I look like that famous picture from Stephen King’s horror novel, from the 1970s movie version, except I’m not on stage in a prom dress. I’m next to Silas, who is mercifully turned away from the camera, broad shoulders tight and big as he moves to rush me away from the fracas.

“I didn’t! They’re claiming I killed her! But they can’t!” My eyes blur, moving so fast, I can’t focus. I see the word “Carrie” and the rest of the headline becomes unreadable.

“Give me your phone.” Before I can answer, Silas takes it away, shoving it in his jacket pocket.

“Where are we going?”

“To Alice’s.”

“We can’t go there! If someone’s trying to kill me, I don’t want her to become a target!”

“First of all, we went there before when someone was trying to kill you. Second, she’s insisting–called Drew herself a minute ago. And third, you have no choice now. You’ll do as I say.”

Normally I’d argue, but not this time.

I really will do whatever he says.

“That headline. They think I did it,” I cry.

Silas’s mouth tightens. “You didn’t.”

“I know that! You were there and you know it! But–but–we’re running and the police must be looking for witnesses and–”

“It’s covered.”

“What’s covered?”

“Your alibi.”

Alibi. The word feels so slimy.

“What alibi? You’re my alibi!”

“And the footage.”

“Footage? What do you mean, footage?”

Before he can answer, I get it. My God. “The bar has cameras in the bathrooms?” I give him an incredulous look.

He starts to fidget and looks away. “No.”

That shakes me. And then a hot flush of fury pumps my blood.

“Wait a minute. You planted a camera on me?”

“Yes.”

“One hand in this mess is trying to do cavity searches on me, and the other hand is planting cameras? You bastard!” I can’t scream anymore. All I can do is accuse and judge with a raspy voice.

“No comparison. I never pierced your skin, and it wasn’t an implant.”

“Where is it?” I look around wildly.

“On your purse. On the buckle. It looks like a tiny chain with a charm on it.”

I practically throw my purse on the seat between us and find the chain, which is covered in Tara’s blood. He’s right–it’s a tiny charm with a pinhole lens in it.

And the charm itself?

A button battery.

“You sneaky jerk.”

“Go ahead, call me names. I don’t care. I did it to protect you.”

“Protect me? From who?”

“From whoever just killed Tara.”

“Killed? What? She committed suicide!” I know I’m in denial, but I can’t help it.

“Jane, do you really think that was a suicide back there?” He’s in my face, intense. “Really? Tara’s probably right handed. Did you see how clean the right arm’s cut was? Both were equally strong and straight, and both went top down.”

“Top down?”

“From elbow to wrist. People trying to slit their wrists always go wrist up. Tara didn’t kill herself. That was a homicide.”

“Oh, no,” I groan.

“And whoever killed her is trying to frame you. You know what happens when people are trying to frame you? What the next step is if it doesn’t work?”

I don’t answer.

“They try to kill you. Maybe with a firebomb to the car. Maybe they poison your drink in a bar. Or maybe they ambush you in the women’s room and slit your wrists.”

“STOP!”

He grabs my upper arms, holding me in place with a grip so tight, I can’t believe he doesn’t have super powers. His nail beds are a sickly red-rimmed pink, a reminder of blood hastily wiped off. Tara’s blood. “I won’t stop!” he thunders, his voice filled with pain. “Someone is trying to kill you, and whoever just butchered Tara is suspect number one.”

“You know who it is?”

“No idea. But you aren’t going to end up in some rundown bar’s toilet, bleeding out like a six-point buck on the first day of hunting season.”

My stomach rebels, threatening to empty. I look down at my legs and find blood all over them. The arms Silas is grabbing are coated in Tara’s blood.

Then I look at him. From the elbows and knees down, he’s red, too.

How much blood does the human body hold? I wonder, memory kicking me back to elementary school, when that was a test question and not what you ask yourself after finding a friend performing a one-woman experiment to find out.

Silas’s gaze is piercing, intense and frustrated, firm and unyielding. “I do not ever, ever want to find you like that. Not with a bullet in you, not with a knife in you, not in a car on fire. Do you understand me, Jane? DO YOU?” he roars, his voice low and loud, as if he can use sound to make the world bend to his command.

“Pretty sure that’s a life goal for me, too,” I say weakly. He’s breathing so fast, like he’s just run a marathon, and his eyes are dark, tinged with an emotional panic that deepens as I stare at him. His grip lessens but his fingers remain wrapped around my biceps.

