re wrong,” she counters. “I fear everything. What tomorrow will bring and if I’ll be alive to see the end of it. I’m afraid of Javier or anyone else coming through that door and killing me in my sleep. I’m afraid of never being able to live a normal life. I don’t even know what normal feels like anymore.”

“There is a stark difference between fear and uncertainty, Sarai. You fear nothing but are uncertain of everything.”

“How can you believe that?” She seems truly confounded by my assessment of her.

I look at her and answer, “Because you didn’t go to the police. Because you made no effort to contact anyone else that you knew and you have had dozens of chances to do so. Because you got back in the car. With me. A killer. Because you know that I will kill you without thinking twice about it and I would not be remorseful, yet you’re lying next to me. Here in this bed. Alone and willingly.”

I reach over and pull the gun from the floor beside the bed and before she knows what’s happening, the barrel of it is pressed underneath her chin, forcing her head backward. I push my body against hers, our shoulders touching, the weight of my gun hand held up by her chest. My eyes study hers, the question and surprise within them, although faint. I look at her mouth, her soft and innocent lips pressed together gently.

I lean over and whisper onto the side of her mouth, “Because you’re not shaking, Sarai.” And then slowly, I pull the gun away, never removing my eyes from hers.

“I am not Javier,” I say. “You are mistaken if you believe you can manipulate me as you did him.”

She appears offended, though it’s very faint in her eyes, I see it. It is exactly the reaction that I wanted. That I needed, to know that the accusation is untrue.

Without argument, she looks away from me and rolls over onto her other side. She doesn’t get up and move back to her bed.

And I don’t force her.

“I wasn’t with Javier willingly,” she says with her back to me.  “I don’t have any reason to manipulate you.”

A minute of quiet passes; only the shuffling of feet moving down the carpeted hallway outside the door disrupting it.

“I’m glad you came back,” she says softly. “And Victor…I should tell you, I’ve been a liar for the past nine years of my life. Everything I said and did and expressed was a lie. I like to think I’ve mastered it by now.” She pauses and I don’t have to wonder long where she’s going with this. “I’ve noticed that every time you talk to that man, Niklas, about me, that you’re lying to him.” She cranes her head backward to see me behind her. “Thank you for helping me.”

And then she turns away again and says nothing to me for the rest of the night.

Sarai

I wake up the next morning tangled in the sheet in the center of Victor’s bed.

I wonder if he slept here last night.

“Let’s go,” he says from somewhere behind me. “We have two hours before our plane leaves and you need some new clothes.”

I roll over to see him standing in the room, fully dressed in his suit and bloody white shirt, waiting for me.

I glance at the shirt tucked into his slacks, seeing a bloodstain.

“I’m not the only one that needs new clothes.”

I walk over to him and reach out to lift his shirt, but he closes his suit jacket buttoning only one button, to conceal the obvious red against the white of the fabric.

“How are you feeling?” I ask, only a little hurt that he refused me the chance to inspect his wound.

“I’m fine.”

“But you need to at least change that gauze.”

“I know,” he says lightly. “And it will be taken care of when we get to Houston.”

We drive to a nearby department store where he parks near the front and gets out. I remain seated, not expecting him to make me go in without shoes and looking the way I do.

Before he shuts the door I say, “I should probably tell you what size I wear.”

He closes the door without letting me finish and walks around to my side, opening my door and waiting for me.

“You’re a size six,” he says, surprising me. “Now get out. You can’t stay out here by yourself.”

“I can’t go inside, either.” I point at my bare feet, which are now black on the bottom from walking around without shoes since yesterday. “I’m barefooted. No shirt, no shoes, no service.”

Appearing annoyed with me, Victor takes my hand and yanks me out of the car.

I hardly protest.

We’re only in the store for fifteen minutes tops before we make it back outside, me with a new pair of casual gray yoga pants, a plain white t-shirt and a pair of running shoes. He also let me snag a package of low-cut white socks and a six-pack of white cotton panties. The whole time I felt like I was forgetting something, but it’s not until we’re back inside the car that I remember: I should’ve bought a bra. It’s been so long since I owned one I really did forget their importance.

I had expected to show up at a regular airport and get to fly on a passenger plane, but instead we drive to a place back in Green Valley and board a private jet. It only makes sense I realize, since he can’t very well get past a security check in any public airport with a suitcase full of guns, a duffle bag with a mound of cash and another chock full of suspicious items.

While on the tiny plane Victor presents me with my very own fake driver’s license, which looks so real it could easily pass for something from the DMV. I wondered where he got it, but never asked, assuming that earlier in the morning just before we left he went down to the front desk in the lobby to pick up a ‘package’.

I’m twenty-year-old Izabel Seyfried of San Antonio, Texas, today.

And the photograph, I’m not even sure how he managed to take it, but it’s definitely of me and so recent that I’m wearing the same filthy tank top I had been wearing since I escaped the compound. The natural background of the photo has been removed and replaced with the dull blue DMV background, so I don’t have any idea where I was when he took the photo, either. I don’t know, but I have a driver’s license and that’s good enough for me.

“The place where we are going,” Victor says, “is safe, but the woman there should not know your real name. No one should from here on out. I will refer to you as Izabel and you need to answer to that name as casually as you would your own.”