She woke up on her back, sore as hell, and under the wide-eyed gaze of several white-clad workers. They wore masks, but their surprise shone through. Locals, middle-aged men and women. For the moment, they were silent.

The conveyor belt she’d apparently landed on had stopped moving. Jagged little edges of things stuck underneath her, jabbing against her skin and along her spine. She tried to move immediately, but then hands came down, holding and stopping her. Voices, too, everything trying to hold her in place, telling her to wait, to relax, to stay. But despite the pain in her back, she just wanted to get off the belt and get the hell out of there. It wouldn’t matter if her legs were broken, if she’d have to crawl out with pure upper body determination. It wouldn’t matter how much she was bleeding. She just needed to be gone, as far away as possible from this room and these people, and the man she’d once had the stupidest idea to try following.

She raised her head off the belt, scanning around for her nearest exit. And then the wave of voices came back.

“Don’t move.”

“You’re hurt.”

“Just hold still.”

They all came in jumbled, the voices, the hands.

“Hold still!”

She was so not going to hold still.

“Stop!” a man yelled, his hands coming down and holding her body more firmly, almost crushing her against whatever she was lying on. What was it? Florescent light bulbs? There was a crinkling sound underneath, and from the room, footsteps. A whole army of them rushing in as rapidly and urgently as the voices.

One of the faces was finally revealed to her, a hand pulling away the mask to reveal a young woman’s frightened expression. “Please stay still,” she said. “We’re getting help for you.”

What was there left to say to these people? For as badly as her body felt, Annica didn’t want to stay lying there. She didn’t want their help. She struggled against their hands again, her muscles feeling weaker this time. And then, over all the noise, the loudest voice of all. “Hold her down!”

She stopped moving. Struggling against their combined weight was pointless. She lay still, waiting. The loud voice, the seeming leader of whatever this operation she’d had just landed on was. When his face appeared above her, unmasked, she couldn’t stop herself from letting out a gasp. It was the sound of terror and it seemed to startle her rescuers, who drew back, staring at the new arrival. And he was staring at her—the man she’d been following. Sharky. Those same eyes, now bulging out, that same mouth, still mournful, beautiful, but now twisted with concern. His chest was heaving, like he’d run some distance. Only a few minutes ago, she’d been the one struggling to catch up with him. And now here he was, his hand dropping to her arm, patting her.

“Are you okay?” he said.

She had no idea how bad it was. She had no idea about anything. Lying on her back still, in this strange room and under these strange faces, the world seemed chaotic and distorted. She had fallen some distance through the air, from a life that had finally become ordinary and safe, to this. What the hell was this?

“Can you hear me?” Sharky had said it twice, with Annica just picking up on it.

“Yes.” She could almost feel his gaze, his attention gently sweeping across her face like the tips of feathers. He winced, almost as if he could feel her pain.

He winced again at the sound of another voice, out of her field of view. The most authoritarian yet. “Get her up.”

“She’s hurt,” Sharky said.

“Get her up,” was the answer, hard and loud like a prison guard. “Get her up and get her out of here.”

“Can you sit up?” Sharky asked her.

She sat without a word, but with a long groan instead. Her tailbone felt like it had been replaced with a burning hot piece of coal.

“What hurts the most?” he asked her. “Is your arm okay?”

She could only mumble something unintelligible.

“You’re lucky this beltway has some give to it.” He stuck his arm out. “Ready?”

“Huh?”

“Let’s go,” came the voice. “Get her moving.”

She grabbed hold of him, her hand squeezing around his forearm as it flexed and pulled her down off the table onto two shaky legs. They were shaky, but holding. She was amazed they hadn’t shattered in a million pieces.

“There you go,” Sharky said, brushing random bits of crud off her shoulders. “You landed perfectly. Or else you wouldn’t be standing.”

Someone in the background started shouting to the workers, convincing them that the “show’s over” and how they needed to clean up her mess. Immediately, the worker ants were activated, Annica surrounded by a flurry of activity. It was dizzying. Her head spun, either from the disorientating effect of this strange environment, or how she landed into it. And she started feeling that hot pressure again, like the sea sickness, but this time on land. It grew worse when she saw the man who’d been barking all the orders. The heat rose continually as he approached, her face feeling the hot blast of air from his angry mouth. “What the fuck is this?” he shouted. “Who are you?”

