I’m still wrapped in a towel when Zach’s phone buzzes with a message. He walks across the room naked and I can’t take my eyes off him. Being with him, it’s intense. Insane.

And fleeting.

That last one, it scares me. The feeling sits like a brick in my stomach.

“What is it?” I ask when he tosses the phone on the bed and pulls on his jeans.

He glances at me while searching for a clean T-shirt in his duffel. “I have to go. Beos is at the market.”

“He’s the one who made my passport.”

Zach nods. He’s sitting on the bed putting his shoes on.

“I’ll be ready in a sec,” I say, picking up a dress that’s still lying on the floor after our earlier battle.

“Eve.” His hands are on my shoulders, warm and strong. He squeezes gently, then turns me to face him.

I know what he’s going to say.

“Zach—”

“No.” His answer is final, I know it.

“Please.”

“It’s too dangerous.” He’s shaking his head. “Stay here until I’m back. I promise we’ll make a plan together when I’m back.”

I’m looking up at him, his gaze is heavy, dark.

“This is about me too.”

“If he sees you, he’ll run. We’re too close to lose him and he can get us to Malik. To your brother, maybe. I have to go, okay?”

Reluctantly, I nod. He’s right. I know it.

“Good.” Setting me aside, he reaches into his duffel bag and takes out my pistol, the one he’d confiscated a few nights ago. He loads it with ammunition. “Do you know how to use this?”

I look at it. I don’t want to use it. I suck in a breath, steeling my spine. “Aim and shoot,” I say.

He puts it in my hand and closes my fingers around it. “Don’t let anyone in.”

“You think someone’s going to come?” I’m scared. I hate feeling like this, but I am.

“No one knows we’re here. You’ve been inside the hotel or with me the whole time. I just want you prepared.”

I remember my trip to the falafel stand the day before, but I don’t mention it. He needs to focus on getting information out of Beos.

“Okay, Eve?”

I nod. I have to get better at hiding my thoughts. He reads me like a book. “Go. I’ll be fine.”

He wraps his hands around my upper arms and pulls me in tight, his eyes intense on mine, like he’s trying to memorize me. Like it’s the last time he’ll see me. I shudder at the thought because I wonder if it is. If he’s walking into a trap.

“When you’re back, you’ll tell me who Malik is.” It’s not a question.

He nods. Then leans down to kiss me hard on the lips. When he’s done, he looks at me for another long minute before tucking the Glock into the waistband of his jeans then slipping on a jacket to hide it. “Lock the door behind me. Don’t let anyone in but me, understand?”

“I understand.”

The moment he’s out the door, the room feels empty, too big. And I feel too alone. I look at the pistol in my hand, set it on the nightstand and sit down on the edge of the bed. What am I doing? What am I thinking? Feeling?

I’ve been alone for the last two years, yet I’ve never felt as lonely as I do right now. It’s like when he walked out the door, he took something with him. Some part of me. I get up and walk to the window and see him just as he circles to the car. He glances up, but I don’t think he can see me. The windows are tinted so I can see out but from the outside, no one can see in. I stand there until he’s driven away then begin to pick up my things from the floor, begin to neatly fold the clothes he’d randomly thrown into my suitcase.

I put on a pair of panties and bra, then choose a dress. That’s when I glance at his duffel bag. My eyes drift to the locked door, then back to the bag. I know it’s wrong, but I go to it. Unzip it. Pull it open.

He carries this thing around like it’s some part of him. To me, it’s like a rope around his neck, the anchor dragging him under, and it’s only a matter of time before he sinks. I want to know what’s inside it. What’s got this hold on him. I should ask him, I know, but I don’t. Instead, I shove the few pieces of clothing aside. The thing I’m looking for is at the bottom. It’s inside those worn-out folders that look to be a hundred years old.

My hands are shaking as I lift them out and I can’t drag my eyes away as I carry them to the bed and sit with them on my lap.

I open the first one and there’s Armen’s face. This photo I’ve already seen. I touch it, touch my brother’s face. He’s not smiling. He’s in the middle of what I can tell is a heated conversation. The person he’s talking to isn’t in the shot, but Armen looks fierce. Not quite angry, but intense.

I place the picture face down on the bed beside me. I wish I had another one of him. One where he’s smiling. He had the best smile. At least he did before Malik stole it away.

