“You don’t mind,” Russell said easily. “Brock is the sneakiest bastard we’ve had yet. Time is of the essence if we’re going to nab him.”

I said nothing. Clearly, this was not the time to admit that I’d been counting on a way to help Brock escape ever since Russell had walked into that café.

“And turn him over to the police, of course,” he said with a smirk, like he knew he was lying and didn’t care if I knew or not.

As we turned onto the dirt road off the parking lot, I sneakily checked the door again. Locked, of course.

“Maybe you could just…”

“Don’t have time to drop you off, unfortunately,” Russell returned coolly.

He hit a button which made music blare through the car. It took a minute for me to recognize the angry song.

The song was jarring, the singer’s voice a rebellious rasp, the guitar a groaning, percussive hit to the gut, the percussion itself just slamming along. It was ironically appropriate, when the singer yelled “screw you, I won’t do what you tell me”, almost like the universe thumbing its teeth at my predicament. I had chosen money over righteousness, and now I was going to pay the ultimate price. I was going to witness first-hand what Russell and his goons were going to do to the man I may have just fallen for.

My gaze slid around the car dully. I noticed everything: the floor mat littered with beer bottles at my feet, the cup holder of cigarette butts by my elbow, the hand sanitizer flopped atop them like a joke. The whole car was a hotbox of smoke and my own idiotic failure. My hand grabbed the window handle.

“Can I?”

Russell responded by leaning over and, as the car bumped along, twisting the handle around and around. Once the window was down enough, I stuck my whole head out the window and gulped in the fresh air greedily. A light snow still coated everything, and some icy leaves brushed my eager face. This was the calm before the storm, and what was coming was inevitable.

When I pulled my head back inside, my glance slid to the glove compartment. Its door was ajar. Inside, what looked like a gun glinted. This was bad. This was very, very bad. I felt in my pocket for my phone. Maybe if I just dialed…

“You understand, of course, that my friends and I take our work seriously,” Russell said, his voice light. He shot me a significant look. “Very seriously.”

I let my phone go. I would just have to go along for the ride. I didn’t have any choice.

The drive took even longer than I remembered. Russell spoke to me just once to ask how far in it was.

At my “not sure, pretty far though,” he grunted and said nothing more.

He turned off the radio in the middle of a country song that liberally used a cowbell.

The quiet was even more stifling, and the occasional clank of beer bottles didn’t help things. I was on edge. Every little movement Russell made and every tiny sound from the car or outside frightened me. Meanwhile, our blacked-out clones were still behind us. We passed a twisted ruin of a tree trunk, and my heart fell. We were almost there.

By the time we pulled into the all-too-familiar parking lot, I felt like I was going to pass out with fear.

“Finally,” Russell said.

Then, one hand on the steering wheel, he slipped the other into the glove compartment and took out the gun.

With a playful wag of it at me, he joked, “Now, don’t you go trying anything now.”

I clenched my fists, and he got out of the car.

As I watched him and seven men assemble in front of the cabin, unlikely explanations flew through my head. Maybe Russell was telling the truth. Maybe he and his men (who also happened to be wearing all black) just wanted to capture Brock and take him to the police. Maybe Brock was going to be fine and would just have to finally pay for his crimes. Maybe everything was going to be all right.

But when the other men took out their guns, even those unlikely reassurances disappeared.

Russell knocked on the door.

Please don’t answer, I silently begged Brock. Please, please be out on a walk, or peer out the window first. Please, don’t you open that door.

But then the door swung open, and I found myself terrified yet pleased. Seeing his handsome face again, even in these circumstances, was something I thought I’d never get to do again. Brock’s face went grave at the sight of Russell and the others, and then his gaze slid over their shoulders…to me. I shrank back, wanting to disappear into the black polyester seat or onto the beer-bottle-covered floor, but it was too late. It was too late entirely. Brock had seen me, and his face looked like he’d been shot already. He hung his head and then slammed the door shut.