“I’m no one.”

“You’re about to be no one in a few minutes.”

“What?”

“What’s your name?”

“Why?”

“Because you just fell through my fucking ceiling, that’s why.”

“Sorry,” Annica said. She even really meant it.

He looked over to Sharky and said it again. “Get her out of here.”

Before Annica could say anything, his hands returned, this time much more rough, pushing her away from the angry boss. At first she was glad to be moving in the opposite direction from him. But the way she was being handled was a bad sign of things to come.

“Take it easy,” Annica said to him, “I’m going, I’m going.”

He didn’t respond. He’d gone from that mysterious man on the cargo ship, to a kind face in the wilderness, and now to a hardened cop. Especially the way he’d handled her, rough and brutish until he’d pushed her clear out into the hall.

“Stop,” she said, struggling against his grasp. “Just stop grabbing me like that. I’ll go.”

He pushed her forward.

“Let go of me!”

He only relaxed his grip.

“Where are we going?”

“Relax,” Sharky said.

“No!”

“We’re just going to ask you some questions,” he said, “and then you can go.”

He had a large ring of keys attached to his belt. It jingled loudly as they walked the hall. “Are you security?” she asked.

“Something like that.”

He was strong, that she knew. Whenever their bodies would come into contact, a light bump around the corner, she could feel the solidity of his body, his thick chest, his core. When she’d put up an effort, he hardly had to work at all. She would hate to see him actually try.

“Don’t worry,” he said.

“Don’t worry?”

“I’m not a cop.”

She almost laughed at that, even in the seriousness of the moment. How could he have said that and not been joking?

“We won’t call the cops, either,” Sharky said, trying to make it sound like that was a good thing.

“I almost wish you would,” Annica said.

“Really?”

“No.”

He opened a door for her, and then he watched very carefully as she walked in. A small office. A small desk and two chairs. He told her to sit. Then he closed the door, leaning his back against it. The only way out.

“What do you want?” she asked.

He shrugged and said, “Nothing.”

It was like a dagger through her heart. Why couldn’t he want something? She was here, locked in this room. Could he at least want her to talk, to stay alive for an explanation of who she was and where she was from?

“We just need you to sit tight a moment,” he said.

“Can I ask who you are?”

“I’m a security guard. That’s all. Nothing personal.”

“You were on the ship. The cargo ship. The Batchewana.”

His expression shifted immediately, from a businesslike smugness to something that almost seemed wounded, like she’d just ripped out a chunk of his flesh. It melted through the ice of his cool demeanor.

Annica said, “I was a passenger on the—”

“I know.”

He moved off the door right as it opened, Sharky making room for the man who had just been raging back on the production floor.

“Hi,” he said with a fake and pained smile. “How are you?”

“Not too good,” Annica said as coolly as she could.

“I know,” he said, reaching out his hand. “I’m Roger.”

Annica just stared at it. And then let her eyes drift away, watching how Sharky had stood back. She could almost see the wheels in his head turning.

“May I ask your name?”

She shrugged, averting her eyes.

“Okay. Empty your pockets,” Roger said, his voice getting lower. Even lower a minute later with, “Empty them or we’ll do it for you. Trust me, we will and it won’t be very fun.”

She was really screwed. She knew it now more than ever. More than when she was stuck in a hallway, or in the darkness of the drop chute, or lying on the conveyor belt. Here she knew that it might all be over with.

She looked sadly at the contents of her pockets spread out on the desk. Her cell phone, luggage locker key, handful of change, and a pen.

Roger pocketed the pen, and the change. Then looked judiciously at the locker key as he dangled it in the air. “What’s this?”

“A key,” she said.

He rolled his eyes, dropping it to the desk with a clink. He grabbed her phone next. “What’s your password?”

“I’m not saying another thing,” she said. “You’ll have to call the police. I don’t care what kind of trouble I get in.”