The others in this file are also ones I’ve already seen, back at the McKinney property. My brothers, and Zach’s men. They’re smiling, some of them at least. I make myself look at each one. See each man who died that night. Remember each of their names. Say them out loud. It feels right, even if it makes tears stream down my face. Zach was right this morning. I didn’t want to go to Baskinta, but we needed to. We owed it to them.

I take a tissue from the nightstand and wipe my nose. My eyes are locked on the pistol and something makes me pick it up, put it beside me on the bed. I look at the next folder. I should get dressed. I should wait until Zach’s back and ask him to show me himself. But I don’t. I open it instead.

And I regret the moment I do. Because what greets me, well, I’m not expecting that. I’m not ready for it. I don’t think I ever could be ready for it.

One hand covers my mouth as bile rises up my throat. He’s carrying these around with him? The massacre, the scene of the bloodbath, the bodies, body parts. Walls, the ones that are still standing, leak blood and flesh and insides. I can’t count the number of bodies. I can’t count how many lives were lost. It’s impossible. A severed head here, a foot there, someone I recognize in the corner, captured as he’s dying, blood smearing the wall as he slides down, a corpse. Beos showed me some photos before I left Beirut, but they were nothing like these.

I’m going to vomit.

I stand so fast, the photographs scatter to the floor at my feet and I run into the bathroom and lift the toilet seat just in time as the first wave sends the little I’ve eaten today up and out. Wet hair sticks to my face, I can’t pull it away fast enough before I throw up, tears clogging my eyes. I feel like I’m going to die. Like nothing is left inside me. One clammy, trembling hand fumbles up to flush the toilet as I lean back, but only for a moment, because it’s not finished yet. The images are burned onto my brain now and it’s like they’re running on a slideshow I can’t stop and I’m puking again. I don’t know how long this goes on, but it feels like forever before the dry heaves end and I’m leaning my back against the cool tub, weeping. Filthy. Covered in my own vomit.

That’s when I hear him.

He’s back. Zach’s back.

I hear the sound of the lock disengaging, the doorknob turning.

The chain breaking.

I’m breathing hard and I can’t get up. I can’t make my legs work. My eyes are locked on the open bathroom door and my fingers move of their own accord and I only half acknowledge I’ve brought my pistol with me. I must have picked it up when I ran in here.

Because I’m going to need it.

It’s not Zach.

Heavy boots walk through the bedroom. The bed strains with the burden of weight and someone makes a tsk-tsk sound.

“Someone’s made a mess.”

He hears my intake of breath. He must. It’s so loud. He knows I’m here. In here puking my guts out.

I force myself to stand, the gun in my hand.

He stands too. I hear the bed creak. Hear papers crunch beneath his boots. My fingers are working involuntarily and the gun at my side is cocked and when the man steps into view, he takes up the entire doorway. He’s huge, his face scarred, his black eyes hard. Cruel. He’s wearing black from head to toe and it’s like he’s blocked out any sunlight.

A smile breaks across his face but it doesn’t touch his eyes. No. They’re roaming over my body and I realize I’m still naked, or almost so.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he drags his eyes back up to meet mine. “Well, well, if it isn’t Eve El-Amin, all grown up.”

I recognize him then. It’s his voice that does it, that triggers something deep inside me. And without thinking, without hesitating, the arm that’s holding the pistol rises to his chest and there’s a moment of shock on his face, and it looks so strange there. So human.

But he’s not human. He’s one of the men who came that last day. One of the ones Armen brought into our house. The one he had words with. The one who dragged me up by my hair as Armen injected me.

I wait until his eyes meet mine and he gives me that grin again. That grin that says he’ll hurt me now, like he did then. And then it’s done. I pull the trigger, and it’s finished.

This man, this giant, stumbles backward one step, two. He still has that look on his face. That surprise. But then that’s gone too and I watch him the whole time, follow him into the bedroom, memorize every flash of anything that crosses his face. And when he falls, it’s like slow motion and as he’s falling on those photographs of death, it’s like history repeating itself. Death on death. Blood on the walls. Blood on me. In my hair. In my mouth. I can taste it. I taste his blood in my mouth.

It’s me who stumbles this time. Me who falls backward against the wall. Slides down it, the pistol falling to the luxurious, ruined carpet beneath my feet. And all I can see all around me is death.

Death.

Past and present colliding.

Death.