On the screen, I watch her neatly and methodically collect her things. The camera shadows her, nosing closer as her hand closes around her jacket. Just another Monday night. Justanother person heading home. But will she make it? Or will the men following her do more than just watch?
Will they abduct her? Break her?
Panic tightens my chest in waves. I’ve spent years explaining to people that fear is just energy. That the body is only confused about its own strength. I used to claim that anxiety is a sign of power.
But I can’t meditate this very real fear away. No smudge, crystal, grid, or chant can bend the energy into submission.
Men with guns don’t care about positive affirmations.
So I have to keep my shit together. Keep Ashley safe and myself alive.
Time melts. I lose count of the minutes and hours I spend thinking, reflecting, asking the universe for an answer. On the monitor, Ashley slips through her day, unaware of the trap orbiting her.
The door to my prison opens.
I sense my kidnapper’s presence like a drop in atmospheric pressure. I don’t look up. I can’t bear to see his empty eyes or the mouth that kissed me with such unexpected gentleness now set in a line of indifference.
I know if I meet his gaze, I’ll falter. And I can’t do that.
Kirill stands at my back as I stay focused on the screen.
“The key.” No inflection. Just flat certainty that slices open the space between us. “What does it open?”
My eyes remain glued to the monitor.
If I reveal what I know—that the key belonged to the room my father stayed in at the Alibi Club on Isla de Huesos—everything unravels. He’d see straight through me. Every lie. Every dodge. And then what? What would happen to Ashley? To me?
Get it together, Jordan.
I close my eyes and suck in a breath. “I don’t know.”
He moves closer, the threat settling around my shoulders like a too-tight coat.
I lick my dry lips. I just need to give him enough to appease him until I come up with a real plan. “I can try and help you find it, though. The information you want.” I finally face him and catch those icy eyes. “The universe always provides. Maybe the key is a message. A doorway opening somewhere in your life, and you just need…to…”
I trail off when his jaw tightens. The flicker of muscle beneath the skin poses as a warning.
“Information is an asset, Jordan. Just like your friend’s job. Her ability to pay her mother’s medical bills.” He leaves without another word, the door locking with asnickthat echoes in the emptiness.
The tablet remains in my hands, the screen glowing with Ashley’s innocent face.
The pendulum swings lower, a guillotine over my neck. If I don’t do what he wants, Ashley loses everything. Her job. Her mother’s care. Maybe her life.
All because of me.
I clench the tablet tighter.
I can’t give him answers I don’t have. But I won’t let her get hurt.
Jordan
Morning steals across the room, greedy and silent, leaching the darkness from every corner until a thin, sickly light clings to the window. Sleep never touched me. My raw, swollen eyes ache, crusted with the tears I didn’t let fall.
After eating two sandwiches and a banana, I lay awake contemplating my life choices and worrying about my friend.
The tablet sits abandoned on the nightstand, where I’d finally dropped it sometime in the dead hours when nothing dared move.
Ashley got home.