She would rather deal with that kind trouble. It was probably easier than whatever these guys had in store.

Roger held the phone up to Sharky. “Don’t we have someone?”

“For that?”

“Yeah. Is he in today?”

Sharky pursed his lips, his non-answer perhaps informing Annica that she had just lucked out. There was no one around to crack her phone’s password—or so she hoped.

“Well, don’t worry,” Roger said, turning back to her with a sigh. “We’ll get into it one way or another.”

“I don’t care anymore,” she said.

“You will care.” He placed the phone on his desk, chuckling. “You’ll care if have to resort to sending you downstairs for some enhanced interrogation techniques.”

She couldn’t let herself think about downstairs. She could only think of upstairs, the outside world, life, hope.

“And it won’t be as nice down there,” Roger said. “The less you cooperate, the smaller the instruments.”

Annica tried to suppress a shudder and failed.

Roger seemed delighted, smiling. “Okay?”

“Okay what?”

“No one here wants to do that. Most of all you, I’m sure. But it will happen if you don’t start telling us some answers.”

“Fine,” she said.

Roger’s smile grew, horrifyingly. The most yellowed teeth she’d ever saw. “That wasn’t so bad, right?”

“Go ahead,” Annica said. “What do you want to know?”

“Let’s start with your name.”

“Laura.”

“And what brings Laura to Hawaii?”

“A fucking vacation.”

“Alone?”

“Until I meet my husband. Who’s extremely protective of me, and a little crazy.” A plan started forming in her mind. She only hoped Jackson would play ball if it got to that.

“Sure,” Roger said.

“Who’s probably getting worried about me as we speak.”

“As he should be.”“He’s supposed to meet me at Cafe Juniper at two o’clock.”

“That’s in ten minutes,” Sharky said quietly.

Roger gave him a sour look. And then back to Annica, “We’ll make the timeline up from here on out. Okay?”

Annica thought about Jackson again. He wasn’t exactly her spouse, but in a weird way, he was the closest thing to it. There was some truth, and some mixed emotions, to her answer. And there was truth to Jackson waiting for her, with his own spouse. Mira.

Ever since Annica and Jackson’s not-so-serious relationship withered away, she had not-so-secretly kept tabs on him. Her ex-Navy Seal, ex-lover. They stayed friendly. They stayed business partners. Annica had even met his new girl, likely his first since . . . whatever it was she and Jackson had shared out of rainy clothes, in the foggy-windowed darkness of his backseat. Whoever Annica was back then . . .

“So when we hack into your phone,” Roger said, “it’ll corroborate the story of Laura, a vacationer? Innocent little Laura, coming to Hawaii just to meet her husband?”

“Sure.”

“What’s your husband’s name?”

“Jack,” she said, almost completing the entire name.

“Jack . . .”

“Jack.” She said it more firmly, and with a firmer and more final ending.

“Well, what do you think?” Roger said to Sharky. “Sound pretty credible?”

He shrugged in response.

“To me,” Roger said, “it sounds like the words of someone who doesn’t want to go downstairs.”

“Well . . .”

“Doesn’t it?” he said, tapping the phone.

“Well, who the hell would want to go downstairs? If it’s anything like you’ve described . . .”

“And it also sounds like someone who’s trying hard to give just enough information to stay out of it, but not enough information to really say anything of value.”

By now, Annica had thoroughly examined the room, or at least as much she could examine from her cramped corner seat. An increasingly desperate search for any semblance of a weapon. Or better yet, an escape. Or just any basic tool she could grab and wield for either purpose. There was the old-school computer monitor on Roger’s desk. An inoperable-looking stapler that seemed to be used as paperweight. Was it weighty enough to do damage to the pockmarked face of Roger?

How about the cracked-open window to her left? Would it be low enough to survive the fall? And onto what matter of industrial bric-a-brac would she be landing?

What about the simplest equation: the door? Would Roger be a pal and let her pass by?

“What else can I tell you?” she said, trying not to eye the door so intently. “What do you want?”

“First,” Roger said, “you’ll have to agree that it’s been a bit of an odd morning. No?”

