I pick out the toiletries and knock lightly before pushing open the bathroom door. The steam hits me first. She peeks her head out from behind the shower curtain, eyes wide, jaw clenched.
“I wasn’t doing anything,” she blurts.
I hold up the toiletries, open-palmed. A peace offering.
Her eyes dart from my hand to my gun, then back. Slowly, she reaches out and takes the bottles. “Thank you,” she whispers, her voice ragged. Her bottom lip wobbles. I turn away, not waiting for whatever look might come next.
I close the door for her.
Minutes pass. Maybe hours. The bathroom door opens, and she steps out in a towel, her hair wrapped in a separate towel. I force my eyes not to linger. Her skin is steam-flushed, and her eyes are less puffy. She’s all cried out and clean. A shower can fix a lot. Not this. She looks less like a prisoner now. Just tired. Worn.
“Do you draw straws for this?” she asks, one knee on the mattress, considering getting in. Unsure if she’s allowed. Unsure how to relax in a place like this.
I glance away from the door and at her. “For what?”
“Who gets stuck with the prisoner.”
I almost smile. “There aren’t usually prisoners. It’s not usually this complicated.”
She laughs under her breath. It’s not a real laugh, but it still does something to my chest. “What’s complicated about it this time?” she asks.
I don’t answer.
She pries, “Because I might have told someone? So what? Why don’t you just kill everyone I’ve ever talked to?” Her lips twist into an ironic smile. Her voice has sharp corners, but her hands shake in her lap.
She wants an answer that makes this make sense. Doesn’t know we already know. Doesn’t understand why she’s still breathing. Maybe I don’t either. I don’t understand why I feel sogratefulfor her life.
“You don’t seem like them,” she says. “Did you grow up like this?”Like this.It’s a simplistic way of asking about the family business of murder.
I nod.
Softer now, she whispers, “When you grow up in it, it doesn’t even feel like ‘growing up’ in something. It just is.” She’s picking at the blanket, her fingers working quickly around a wayward string and tugging. “My dad was abusive. But I didn’t know therewas a word for it.” She meets my eyes. “I thought it was just how dads were.”
For a second, I see her. Not the hostage. Just a woman trying not to fall apart in front of a stranger. But I shake it off. “You look tired,” I say.
“I am.”
“You should sleep.”
“Will you shoot me in my sleep?”
“No.”
She watches me a beat longer. Then she shifts, lays her head down on the mattress without uncoiling completely. Like she doesn’t trust me. Good. She shouldn’t.
I don’t move. I sit there in the dark, pretending not to notice when her breathing softens.
She looks younger when she’s asleep. And softer. Like the mother of my children instead of the loose end I’m supposed to cut.
Her hands twitch like she’s dreaming. I wonder if it’s about her kids.Ourkids. I don’t know whose kids they are, but they’re mine in my mind. In my mind, they have all the gentleness I was born with, but they get to live it out. They don’t learn to kill before they learn to shave. They don’t grow up thinking loyalty and violence are the same thing.
Declan would kill her in a heartbeat, would have killed her the moment she started asking questions. And Rian’s already crossed lines I’m not sure he can walk back from. That leaves me here, on the line, gun in my lap.
I should be listening for danger. For the sound of a door opening. For footsteps. But instead, I listen to the enemy’s breathing.
God help me, it’s an expensive lullaby.
15