The next second, Russell and his men were hammering on it, yelling. Finally, they kicked it, smashing into it with such force that it gave way. There was a crash and then Brock was on the roof, leaping into a snowbank below before taking off running. He disappeared into the forest.

I couldn’t sit still in the car any longer. I tried the door, but it wouldn’t budge. Somehow Russell had locked it so that I couldn’t leave, unless...

I climbed out the window and hopped onto the snow just as Russell and his men came running out.

Russell raced over to me, his face now a full-on snarl, his gun clutched in white-knuckled hands.

“Which way did he go?”

I gaped at him, and he took a casual look at his gun and then at me.

“Which way?”

“That way,” I said, pointing in the opposite direction I had seen Brock run.

As two of his beefy men ran up, Russell swept his gun out in the direction I had pointed. “That way.”

Then, turning to me with a put-on smile, Russell gently said, “You probably want to be getting home, now don’t you?”

I nodded dumbly, and he walked over to the car and unlocked it.

“Got it all fitted out with a whole bunch of customized features,” he said casually, slipping inside.

I stood there for a minute, staring at the seat I had been in. Did I really want to go back in there with him? How did I know that Russell was going to return me home safely, that he wasn’t going to get rid of me too for knowing too much?

“You coming?” Russell’s easy voice broke through my reverie.

He was turned to face me, his gun still in hand. Whatever he intended to do with me, I had no choice but to go with him. I opened the car door and sat down. Leaning over me, Russell closed the window.

“And we’re off,” he said, and then we were, rumbling down the way we’d come, down the road I’d gone up and down too many times now.

The last few minutes replayed in my head in a surreal haze, like scenes from a movie. The gun, Russell’s men, the fallen door, the crash, Brock’s look. That heartbreaking look of knowing, of realization. That look I would never forgive myself for.

As we passed it, I glared at the twisted trunk of the tree. It was strangely emblematic of all that was left of me, of how low I had let myself fall for my job. I had sacrificed a good man, had done what I knew was wrong, to save myself and my job.

Russell didn’t even try to have a conversation now. Lost in his own vile thoughts, he absently picked up a cigarette, lit it, and puffed away. It was all another job to him, all another day’s work, while to me, for a moment, this man, Brock Anderson, had been everything.

It was getting late now; the sky was an unimpressed gray, the trees all bowed over with the too-heavy snow, claws of branches extended towards me eerily, as if begging for the help they knew they couldn’t have. Still, I whispered a “sorry” to them, one that was meant for him, really. It was for everyone I had ever failed—myself most of all. It was a “sorry” for failing once more, for making the wrong choice.

By the time I checked my phone, I was hardly surprised to find his message: I’m at your apartment, waiting by the door. I won’t leave until I’ve seen you. It was Charlie. He always had a knack for coming at the worst times, the lowest times when I couldn’t say no.

When Russell pulled up to the darkened East Street Garage, we sat there for a minute. I was too tired for any more pretenses. I hardly even cared for the money. I just wanted to get out of this suffocating prison of a car.

Russell said, “You will tell me if he contacts you again, if you see him. If you find out anything about him.”

I nodded my head robotically and told him I would.

He handed me my envelope, and I got out.

One step away and—“Miss Combs!”

“Yes?”

“You must have been proud, happy to see your good detective work being put to use.”

I scrutinized his face for a minute and then finally produced the expected “yes.”

“Thanks again,” he said.

We stood there for another minute, staring at each other. Then I gave an awkward wave, and he gave one back. It was only once he had pulled away that I let the tears fall.

What had just happened? Other than me betraying all that was right, that was. That look on Russell’s face… He hadn’t believed those words any more than I had, and yet he had said them entirely for me. That look had been pure pity.

I shook my head and brushed aside the tears angrily. It was stupid, all of it. I was the last person in the world who deserved anyone’s pity.