“Do you understand?” he whispers, grabbing my shoulders and pulling me to him, my ear landing over his heart.

It sounds like rain on a tin roof. Tara’s blood is all over me. The heat of Silas’s body combines with my own panicked self and makes me squirm out of his arms.

“Blood,” I gasp. “Blood. Too much blood,” I say, keening.

He grasps my hand, holding it in his. “This better?” I look down at our joined hands and realize that yes, it is. I need connection of some kind. Silas senses it, pushes for it.

I nod, then close my eyes.

And immediately see Tara’s vacant stare in my memory.

My eyelids fly open and I tip my chin up, looking at the upholstered ceiling of the SUV. “Where are we going?”

“Straight to the airport. We’ll shower before or on the plane. They’ll have a change of clothes for us.”

“A change of–okay.” I try to close my eyes again.

I fail.

“Talk to me about anything but what just happened,” I say. “Please.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Did you go to college?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“UC Irvine.”

“Is that where you met Drew?”

“No.”

“How old are you?”

“How old do you think I am?”

“Older than me.” I look at him. “No grey hair. Under thirty.” The stupid trivia helps my heart to stop jumping in my chest.

He’s amused. “I have friends who are under thirty and have grey hair.”

“Really? I don’t.”

“I’m twenty-eight.”

“My guess was close. Twenty-seven.”

He just nods and squeezes my hand. This is working. I’m calming down. Then I look down at my body and sit up, fast. I move closer to Silas. He opens his arms, as if to embrace me.

That’s not what I’m seeking.

As I angle my head, I get a glimpse of myself in the rear-view mirror.

I start hyperventilating.

I saw the photo online, but as I look in terror and touch my bloody hair with my bloodied hands, it feels like I’m dying. Me. Like this is my blood. My slit arms. My vacant eyes.

“Shhh,” Silas says, his grip tight on my hand. “Don’t look. Wait until we’re at the airport and you can shower. It will come off.”

“How do you know?”

His stare is steady, words an icepick to my heart. “Because I’ve been covered in far more blood after an IED explosion. And some of it was mine.” He lets go of my hand and bends down to lift his bloody pants leg, the cloth growing stiff as the blood dries. A jagged line of scar stretches up the side of his calf, burrowed under his sock and traveling to his knee. His leg hair doesn’t grow on the white, gnarled skin.

“Oh, Silas.”

He drops the cloth and looks at me. “I’m fine now. But I wasn’t that day. I was lucky. I was the one picking pieces of my friends off my body. But I had a body. One that was still alive and breathing. My friends didn’t.”

The SUV stops in front of a small white building, all the walls made of metal. We’re at a small helipad in an industrial park. I’ve never been here before.

“What’s this?”

“A safe place to use a helicopter. And they have bathrooms. No more problems with the plane and the shower doors,” he says.

I grimace, remembering my foible.

“It’s safe here,” he adds, almost as an afterthought, even though I know it’s most definitely not.

It is neither safe nor an afterthought.

I get out of the SUV, flanked on both sides by Silas and Duff. We enter into a concrete-floor building, an open warehouse with an office in the back. As we walk through the glass door, I find a simply decorated space that looks like someone lives here.

“An apartment?” I ask Silas.

“A safehouse.”

Ah.

He hands me a small plastic bag. I peer in. Towel, shampoo, some pink underwear. A dress.

Flip-flops.

“Best we could do on short notice. Alice is having some clothes delivered to the ranch for you.”

I accept this as my new reality and look around for a bathroom.

“Here,” he says, guiding me to the doors. There are two, unmarked.

“I’ll be in the bathroom next door. Be quick. We need to move fast. Duff will stand guard.”

I nod and go into the bathroom. There’s no tub, just a shower. It takes longer than it should for me to figure out how to turn on the water. I shimmy out of my clothes, peeling them off like leeches, shoving them in the garbage, shoes and all.

I get in the shower. The water is ice cold. I haven’t given it enough time to warm up.

My skin welcomes the intrusion. The sooner the blood is gone, the sooner I can think again. The drain fills with swirling pink water, small bursts of thicker red making it look like a tie-dye bucket. I start to sob.

That is blood.

Tara’s blood.

