Cara

 

“It will work best if you just stay at my place,” Devin said as he drove them back across town towards his house. “If the police come back looking for you, it would look better if we were still together. Otherwise, they might think you’re trying to run.”

 

“Makes sense,” Cara said, staring out the window, watching as the trees blurred into a wall of green.

 

“You can stay in my room, if you want.”

 

“I’ll stay downstairs,” Cara said. “In the guest room.”

 

It was the room Devin had first taken her to. The one she’d first woken up in after she’d killed her husband and Devin had kidnapped her. It felt appropriate to be back there. For things to come full circle. Cara had just found out that Devin wasn’t who he said he was.

 

All of the progress they’d made towards any semblance of a relationship had been naïve. He was the same man who kidnapped her and tied her to a chair. She wanted to be back in that dank basement room so she wouldn’t forget.

 

There wasn’t a real risk of her actually forgetting what Devin had done, but being around him was hard. As much as she wanted to hold a grudge forever, her heart wanted to make excuses for him.

 

He was scared and didn’t know what to do.

 

He thought I’d tell the police.

 

He thought his boss would find out and have him killed.

 

But there were no excuses. Not after the first few days. Not after they slept together in the kitchen and he opened up to her about Amber. Cara didn’t know exactly how she would have reacted had he told her sooner, but she imagined it would have been more positive. Anything would have been better than finding out the truth from Cristoff. That had made it seem as if Devin was never planning to tell her the truth. As if he was completely fine with the idea of her living her entire life believing he’d saved her from sex slavery.

 

No, it was better for her to keep her distance. They’d live under the same roof to keep police suspicion low, and they’d plan out the Bianchi hit together, but otherwise, no contact. Cara didn’t want things to fall back into a natural rhythm. She didn’t want him to worm his way back into her heart by saying things like how much he loved her.

 

What had that been about, anyway? He loved her? Seriously? He’d said it and Cara hadn’t been able to tell whether it was the truth or a ploy. A trick to try and soften her towards him. It could have been both, she supposed, but that wasn’t better. If Cara had learned anything from her many years married to Danny, it was that love didn’t manipulate.

 

If Devin truly loved her, he wouldn’t have said it to try and force her into forgiving him for his lies. He would have shown her he loved her by telling her the truth himself, but coming clean and giving her the option to forgive him or not. But he didn’t do that. And for Cara, that was all the proof she needed. Devin didn’t love her. Not really. Not in the way it counted.

 

They pulled into the driveway, and Cara was the first one out of the car. She needed air. She needed to be more than two feet away from Devin. She needed time alone to process and grieve and think and plan.

 

Devin walked to the door, and his hand hesitated in his pocket, as if he didn’t want to pull the keys out and open the door. He eventually did, but the task seemed labored. As soon as the door was opened, he stepped back and ushered her inside.

 

“Do you want lunch?” he asked. “I don’t have much, but there are some frozen meals in—”

 

“No,” Cara said. “I’m fine.”

 

“Oh, okay. Well, do you want to talk about anything? From today or—”

 

“I’m tired,” she replied, which wasn’t a total lie. She felt exhausted. Her limbs felt heavy and useless, and her brain had felt foggy for days. “I’m just going to go to sleep.”

 

“Right.” Devin nodded, staring at her so hard Cara thought he’d burn holes in her.

 

“We can start planning tomorrow,” she said.

 

Devin nodded again but didn’t say anything. His lips were pinched together, and Cara had never seen him cry, but she thought it looked like he might. She didn’t want to see that. She didn’t want to witness it. It would break her heart more than it already was. She’d forgive him, for sure. She knew it.

 

She turned away and went downstairs. When she got into the guest room, she collapsed face-first into the mattress, the smell of dust and disuse overwhelming her. But she didn’t move. She stayed there, breathing in the stale air, trying hard to think of nothing at all.

 

# # #

 

When she woke up in the morning, the room was still dark, and Cara didn’t recognize where she was. Then, she saw the familiar window near the ceiling, narrow and darkened with grime and dust, and she remembered. Devin’s house. The guest room.

 

The memory of the previous day washed over her. Devin’s betrayal. Her new assignment. The weight of it all was enough to press her into the mattress until she was smothered. Yet, she found the strength to sit up, and, eventually, stand up.