“I agree,” she said, knowing before even saying the words how easy it would be to come across as utterly genuine. But should she have dialed it back? Annica may have just given away a benchmark for the rest of her answers, just like the seemingly innocuous opening questions of a lie-detector test.

“I’m glad we can agree on something,” he said finally, after his eyes had thoroughly consumed her. Despite the man’s small size, she felt even smaller in his gaze.

“I had no intentions,” she said, “of coming here.”

“So what was it? How did all this begin?”

“There is no ‘all this.’”

His eyes narrowed on her. “Laura, or whatever your name is . . . You broke into our facility, crawled through the ductwork, then somehow crashed through the ceiling and almost landed on one of our employees at the sorting belt. That’s what I mean by all this.”

What could she say to that?

What could she do?

Computer monitor. Paperweight. Open window . . . What else?

A crooked smile came from Roger when her eyes met his. “So why don’t we try again?” he said.

“Fine.”

“And we can start off generally, if you’d like.”

Annica nodded. “Fine.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’ve got the hots for him.”

No reaction from Roger. Had he heard this one, too?

“That’s all it is,” she added.

“You have the hots for who?”

She looked at Sharky, his cold, hard face suddenly blushing. Dark eyes not so dark anymore. It was amazing how quickly his demeanor kept changing with her. He’d gone from mysterious and sexy, to scary and threatening, and now: puppy dog.

Who the hell was he?

“Who?” Roger said again.

“Him,” she said, looking at Sharky enough that he’d averted his eyes, looking down at his feet, chuckling to himself as if he’d known all along. “Him right there.”

Roger checked his armed guard, who shrugged innocently in response.

“That’s why I’ve been a little . . . evasive.”

“Because of your husband,” Roger said.

“I’m married,” Annica said, keeping her eyes on him. “Happily. I’ve got no business following around some stranger like this, following him here especially.”

“I’d say. You have absolutely no business here.”

“Of course.”

“I think you finally understand that now,” Roger said.

“I always understood that.”

Roger frowned and said, “So do you know him?”

“No, I just saw him. On the street.” Annica’s mind sputtered to find the right lie. Though it wasn’t really a lie at all. She had just seen him. And, yes, there definitely was . . . “Just something,” Annica said. “Just something about . . .”

“Something about what?” Roger said, head tilted to the side. “You know this sounds a lot like pure bullshit.”

“I just wanted to talk to him. It wasn’t supposed to be a big deal.” She almost laughed at how ridiculous it all was. But then she remembered what promises lay in store for her in the basement.

“Does this happen to you often?” Roger asked.

“Never.”

“I wish I could believe you.”

“It really doesn’t.”

“I’m talking about the whole story.”

“Call the cops then.”

He chuckled. “You seem like a bright girl. You know that’s not an option.”

“What other options do we have?”

“Laying you out on the table,” Roger said. “Maybe starting with the live wire, run that from a car battery. We’ve got all kinds of options down there.”

“Are there any—” Her words were cut off by a hard, dry swallow. Her mouth almost felt too dry to form proper words. “Are there any up here?”

“Any options, you mean?”

“Anything.”

“It depends on what you tell us, and how close it is to the truth. That will decide the options for you.”

Annica stared at Sharky for a moment, his posture having relaxed against the door frame once again. “And if I tell the truth, you’ll just let me go on my way?”

“It depends what kind of truth you’ve got. I’m just keeping it real with you, Laura, or whoever you are. No bullshit. That’s the kind of courtesy I’m showing you right now. You’ll be wise to do the same.”

“I am,” she said. “I am doing the same.” She looked up at Sharky one last time, pleading with him, using her eyes to pierce through that rough exterior, pierce and stab and tug at his heartstrings—if he had any. Please have some. Please.

“Alright,” Roger said. “Maybe we’ve gone as far as we can with this.” He looked at Sharky and said, “What do you think?”

“I think she needs a tour.”

“Yeah.” Roger was nodding. “Yeah, maybe a tour might be the best thing. What do you say, Laura?”

“What?”

“You want the tour, right? That’s what you came here for?”

“I came just to . . . I came to get his phone number. That’s all I wanted.”