I leave the shower, dripping all over the floor. I fish through the bag to find the small travel-size bottle of shampoo and soap. No conditioner. A man with short hair must have put this together.

Lathering up, leaving the soap wrapper on the shower floor, I scrub so hard, my skin starts to hurt. I use the bar soap to wash my hair, then switch to shampoo until no more pink water remains. Now the water is warm, turning hot just as I need to rinse my hair again.

I do.

I stand under the burning-hot spray and let my hair feel like it’s on fire, the heat hurting my back.

And then I turn off the water and stand there, dazed.

A small mirror above the sink, directly across from me, shows a wet, naked woman who can’t quite believe she’s here.

It reflects the truth.

Tap tap tap.

“Jane? You ready?”

“No.”

“Can you be ready in two minutes? We need to go.”

“No.”

“No, you can’t do it that fast, or–”

“No.”

He goes quiet. I grab a towel and start drying off, my hair first, body second.

“No,” I whisper as I drop the towel and slip my legs into the pink panties.

“No,” I hiss as I toss the simple A-line sundress, a size too big, over my head, instantly covered. The bag has no bra.

“No,” I say, louder, as I slide my soles into the flip-flops, jamming a comb through my hair as if my scalp has offended me.

Then I open the door, look at Silas, and say, “No!”

“No–what?”

“This entire day–hell, this year–deserves nothing but no.”

He nods. “Yes.”

And with that he takes me right back outside, through a back door, where a helicopter already has its rotors turning.

We board. I click my seatbelt.

And let the roar of the engine take me away.

By the time we reach the airport, I am good for nothing. Silas has to take me by the hand and navigate, showing me where to go. I can move my feet. That’s it.

We board the plane and I take the seat that looks the most comfortable. Silas sits next to me. It’s so different from our previous flights. Grabbing a blanket, he waits until I’m clicked in and then drapes it over me.

“Need a pillow?”

I shake my head.

Settling in the seat right next to mine, he puts his seatbelt on. There is no self-conscious posturing of his body, trying not to touch me. We’re not intimate. None of this is romantic. I’m in survival mode and his focus is on taking care of me. You don’t keep tight physical boundaries when your goal is survival.

You can’t.

I jolt when I feel the plane move, my ear brushing against Silas’s shoulder. My vision swims, my wet hair moist against my cheek.

I drift off, his hard, solid body a comfort.

One that invades my dreams.

---

I’m in the house where the party was, in the hallway upstairs by all the bedrooms. Each door is numbered, one, two, three on the left, four, five, six on the right.

A bright red waterfall of blood is at the end of the hallway.

Copper and fresh meat fill my senses, the odor all-consuming, like I’m eating it. Small animals lick my ankles, obedient, excited pets. When I look down I can’t see them, a black smoke covering everything below my knees.

But I feel them, licking and nipping until the sensation increases, painful bites stabbing my ankles. I have no choice.

I have to pick a door.

I don’t want to choose one because the hallway is the safest place. Each choice is a kind of death. Closing off options and entering wholesale into one of them means all the other doors are no longer mine to try.

But the bites intensify until my calf screams with pain and I lift my leg.

To find a tiny animal with red, closing eyes and teeth the size of a steak knife feasting on me.

Behind door number one, the rush of fresh water and cloves makes me take a step forward until a green gas floats around me. I choke. As the mist clears, I see bodies piled on the floor, all of them female, all of them naked.

And all of them with eyes plucked out.

Slamming the door shut, I move forward down the hallway, wading through increasingly bigger animals that I now have to kick away from me.

I smell my own blood.

Door number four is to my right. When I touch the doorknob, an electric bolt sprints through me until my teeth go numb. As I pull away, all the animals scream at once, then stop biting me.

I don’t open that door.

Door number two beckons, glowing with sunlight in all the cracks, making promises I hope it can keep. Hope is light, so my eyes try to tell my heart this is the safe place.

Until I open the door to find a man in a white ski mask, holding a bright searchlight pointed at my eyes, his body naked, the animals feasting on his flesh as he moans in ecstasy.

I close door number two. Fast.

“Jane!” my mother calls, somewhere behind a door I’ve not yet reached, her voice soothing and frantic at the same time.

“Mom!” I scream, opening door number five fast, my face consumed by fire. Hair burning, my head a candle, I turn to door number three and open it–

And a shotgun blasts me, pushing me into the blood waterfall at the end of the hall, where I fall and fall and fall into an endless, eternal abyss.