 

Her body was sore from the previous day’s adrenaline, her hips and knees stiff, her arms tired. Her stomach growled, and she remembered she hadn’t eaten lunch or dinner the previous day. In fact, she checked the alarm clock next to the bed and realized she’d slept for fifteen hours.

 

Normally, she would go upstairs and find something to eat. Even though she’d only known Devin for a week, she felt comfortable in his space. Now, though, everything was different. She could hear his footsteps moving around upstairs, the old wooden floor creaking under his weight, and it felt like she was living with a stranger. Despite her hunger, she wasn’t ready to go up. So, she decided to shower.

 

The basement shower clearly hadn’t been used or cleaned in ages, maybe even since Amber died, but it had hot water, and that was all that mattered. Cara let the water pour over her, washing away the dried sweat and anxiety of the day before. She let the water run for too long. Until the bathroom filled with steam, and then cleared again as the hot water ran out.

 

Finally, when her teeth were nearly chattering with the cold, she got out and dried off. When she made it upstairs, her hair still wet and her black cotton dress on, Devin had set the table with breakfast. Bacon, eggs, English muffins and jam, chopped strawberries.

 

“I thought you didn’t have anything in the house?” she said, eyebrows raised.

 

“I went to the store yesterday afternoon. I hadn’t been in a while, and I was tired of eating stale toast. Though, I’m not sure if there is such a thing as stale toast. There is stale bread, but once you toast it, wouldn’t that get rid of the staleness?”

 

He was nervous, and Cara could tell. Devin wasn’t one to ramble, but he didn’t seem capable of stopping. “Your guess is better than mine,” she said. “You’re the one who has been eating it all week.”

 

“True. Well, I’ve been toasting stale bread, and I wanted to toast fresh bread, instead. And while I was there, I thought I’d pick up something for breakfast. You didn’t eat yesterday, after all. I would have come down to ask you up for dinner, but I didn’t want to disturb you. And I figured you’d come up if you wanted to, which you obviously didn’t want to.”

 

“I was sleeping.”

 

“Right. I assumed. You needed your rest. Big day, yesterday.”

 

Just the mention of the day before—hearing Devin mention it so casually, albeit nervously—made Cara angry all over again. As if the “bigness” of the day hadn’t been entirely his fault. If he hadn’t lied to her or if he’d told her the truth before they’d walked into that house, the day could have ended differently.

 

She didn’t know how exactly, but perhaps she wouldn’t have ended up backed into a corner where her only options were to kill or be killed. She tried to push the thoughts away, feeling herself growing angrier as more and more of them piled up inside her mind.

 

If she wanted to be able to be around Devin and plan their hit, she needed to momentarily forget what he’d done. She needed to be able to look at him without wanting to punch him in the groin. She took a deep breath.

 

“Smells great,” she said, her voice monotone as she sat down at the table.

 

“Help yourself.”

 

Every exchange between them felt awkward, forced. Any outside observer would have never guessed they’d known each other longer than just that morning, let alone slept together.

 

Even the thought of it made Cara blush now. Remembering Devin’s hands on her, the way he’d made her feel. It had all been a lie. Hadn’t it? She had slept with someone she didn’t actually know. Someone who had been planning to kill her.

 

“How did you sleep?” he asked.

 

“Fine,” she said, piling strawberries onto her plate.

 

She didn’t want this. The small talk. The chitchat. The friendly banter.

 

“So, we should probably start planning the hit, right?” she asked, trying to refocus the conversation, give it a purpose. She didn’t want Devin thinking he could win her back.

 

“Can’t we have breakfast first?” he asked, and Cara noted a touch of frustration in his voice.

 

“It just seems like the sooner we get started, the sooner we can get it done, and the sooner we can both get out of here.”

 

“I know, but I just thought…” His voice trailed off.

 

Cara knew what he thought. He thought he would make her a breakfast and they would chat and that she would eventually forgive him. The sad thing was, he was probably right. If she let herself fall for him again, she would. The thing was, though, she wasn’t going to let herself.

 

“We need to make it look like I made the hit. How do you plan to do that?” she asked, redirecting the conversation.

 

Devin took a bite out of his English muffin, jam spilling out the back end and dropping onto the faux wood table. “You took out the second target with a bullet to the temple, so I’m thinking we’ll just stick with that. But I think we’re being watched, which means we need to trick whoever is watching into thinking that I am you.”

