Chapter 5 #3
“They weren’t going to kill you,” I said, and that made her face snap up. Her eyes hit mine, hard, and I watched the hope die before the question could even form on her lips.
I didn’t let her ask. I told her. “Halberd,” I said. “The hedge fund. You familiar with the name?”
She froze. An almost-perfect freeze, except for the tiniest jump of a nerve at her jaw.
I pressed. “Interesting. Why do you think a bunch of white-collar criminals in prison for cleaning Valenti money would send men to hunt you down?”
She looked away, and when she spoke it was almost a whisper. “I don’t know anything about Halberd.”
I shook my head. “Not a good liar.” I stepped closer, one slow pace. “They want you alive. No questions, no damage, just bring you in. That’s not normal, not for this crowd.”
She cut me off. “How did you get this out of them?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I do. Did you hurt them?”
“Not personally,” I said. “I let someone else handle it.”
She shook her head, her skin dragged taut. “You’re the same as them. All monsters.”
“No,” I said. “We are not. I would never pay men to do what those men were planning to do with you. Do you understand what they were going to do to you? Take you to a brothel, force you to work. Forever. Or at least the despair and pain got to be too much.”
She stared at me then, really looked, like she was seeing me for the first time. I saw the scan happening, the way she was piecing the past forty-eight hours into a new shape.
“Two others before you,” I said. “Both dead.”
“You don’t even know me,” she said, but her voice was softer. “Why do you care?”
I didn’t answer her right away. If I told her the truth, she’d run; if I lied, she’d know. I let the silence fill the space until she had to look away.
I said, “You can get back on that bus. But they’ll find you. The world these people move in—their world—it’s invisible to everyone except themselves. You can’t win by running. You have to hide inside the monster’s mouth, or you get chewed up in the street.”
She let out a laugh, but it was empty, a sound made only to fill the air. “You are so fucked up,” she said.
I didn’t disagree.
I told her, “I have a place. No one knows where it is. I will look after you until it’s safe. We’ll work together to find these people, and we will make them pay for what they’ve done—for what they planned to do with you. Only you decide.”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t even move. For a second, I thought she’d gone catatonic, but then she spoke.
“What if I say no?”
I shrugged. “Then you say no. I won’t stop you. I won’t even follow you out the door.” It was a lie, but only on the margins.
She stared at the linoleum for a long time. The room smelled like canned air and old coffee and the chemical sweetness of the cupcakes in the vending machine. I tasted all of it at the back of my tongue while I waited.
Finally, she looked up. Her voice was rough. “What’s the address?”
I told her. She put it in her phone, but didn’t hit send—just kept her thumb over the screen.
I said, “I can take you there now. Or you can go alone. I’m not going to force you.”
She blinked, hard. I saw the tears start but she killed them before they got past her lashes.
“Why are you doing this?” she said.
“Because I want to. Because I can’t stop thinking about you. Because I do not want to see you disappear. Because once, years ago, I failed a woman who was important to me, and I vowed I would never do it again.”
The words hung in the air. Heavy. She looked at me with something like pity, or maybe just understanding.
The bus driver called: “Detroit, all-aboard. Five minutes.”
She didn’t move. I half-expected her to bolt, to make a run for it, but she just stood there, staring at the screen of her phone like she could will it to offer an answer.
I said, “You don’t have to decide now. There’s another bus in an hour.”
She nodded, but it was the kind of nod that meant nothing.
I stayed right where I was. I could have reached for her, could have tried to hold her bag for her, but I remembered how she’d looked when I’d touched her before—like I was on fire and she was all oxygen. I kept my hands at my sides.
The clock rolled to 9:20. The driver came back in, checked her and me, and then scowled at his phone.
She watched the bus through the window, watched it until the doors snapped shut and it pulled away, trailing exhaust.
And still she didn’t move.
We stood there while the station emptied out. The minutes stacked up, slow and heavy. At some point, I realized I was shaking. Not much, but enough that I had to brace my hands on the edge of the plastic chair next to me.
She noticed. She watched my hands, then looked me up and down, like she was checking for weapons.
“Take me there.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. My name’s Angela.”
“Angela,” I said, finally allowing myself a smile. “Good to meet you.”
I held out a hand. She took it.
And as I looked at her, I had a feeling—that I would remember this moment forever, that my life would be split at this moment into the time before I met her, and the time after.
I just didn’t know what my new life might look like.