“Jane!” my mother calls again, only her voice is deeper, more urgent, coaxing me out of the abyss until I startle and scream–

---

–waking up from the nightmare, my skin chilled and cheek red.

Silas, not Mom, is calling my name

“What? What happened?” I sit up, completely disoriented, swiping at my ankles with my palms over and over as Silas leans back from me, looking deeply confused.

“You were flailing in your sleep. Kept whispering about blood and being bitten. Were you dreaming about vampires?” Touching my shoulder with a big warm palm, Silas bends into my personal space, his face inches from mine. It’s an intimate act, and his warmth feels like a continuation, not a gesture.

Did I fall asleep on him?

“I wish.” I shudder and sit up fully, pulling away. My stomach is sour and I feel like my blood has been thickened by cornstarch. “Where are we?”

“Somewhere over New Mexico? I don’t know. I’m not a pilot.” He gives me a self-effacing smile, as if he’s genuinely embarrassed he can’t fly a plane.

“Well, I can’t perform heart surgery, so we’re both inadequate,” I say, stretching my arms high as a yawn takes over my body. The only way to get rid of the weird sense of being between reality and dreamland is to shake it off, stretch it out, root myself in the real.

Silas’s eyes are all over me, an audience of thousands. I can feel him, even when my eyes are closed. This is no performance. I am not a model for a painting.

I don’t care.

This is as real as it gets.

Undefined emotion rushes through my limbs, going where it needs to go, refreshing me enough to shake off the feeling I’m being nibbled to death by sharks and drowning in a river of my own blood.

Silas puts his eyes back in his head and looks away, shifting his weight in his seat so that there is a clear professional boundary between our body spaces.

I unclick my seatbelt and find the bar, grabbing a can of soda. I lift it and raise my eyebrows, trying to catch his attention.

He finally looks at me, shakes his head, and says, “No, thanks.” His phone becomes his new object of attention.

“How do you have a signal up here?” I ask as I sit down again, popping open my soda and taking a sip. Cool root beer, my favorite, tickles my tongue.

“Major airlines can do it. You think the government can’t? Your connection will be much better on this aircraft, too.” His voice is steady, distracted. Whatever emotion I thought I was receiving from him has been tucked away somewhere inside him. Silas is in work mode now.

“I see.” I nod and look out the window, letting the sweet drink distract me. A cool sweat starts to chill on my skin. I reach up and brush my short bangs off my forehead. Damp hair greets my fingertips.

That dream was so real.

I sip slowly, looking out the window as dusk turns to darkness. When you’re this high up over the clouds, the sunsets can be unreal. I’ve missed the most spectacular part and now just settle for shades of grey, moonlight making thin sections of cotton clouds glow.

Silas’s warm fingers brush against my shoulder, one grazing my bare neck. I shiver.

“Jane?”

I close my eyes, the tangy taste of sugar on my lips as I lick them. “Yes?”

“What was your dream about?”

“You really want to know?”

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”

Tears fill my eyes with a fierce swiftness, as if they’re waiting to swarm. My throat goes tight, the bridge of my nose tingling, and I see it all. A montage of every awful moment of my dream pours through me. With a shaking hand, I set my empty soda can on the end table next to my seat and lean back, sighing.

And I tell him.

He nods, looking down at his hands, not from shyness but from the will to listen deeply. When I’m done, he nods slowly.

“It’s a pretty obvious dream. Tara’s blood, the press nipping at your heels, taking bigger and bigger bites out of you...”

“What’s the latest? Have I been blamed for the newest North Korean missile crisis?”

He smiles. “Haven’t you heard? You’re carrying the love child of Elvis and Kim Jong Il.”

The joke catches me completely off guard and I laugh, then belch.

Loudly.

Silas’s face breaks into a beautiful smile, pure laughter pouring out of him, booming all the way to my heart.

“Excuse me!” I gasp, embarrassed but laughing. “Root beer.”

“Basic biology. You’re allowed to be human, you know.”

“Tell that to Monica Bosworth.”

“I’m trying.”

“Are you? Really? Does that mean you believe me?”

“I never said that.”

“Then why would you defend me to Monica, of all people?”

“Not defending. Explaining.”

“When everything is black or white, right or wrong, explaining is defending.”