 

Cara looked at Devin’s broad shoulders, his long torso. He was twice her width and an entire head taller than her.

 

“How are we going to do that?” she asked.

 

Devin shook his head. “It actually won’t be as difficult as you’re thinking. The guys they send out on the stakeouts are morons, definitely not professionals. They are there to catch the obvious signs of deception, but if I dress like you and stay far enough away, they won’t have any idea.”

 

“You’re joking, right? You’re twice my size. How would someone not notice that?”

 

“They are morons,” he repeated, saying each word slowly. “If they see you leave the house in a black hoodie, and then see me breaking into the Bianchi compound in a black hoodie, they won’t think any more about it. Honestly, that isn’t the tricky part.”

 

“Okay,” she said, pushing her breakfast around her plate despite how hungry she was. “Then what is the tricky part?”

 

“Getting into the Bianchi compound, getting past the guards, getting into Rob Bianchi’s room, and then getting out again without being caught.”

 

“Is that all?” Cara asked, nervously laughing before remembering their situation and becoming serious again.

 

“I’m working on a plan for all of that,” Devin said.

 

“What is it?”

 

“I’d rather not say.” He cast a nervous look at her, and then back down at his plate.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“I’ll tell you the day of the hit.”

 

“Why not now?” Cara asked, her voice growing louder.

 

Devin took a deep breath. “I don’t want to make you angry, okay? But you did a hit by yourself once, and I just don’t want you getting any ideas. If I lay out the plan, you could take it and run. You could get the idea in your head that you can do this without me and you’ll try to break into the Bianchi compound, and you’ll get yourself killed. I’m just trying to minimize the chance of that happening.”

 

“Sooo,” Cara said, drawing the word out nice and long, “you are saying you don’t trust me? You don’t trust me? Am I understanding this correctly?”

 

“I trust you. I just…” He shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, I guess that is what I’m saying. I don’t trust you to not be a martyr.”

 

“That’s rich coming from you,” Cara said. “How can I even trust you actually have a plan? You did want me dead once before, who’s to say you aren’t planning to botch the whole thing and let the Morettis kill me? Or maybe you’ve been working with the Bianchis all along? A double agent, perhaps?”

 

Devin laughed. “You really think I’d go to this much trouble if I’d wanted you dead this whole time?”

 

“You concocted a complex plan the first time you wanted me dead.”

 

“That was to save my own skin. To save face with the Morettis. I no longer work for the Morettis. I could kill you right now, and leave you at the kitchen table to rot while I hopped on a plane and fled the country. I no longer need a complex plan. All I need is a gun. And honestly, I don’t even need that. I could kill you right now with nothing more than my bare hands.”

 

Cara felt her body go cold. For the first time, she was afraid of Devin. Even when they’d first met, when he’d kidnapped her and tied her up, she hadn’t been afraid of him. Not really. She’d been more afraid of death than anything else. Of what awaited her, of what it would feel like.

 

Devin hadn’t struck her as a particularly scary person though. But now, he terrified her. He was right. His body was a weapon. He was bigger than her. Stronger than her. He could overpower her in a second, and she’d never be able to stop him. And without his ties to the Morettis, he had nothing left to lose. No wife, his son hated him, and no job. He really could drop everything and leave the country. He’d be on foreign soil before anyone even found her body.

 

He leaned forward, his caramel eyes golden and serious. “I want to protect you. It’s all I’ve wanted for a while now. Let me do that. Let me make sure you live to see next week, and then I’ll leave, and you’ll never have to see me again. Okay?”

 

Cara didn’t answer for a while. Her nerves felt fried. Too many conflicting emotions roared through her body. Finally, as they finished eating, the eggs and bacon entirely cold from sitting out so long, she asked, “Where are you going to go?”

 

“Huh?” Devin asked, startled by her question after so long sitting in silence.

 

“When we finish the job. Where are you going to go?”

 

Devin shrugged. “Somewhere overseas. Maybe warm. I think I’d like to live somewhere warm for a change, somewhere where it never snows.”

 

“What will you do there?” she asked, not sure why she was asking, but feeling like she had to know the answer.

 

“I’ll be quiet,” he said. “I’ve always envied people who lead quiet lives. People who wake up and go to work and come home and don’t stay out late and if they do stay out late, only on weekends. I want to be boring for a change.”