“Well, I’m sure he can give it to you during the tour. Isn’t that right?”

“That’s right,” Sharky said.

“And he’s single,” Roger said to him, that smile going crooked again. “Isn’t that right? Single and looking?”

“Always looking,” Sharky said, not smiling at all.

Annica, with the vague sensation that their meeting was about to wrap, urged Roger with a wide-eyed glance. Her chair was slightly lower than his and she’d been staring up at him the whole time, pleading. “Wait,” she said. “Please. I don’t need a tour.”

Roger shrugged.

“I don’t want a tour,” Annica whimpered. She didn’t know the specifics of what the tour entailed. She just knew that she wanted no part of it. No tour. No basement.

“Well,” Roger said, standing from his chair, “Let’s hop to it then.”

“No.”

“You got this?” Roger asked his guard.

Sharky said, “The . . . tour?”

Roger showed him Annica’s phone. And then tossed it underhand at him, the phone bouncing off Sharky’s chest and into his clasped hands. “Let me know if he gets anywhere with that,” Roger said.

“Will do.”

“And let me know her name when he gets it.”

“It’s Laura,” Annica said, watching how he looked at her, how his face frowned almost sympathetically. “Laura Graziano.”

“It’s Jane Doe.” Roger gave one last chuckle to Sharky before walking out of the room. No last words for Annica. Not even a sideways glance. It was the type of dismissal a judge gives to a convict headed for death row.

“Alright, Jane,” Sharky said, pointing to the open doorway. “You ready?”

“No.”

“You need help again?”

She waited for a moment, making sure he wouldn’t approach her for any “help.” Her eyes were trained on his feet. One step forward and she’d go screaming into him, punching and kicking, and biting, and doing it all with the ferocity of a cornered animal.

But he stayed relaxed against the door. “You ready?”

She felt her hands unconsciously grip the armrest, fingers curling around, Annica clutching on for dear life. She looked at Sharky. “Are you going to kill me?”

“No.”

“What’s happening?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m walking you out of here.”

“That’s what ‘the tour’ means?”

He didn’t respond. No words or body language. Just that classic cool demeanor of a man, a guard, named Sharky. The man who would be giving Annica her tour. She hated the idea of it, of him and what he might do to her.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said, finally.

“You don’t have to make it so difficult. Let’s just get up, walk through this door, and I’ll show you out of here.”

There was no other choice, really.

Annica got up and made her way, slowly, to the door.

“Ladies first.”

He walked behind her in the hall, giving directions for each turn and each door. Nothing had looked familiar to her first tour, when she was unguided and alone. When she was still somewhat free, and most definitely alive. Now, it was dead man walking.

“Just relax,” Sharky said from behind her. “Please.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? I can see you shaking from here.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re not visibly shaking? Take a left.”

Annica took a left and was faced with another hall, the interiors all looking the same and melding together in one jumbled mess. She would never be able to find her way out. She might never even get loose to try.

“I’m not scared,” Annica said.

“There’s nothing to be scared about. You just got yourself in a little over your head.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I know.”

“And now we’ll just have to get you out.”

“I’m sorry I followed you.”

“Alright, listen,” he said. “Hold on. Stop.” His hand was on her shoulder.

She stopped and turned to see his mournful expression. “What?”

“He’s going to find out who you are. So there’s no need to keep lying.”

“I’m not lying.”

He sighed, his face moving from sadness to disgust. “Come on, really?”

Nothing made sense to her. Especially how he was looking at her. “What?” she said, her face and inflexion still the same. Still confused. Still scared.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s keep walking.”

She stood still. A memory forming. Those numbers.

“Come on. It’s clear there’s no point in talking.”

“Are you my contact?”

“What?”

“For my story. My interview.” She waited, watching the tension across his face. His Adam’s apple bobbing hard with what seemed like an unplanned swallow. She checked his eyes again, waiting for that flicker of aversion. Deception. But he held strong.

Finally, Annica gathered her strength. “Are you the whistle-blower?”

No reaction. He took a step forward and said, “Let’s get moving.”

“Are you?”