“Just because other people create standards doesn’t mean I follow them. Or believe them to be valid,” he says, his words laden with meaning.

“But you believe the media when they say I’m complicit?”

“I never said I believe the media. I believe Drew.”

Silas isn’t pulling punches. A part of me feels horrified, but a deeper sense of grudging respect emerges.

Respect for me.

If Silas didn’t respect me, he wouldn’t be so blunt. In fact, he wouldn’t talk to me at all.

Blunt is a form of improvement.

“Drew doesn’t trust me.”

“Do you blame him?”

I’m supposed to say no. I know that. Being polite is ingrained in me.

“Yes. Yes, I do,” I say simply, giving Silas a sad-eyed look.

“You blame Drew for not trusting you after he went to rescue Lindsay and found her naked, with you in the room, helping her attackers?”

Air gets trapped in my lungs, not leaving, not staying, suspended like I swallowed a cluster of clouds.

“Do you know,” I finally whisper, “what Drew found when he came into the room?”

“Lindsay, nearly being raped by–”

“No. I’m not talking about Lindsay. She’s important, but–” I choke off my words, realizing I’m racing to line up my evidence to prove to him that I am valid. That I am worth believing.

That I am lovable.

“But?”

“I was next,” I whisper. My body turns to wax, my eyes lowering, my chest rising and falling like a bellows pumps air through it. “What they did to Lindsay, they were about to do to me.”

“I know. I’ve read the reports. That’s what you say they said. Lindsay–”

“You do not know,” I say viciously.

He’s watching me closely, eyes narrowing, mouth staying rigid.

“You do not know how it felt to have a knife to my throat. You do not know how it smelled in that room, with blood and fear and terror like a demented air freshener from hell. You do not know what it was like to be turned into a human mule, delivering burner phones and messages. You do not know what it was like to pick up Lindsay’s naked, bloody body and help her move, to try to protect myself, to protect her, to live second by second through the kind of agony that makes your mind try to escape any way it can because it knows your body is about to be shredded to the core.”

A long line of mental images, a movie in horrifying slow motion, ripples through my memory, my skin crawling as if John is still touching me, my nose filled with the scent of so much anticipated pain. Silas doesn’t look away, his face neutral, eyes watching without obvious emotion, but he’s entirely focused on me.

“You don’t know, so shut the hell up, Silas, about what you think you know about me.”

The rest of the ride is nothing but tense silence.

Which is becoming my default.

---

I stumble off the plane, bleary-eyed. At some point I fell asleep, forehead pressed against one of the small windows. Some nameless driver is on the tarmac with the familiar black SUV. Life feels like déjà vu.

Because it is.

“You feeling okay, Miss Borokov?” the driver asks me with genuine concern as he grabs my elbow before I fall. My stumble is a function of flip-flops I’m not familiar with and exhaustion.

“She’s fine,” Silas snaps.

“My mouth works,” I snap back.

“No kidding,” he mutters under his breath.

“I’m fine,” I say tightly to the driver, just to make a point. Silas rolls his eyes.

It’s the closest we can get to a truce.

More tense silence as the driver, whose name I never get, takes us straight to Alice’s studio, where she’s waiting with vodka, lemonade, and an antipasto platter.

A few bites of cheese and prosciutto-wrapped hearts of palm later, I’m sipping an ungodly ratio of vodka to lemonade and falling asleep in my own plate.

Silas’s phone rings. He looks at it, stands up abruptly, and walks into the other room, speaking in sotto voce. It must be his mother, I guess. There’s no way he’s that caring with Drew or any other security colleague.

“You look drunk, Jane,”Alice says bluntly.

Before I can explain, she holds up a hand. “That’s not a judgment. I wouldn’t blame you for it.”

“I’m so tired,” I start to tell her, but instead my words are garbled, turning into salty, blubbering syllables. Awash with emotion, I can’t stop.

Alice moves closer to me, patting my back gently, making banal comments designed to fill the space so that there isn’t so much pain there.

“This is your haven,” she says kindly. “Your place to come and relax.”

I snort.

“To the extent that you can,” she amends. “I am not trying to be flippant.”

“Alice, you’re constitutionally incapable of not being flippant,” I say just before a yawn consumes me, making me stretch and groan. My body feels like noodles in warm water.

“You’re feisty when you’re tired.”