 

Cara thought about her life with Daniel. About waiting for him to get home for work in the evenings, making dinner for them both, cleaning up. They went out to eat on the weekends, but only when and where Danny wanted to. She’d led a quiet life. A silent life, really. One in which she had no say and no power.

 

All she wanted now was to be exciting. Not the life and death kind of exciting she’d experienced in the last week. But the kind of exciting where she would work only when she needed money and travel without a plan. The kind of exciting that up until now she had only read about in books and seen on television.

 

“What about you?” Devin asked, interrupting her thoughts. “Do you have a plan?”

 

She looked at him and thought about the previous days they’d spent together. Thought about how she would have answered that question even twenty-four hours prior. Before she knew about his lies. Before she knew the truth.

 

“Nope,” she said, shaking her head and standing to clear her breakfast plate. “Not a plan in the world.”

 

# # #

 

The following days were full of silence and planning. Devin still wouldn’t reveal how he intended to get into the Bianchi compound, but they sat across the table from one another for hours every day.

 

Devin was working out all of the kinks, while Cara was trying to decide where she’d move and what she’d change her name to. Maybe Jenna? Or Megan? A classic cool girl name. The name of the American girl all the foreign men would want to date.

 

When the night of the hit finally arrived, Devin and Cara sat at the table one last time to do a final walk-through of the plan.

 

“I’ll go into the garage and hide in the back seat of the car,” Devin said, gesturing wildly with his hands, out of nerves, Cara assumed. “You will go through the front door and open the garage door from the outside. If someone is watching, we want them to get a clear look at you getting into the car alone and driving away.”

 

“And I’m supposed to wear this?” Cara asked, lifting an oversized black hoodie into the air.

 

“Yes. Sorry it’s so big. It’s the only thing in my closet I have more than one of,” he said, shrugging. “Part of the uniform.”

 

She dropped the hoodie into her lap and studied the black fabric, looking for signs of blood staining or brain matter, but didn’t see any.

 

“You’ll drive halfway to the Bianchi compound, but when we pass through the tunnel that is about one mile away, we will make the switch. I’ll climb into the front seat, you’ll shift the car into neutral, and then climb into the back so I can take the wheel. From there on out, your only mission is to hunker down in the back and not be seen. I’ll take care of anything else.”

 

Cara nodded. “And I don’t suspect you’re going to tell me any more about your plan?”

 

Devin shook his head. “Sorry, but I don’t want you running in after me if something goes wrong. I’ll explain everything to you when I get back.”

 

“But you just said yourself that something could go wrong. What if you don’t make it back and then Rob Bianchi is never killed and then, in turn, I’m killed?”

 

“I have that figured out as well,” Devin said, smiling at her reassuringly. His lips pulled upward, but Cara noticed the expression didn’t make it to his eyes. Instead, his eyes were downturned and grayer than normal.

 

“Fine. Then I guess I’ll just sit around like a useless lump while you take care of everything,” she said, crossing her arms and slouching down in the kitchen chair.

 

“Actually,” Devin said, turning to dig into the pocket of the black hoodie hanging from the back of his chair, “I do have something for you to do.”

 

He pulled out a thick white envelope and handed it to her.

 

“What is it? Drug money or something?” Cara asked, reaching for the letter, but then hesitated, drawing her hand back.

 

Devin laughed. “It’s a letter.”

 

Cara’s eyes narrowed, and she withdrew her hand even further. She didn’t want a letter from Devin. She didn’t want to read his apologies or his reasonings. That would go against her plan of never ever forgiving him. She wouldn’t take it.

 

“It’s not for you,” Devin said. “It’s for Evan.”

 

“Your son?” Cara asked, surprised.

 

For a moment she felt relieved, but then she wondered why Devin didn’t write her a letter. Was he going to give up on their relationship so easily? He didn’t even like her enough to fight for her? She knew this was silly, as she had made a firm resolution to never forgive him, but still, she’d expected Devin to make that resolution more difficult to keep. She hadn’t expected him to roll over so easily.

 

Devin nodded. “It’s just in case things don’t go well. I want him to have access to my accounts and my passwords and pin numbers. I doubt he’ll want any of it. He’ll probably just take his mom’s things and throw all of mine away. But still, I have to try and leave him something.”

 

Cara grabbed the letter. “I’ll hold onto it, but I won’t be the one giving it to him. Everything will be fine. You’ll be fine.”

 

Devin smiled at her. “I know.”