“Move,” he said, pushing Annica backward, spinning her around. She could almost feel the nervous energy through his hands. When he held them against her, she could feel the vibrations. Annica had vibrations of her own. She was sure of that. But together, their bodies formed a nervous ball of energy. Was he as frightened as she was?

His hands pressed harder, shoving her, Annica almost spilling over onto the floor. “Alright!” she cried, speeding up her stride, separating himself from him and his chaotic energy. She was moving quickly, like he’d instructed, and navigating the building as he’d instructed. And for once, she kept her mouth shut. But she might have already received her answer. In the quiet of her mind, Annica played and replayed his reaction to her question. There was a look of suppressed terror about him.

As they climbed a set of stairs, her thoughts went to Jackson. Did he ever feel this sort of anxiety on the job? Could he feel her now? Although their relationship now was drastically different than what it once was, there was still at least some sort of connection between them. She felt it the first time she was in danger with him in Virginia Beach. When she was separated, he was there somehow, and then he found her. It was almost like a tracking device. It saved her life back then, back in that cage. Locked away and waiting. Facing death.

What would she be facing this time?

Another cage?

Or would Sharky somehow do the impossible and release her?

Sharky’s boss made the “tour” sound like a death march. A short walk that wouldn’t end in a cage, or an exit door, but a bullet to the head. Fuck . . .

Maybe Jackson could pull it off one more time. He’d always been so great with timing, with saving her ass with seconds to spare. She tried to forget the exact amount of time left on the bomb’s timer in Virginia Beach. She tried to only remember what fresh air felt like after the cage. It felt like the first time, her first breath. Her first kiss.

Everything about Virginia Beach, the good and the bad, had been wrapped up with Jackson. He’d become synonymous with rescue, with so many of her raw emotions. Her memories, the knots of worry in her back muscles, had all taken years off her life. They would also take years to even begin the process of shedding, of growing away from. Being so wrapped up still with Jackson or being captured or killed in some random Hawaiian processing plant were moves in the wrong direction.

She peered into a small room, perhaps the last she might ever see. It was certainly the last of her “tour.”

“Step inside,” Sharky said.

The wrong direction, indeed. This fucking room. This cramped, green-walled cell.

“Step inside,” he urged her, putting a little more venom in the words.

She stepped inside. Then she spun around quickly to keep an eye on him, to keep an eye on the next set of developments. Again, she’d become the cornered animal. She was ready to pounce at the first sign of trouble, the first twitch of his muscles toward his holster. It wasn’t much, but it was the only thing she had left.

“Can you take a seat?” he asked.

She didn’t want to.

It was a room just like the site of her first interrogation with Roger. Small. Two chairs, one table. Only this one had on the wall what seemed to be a trap door similar to the one she’d originally used to get in so much trouble.

Annica motioned to it and said, “What’s behind that door?”

“Just sit please.”

Sitting would take some of the spring out of her attack, quite literally. She needed to stay on her feet. Stay loose and limber and mobile. “I’ll stand.”

“Fine. Can I have your password?” He pulled out her phone and swiped it on, and then looked up at her. “I understand how someone wouldn’t trust Roger. But I’m different.”

“Different how?”

“I’m just different.”

“That means nothing to me right now.”

“Okay.”

“So you get a paycheck from that asshole?”

He shrugged.

“This is how you make your living? An armed thug?”

“No.”

“And what’s so special about this place that they need armed thugs? What are they making here?”

He shook his head. “I’m not going to comment on the business.”

“Can you comment about me? What’s going to happen to me?”

Sharky reached back for the door, pulling it tightly shut behind him. “We just need your password, to check your identity. That’s all this is.”

“Hand me the phone, then.”

“Excuse me?”

“The phone,” Annica said. “You don’t need some hacker. I can open it right now.”

“Why can’t you just tell me the password?”

“It’s my lucky number, that’s why. It’s a secret.”

Sharky smiled. “Of course it is.”

“I’m very spiritual,” she said to his blank face. “Numbers are important to me.”

“And you’re quite the bullshitter,” Sharky said.

“Yeah, and what are you good at? Hustling in pool halls?”