I can’t argue, conserving my energy for standing back up. Her salt-and-pepper eyebrows drop down, tight over the bridge of her long angular nose. Concerned hazel eyes meet mine.

I involuntarily touch my own cheek, wondering what it’s like to have such deep wrinkles as Alice has on her face. How many decades have to pass before you feel like you’re old? Or does she still feel twenty inside, trapped in an old woman’s body? Ninety-two is an eternity to me.

For her, it’s just her reality.

We move down a quiet tile-floored hallway and both stop suddenly, Alice giving me a light hug and a “shoo!” toward the big bed in my guest room. She’s gone before I know it, leaving me in a pastel room with a lilac coverlet on the bed. It smells like a drawer sachet in here.

Mumbled words come through the wall. Silas is on the phone, next door to me. I tiptoe to my open door and stand there, pulling the shell of my ear forward, barely making out his words.

“I know, Mom. I know,” he hisses, the sound low and tortured. This is clearly a well-worn argument. “Tricia’s made another mess we have to clean up, but I won’t take Kelly unless–what? She what? No, Mom, I’m working now. In fact, I shouldn’t be–”

A very, very loud sound, like a child squealing, comes from his direction.

And then Silas says, “Hey, baby! How’s my favorite girl?” in a voice you use with small children you love.

Daughter.

This must be his daughter.

My stomach hurts suddenly, like someone grabbed me below the breastbone and started twisting slowly.

His whole demeanor changes, at least from what I can tell by sound. I’m half charmed, half heartbroken. Tricia must be his wife. Kelly, his daughter.

And I’m nobody.

Quietly, I step back into my room and slowly, painstakingly close the door. I kick off my shoes and, fully dressed, let the cool scented sheets form an embrace, enveloping me in the most powerful balm on the planet.

Sleep.

---

The absence of a dream is almost as startling as a nightmare.

Waking up with a black hole in my mind is its own disturbance. Since that fateful day six months ago, when Mom was jailed and my hell continued, I’ve had nightmares–on a spectrum from slightly disturbing to nearly peed in my sleep from terror.

But to wake up with a blank mind is unheard of.

And frightening in its own way, too.

Human beings are wired for flexibility and routine. We need both. Children need roots and wings. Adults need to be grounded and able to fly. I need to be protected and be given freedom.

It’s a rare person who gets both.

Muted voices carry from the distance, the distinct sound of Alice laughing. Her cackle carries through the house. A quick look out the window tells me it’s either dusk or dawn, the light maintaining the eerie quality of potentially being night or day.

My mouth tastes like dry leaves, my neck has a crick in it, and I need to pee.

The bed is so comfortable, warm and light.

But the bladder calls.

Five minutes later I’ve taken care of the basics. I shuffle down the hall to discover it’s early morning. I’ve slept for at least ten hours. My stomach growls at the halfway point to the kitchen. Hunger drives me forward, but then I freeze.

Silas and Alice are talking.

“You care about her?” Alice asks him, as if she were interviewing him.

“I’m starting to.”

“That’s a weaselly answer.”

“It’s true.”

“You think it’s just sex?”

“We haven’t–” He laughs softly. “If I thought that, I’d never tell you, Ms. Mogrett.”

“Good response. That’s all I need to know.”

“I didn’t answer your question.”

“Oh, my dear boy, you certainly did.” She pauses. “The love of my life was one of my security detail, you know.”

“Really?” He doesn’t sound surprised.

“Milt Sigmundsson. Hot Scandinavian hero. Six foot six, a wall of a man. Born and raised in Minnesota. Served in WWII and came to DC as an agent during my father’s term in office.”

“I don’t recall his name in your biography.”

“Blame my father for that.”

“I see.”

“No, Silas. You don’t. My father sent Milt away from me, forever. Had him stationed in Vietnam in the early stages.”

“Did he die there?” Silas’s blunt question makes me blink hard. Most men would pussyfoot around the issue.

Not Silas.

“Yes. In my mind, my father killed him. I know it’s not technically true, but...”

Silas makes a sympathetic sound.

“War is hell, Alice. I’m sorry he died. Lots of good men and women go to war who don’t deserve to die. I’ve done more tours than most and it’s sheer luck that kept me from being one of the dead.”

My stomach ties itself into a knot at those words.

“Milt’s death isn’t the point, though. It’s that we spent seven years together. He was assigned to shadow me. You spend that much time with someone, it’s hard not to get intimate.”