“Huh?”

“With a name like Sharky.”

His eyes narrowed.

“So maybe I’m not bullshitting,” she said. “I know you.”

“How do you know me?”

“I watched you.”

“On the ship?” His eyes relaxed open, softening. “On the deck?”

“What were you doing out there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Over the rails like that . . .”

“I don’t know,” he said again, this time looking even more sheepish about it. Embarrassed, almost.

“Maybe you need to talk to someone.”

“Yeah,” he said, chuckling quietly. “That’s what they tell me.”

“I mean, someone who might be able to tell your story.” She watched him take a big sigh as he evaluated her, and her proposition. She was getting to him. It would be the only way out of this, needling through the softer parts of his psyche. “You can’t honestly tell me that you’re . . . happy.”

Sharky laughed, but it was grim.

“Especially with this.” Annica had her hands held up, palms outstretched, motioning them gently around the dingy little room. “How can you be happy living like this?”

“Living, in general,” he said, “is the problem.”

“Only if you can’t change things. Only if you lack the courage.”

“I do lack the courage,” he said, “as you saw on the deck.”

“There’s nothing courageous about killing yourself.”

“I wasn’t really going to do that.”

“What were you trying to do out there?”

Sharky shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t seem to know an awful lot.”

“Exactly,” he said. “They pay me not to know.”

“You probably sleep better that way.”

“Trust me,” Sharky said. “Either way, I’ll be sleeping like a baby tonight.”

“What do you mean either way?”

“Here,” Sharky tossed her the phone, which she barely had time to catch. “Just don’t do anything stupid with it.”

Annica held it at her side. “What do you mean, either way?”

“Whatever happens from this.”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve been kidnapped,” she said.

“This isn’t a—”

“I’ve been locked in a fucking cage before. Do you know what it’s like to be in a cage?”

“I’ve been to jail.”

She held back an eye roll. Probably wouldn’t be in her best interests right now. “Big surprise.”

She hadn’t looked at her phone yet. Not even a single glance. Though in the back of her mind she wondered if she had time to do it, to make a call, a call for help to Jackson. Maybe even use the stupid alert app he’d insisted Tansy install on her phone. She’d scoffed at the time, but now? She only hoped her GPS was on. She ran through the timeline in her head, wondering if her fingers could hold steady enough, if she could hold Sharky at bay long enough to hit the right buttons.

But surely he suspected it. They might have been thinking about the exact same thing at that very moment.

Her fingers hovered above the phone screen, trembling at the thought. Could she do it?

“Well?” Sharky said. “You forget your secret favorite number?”

She glanced down at her phone screen, hoping to see a miracle. Maybe Jackson had already noticed she’d gone missing. Her blank splash screen stared back at her. Nothing. The soft pop of the door pushing open sounded and she jerked her head up. It was the sound of someone in a rush. Heavy breathing, too.

Sharky had looked away from her, keeping his eyes away just long enough for her to pocket the phone. She slid it in her pants and then pulled her hand away, quickly, but not too quickly. Smoothly, not to make it obvious that she’d just performed a perhaps life-saving sleight of hand.

“How long will it take?” the man asked Sharky.

“Talk to Roger.”

“I just did. He wants you there now.”

The two men were huddled together in conversation, Annica listening as the volume rose to fill the room. The urgency, too. Something was going on in the building, and it sounded much worse than just a simple, solitary intruder.

“I’m on it,” Sharky said.

“Hurry up.”

The man left, slamming the door behind him.

“What was that?” she asked. “What’s going on?” She wanted to keep him occupied. Rush him with questions so that he wouldn’t have time to notice what she’d done with the phone.

“What?” He looked distracted, eyes having trouble focusing on her. Perfect.

Annica smiled and asked again, “What’s going on?”

“I’m afraid we’ll have to speed up this process.” He finally took his gaze off the floor, staring deep into her eyes.

“What does that mean?”

Sharky reached for his side, drawing his gun.

“No!”

He raised it up to her head and she could see nothing but the barrel. Blacker than midnight. A black hole. Death.

She felt her life already being sucked down into the darkness.

“Hold still.”