Silas stays silent.

“And I don’t mean sexual,” she adds in a gravelly voice. “Intimate.”

“I know the difference,” he says.

“Glad to hear it. Most men in your position don’t.”

“My position?”

“You’re a decorated war hero. You compartmentalize. You close off your feelings in the line of duty. It’s why you’re so good at what you do. But it doesn’t translate well to relationships.”

“Now you’re my therapist?”

“Once you’re ninety-two, son, you’re everyone’s therapist, whether they like it or not.”

I hear him chuckle, then he asks, “What made you start the nudes with Jane?”

“Boredom.”

“Come on, Alice. Seriously.”

“Because Jane doesn’t know how beautiful she really is. Her innate goodness shines through her skin into the light, like energy. I’ve never met a person like that since Milt.”

“Jane reminds you of him?”

“No. But she reminds me of who I was when I was with him, and that’s even more precious.”

Silas stays silent.

“You don’t believe that hogwash about Jane being part of the conspiracy to hurt Lindsay Bosworth, do you?” It’s clear from her tone of voice how Alice feels.

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.” Her voice is caustic now, pure acid. “Why won’t you let yourself act like it?”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“Life is always simpler than we think. We say it’s complicated, but that’s just because we don’t have the guts to do what we need to do.”

“Hmm,” he says, non-committal.

“It’s like sex.”

“Oh, brother,” he says under his breath.

I smile.

“You either go for it or you don’t. And if you do, it’s all about courage.”

“Sex is about courage?”

“For us women, yes. Always. It takes tremendous bravery to bare yourself in every way possible.”

“Jane does that for your paintings.”

“If you think that’s Jane baring herself in full, you’re in for a treat when you finally get your shit together and make a move, young man.”

A long sigh escapes him, then shuffling sounds. “I have calls I need to make.”

“You have emotions you need to avoid.”

“In my line of work, it’s the same thing, ma’am.”

“You need a new line of work.”

“Maybe I’ll take up painting.”

“Hah!” But I can tell she’s genuinely amused. And impressed.

Silas held his own against her.

My stomach growls again and I take one step forward, knowing they heard that. If I step toward them, then maybe they won’t realize I’ve been eavesdropping. Silas quickly looks at me, then away.

Alice points to the kitchen. “We saved some dinner for you. The cook put it in a container you can reheat.”

That answers that. It’s dinner. I slept most of a day.

“I slept that long?”

“You were tired,” she says with a laugh.

“How’s your daughter?” I ask Silas, suddenly remembering the call I overheard but realizing too late, in the throes of hazy waking up, that I just revealed I was listening to him on the phone last night.

“Daughter?” His eyebrows shoot up like stomp rockets.

“She screamed into the phone last night,” I scramble, trying to cover my tracks. “Uh, I could hear her.”

“Oh. That. She’s fine.” Silas holds one finger up to me and points to his phone, as if he has an important call. Alice stands, smoothing the front of her colorful caftan. I’m about to ask Silas more about the little girl, but Alice gives me an inscrutable look that suddenly makes me think it’s not so wise to pry.

“You must be hungry,” she says to me. “Silas, when your wife wakes up, do you bring her coffee?”

“What? Wife? What?” he asks, his reaction so brutally honest and completely befuddled I can’t help laughing.

“You don’t have a wife?” Alice asks, definitely prying.

“No.”

Alice pats my hand, smirks, and walks away, leaving me with a tense silence that is now painfully awkward as well.

Silas pours me a cup of coffee from a carafe and walks to the fridge, pulling out a small platter of cheeses and olives. On the counter, there’s a small plate of crackers. He puts it all together in front of me, urging with a nudge for me to eat.

“She didn’t ask me whether I had a husband.” One corner of his mouth goes up.

“Do you?”

“No. What about you?”

“You seriously think I could hide a husband from you? From Drew? From anyone in government? Oh, that’s right. I forgot to mention him. He’s back home refinishing the deck and taking care of our pug puppy. That husband I’ve been ignoring all this time.”

“Good point,” he says, plucking a piece of cheese from the plate and popping it in his mouth.

I take a long, shallow sip of my hot coffee and give him what is supposed to be a withering look. He grins back and says, “Hey. I’m sorry about our conversation on the plane. It won’t happen again.” He seems genuine. Authentic. Silas never struck me as the kind of man–unlike Drew–who would lie easily for the sake of a greater mission.

It’s not that Silas wouldn’t lie. Any well-trained person in his position would–and should.

It’s just that it isn’t second nature.

“Why won’t it happen again?” I ask, truly curious.

He takes my question as a challenge. “You make it very hard to be nice to you.”

I recoil in surprise. “What?”

“You do. I get that you’re defensive. Anyone in your shoes would be. But you–”

“I want to know why. Why would you decide to change how you treat me?” I continue, pressing him.

He bristles. “I’m not changing. I was never set on a particular way to begin with.”

I make a hooting sounds of mockery. “Right.”

“New evidence makes logical people change course,” he adds, trying again.

“What new evidence do you have about me?” I ask, eyeing him with suspicion.

“Plenty.”

“Documents? Pictures? Records?”

“My own two eyes.”

“Those aren’t going to help me in the court of public opinion.”

“Good thing I don’t care about what other people think,” he says softly. It has more power than a shout.

“How old is your daughter?” I ask, the question lingering in my head.

“My daughter? I don’t have a daughter.”

“But you said–”

“You assumed. She’s my niece. And she’s five.” His whole face transforms when he talks about her, every part of him going paternal and sweet, like he can’t help himself.

“Five is the best age! Is she into princess stuff?”

“Yes,” he says, starting to hum the song “Let It Go” from the movie Frozen.

I hum along, too.

“What’s her name?” I ask when we’re done.

“Kelly. She’s my only niece. Mom’s only grandchild, and the apple of her eye.” This is the first time Silas has offered up information about himself that I haven’t asked directly.

It’s nice.

“Does she love Candyland? Does she make you let her paint your nails and put your hair in bows?”

Silas reaches up and brushes his fingers through his hair. “I plead the Fifth.”

We share a laugh that feels so good. I am groggy from too much sleep but still feel a thrill at the friendliness. I wonder what’s making him thaw, but I won’t ask more questions about his state. Sounds like talking about Kelly is fair game, though.

“Do you have a picture of her?” I ask.

He’s suddenly wary, and I realize my mistake.

“It’s okay,” I say, holding up my palm. “I get it. Privacy.”

“Yes.” As if he’s having second thoughts, his eyes drift to the right and he frowns slightly. “She looks like you.”

“She does?”

“Same shape of eyes.” He studies me. “Same full-faced smile. It’s a little uncanny.”

“Is she your sister or brother’s child?”

“I only have one sister.”

“And does your sister look like me?”

“No. Not really. Same hair color -- not your dyed hair. That’s it.”

“Genetics are a roll of the dice.”

“I guess so.”

I look outside, where the moon is blending with the last streak of pink in the nighttime sky. I nod toward the outdoors and he leans past me, opening the door for us both. I grab my coffee and prepare to walk outside barefoot, not caring.

“When I was a freshman in college, I almost went into early childhood education. I would love to work with little kids.”

“Why didn’t you?” he asks.

“Money. My mother used to say, ‘You have to be well off or marry well to live on a nursery school teacher’s salary.’”

“Sounds old-fashioned.” Chin tipping down, he looks up at me with a playful, chiding expression.

“She was practical. I liked math, loved coding, so... computer science it was.”

“And now?”

“And now? Now I can’t get a job scooping dog poop. No one wants me. I’m blacklisted everywhere.”

“How do you plan to rebuild?” Silas asks, the question casual.

“I don’t know. It’s been suggested I change my name. Move to another country. Completely reboot my life. Erase my hard drive and start anew. But... could you do that?”

“How can you not? I see what you go through. I see the stuff we filter so you don’t have to read it. I know how many people are actively talking about raping and killing you. The bounties people are offering for nude selfies of you.” He peers at me. “Are there any out there?”

“How did we get from me teaching little kids to naked selfies?”

“This is a job about information, Jane.” His eyes flash with amusement. “It’s a tough job, but someone has to find your naked selfies. For security purposes only, of course.”

Is he flirting?

Is Silas Gentian actually flirting with me?

Bzzzz.

He looks at his phone, his entire demeanor changing. It’s like an icy wind hitting you on a balmy day.

“Work. Need to get back. Talk to you later.” Turning on his heel, Silas leaves me, jogging around Alice’s studio and toward the main house, his body fit and his pace all business.

And nothing but.