"The information you heard at the restaurant about the Freeport shipment. The warehouse off FM 523. That information showed up in a DEA briefing." His voice was flat. Like he was reading from a script someone else had written. "The conversation you overheard was a test. You were the only person who heard it. And you passed it to someone."
The test.
I'd known it was a test. I'd figured it out the night I heard it, standing in my kitchen with my hip throbbing from cracking against the drawer handle and my hands shaking so hard I'd had to press them flat against the counter. I'd known.
"I play the piano," I said. "That's all I do. I sit at the piano and I play, and if people choose to have conversations within earshot, that's not something I can control. But I'm not passing information to anyone. There's other people there all the time. It could be anyone."
The words came out the way they needed to. Measured. Confused. Slightly wounded. The helpless blind girl who couldn't possibly be running an intelligence operation from a piano bench.
I don't know what you want me to say.
It was the best performance of my life.
The first blow came without warning.
His open hand connected with the side of my face and my head snapped to the right, the crack of impact echoing off the warehouse walls before the pain registered. It arrived a half-second later. A hot, spreading burn that radiated from my cheekbone to my ear, blooming through the entire left side of my face.
The world tilted. My hands flew off the chair and I caught myself on air, listing sideways before my palm slammed against the concrete floor. Grit bit into my skin. The cold seeped through the heel of my hand and up my arm.
I tasted copper.
"Who is your contact?"
The same question. The same flat voice. Like the blow hadn't happened. Like he hadn't just struck the woman he'd claimed to love across the face while a camera recorded it.
I pushed myself back upright, a bit stunned. My cheek was pulsing, the skin already swelling under the heat. I found the chair edges again and gripped them so hard the flaky rust bit crescents into my palms.
"I don't have one."
The next hit came from the other side. Harder. My teeth sliced the inside of my cheek and my mouth filled with blood. I choked on it, coughing, blood and saliva dripping from my chin onto my dress.
It was emerald dress. One of my favorites.
"Milo." His name tore out of me before I could stop it, raw and cracked and desperate. "Milo, please. Tell me why.Please."
From across the room, Viktor made a sound. Low. Impatient.
The answering silence from Milo was so loud I could feel it pressing against my skin.
Then his hands were on me again. One fisted in the hair at the back of my head, wrenching my neck back. The other gripped my jaw, fingers digging into the hinges hard enough that a strangled cry escaped my throat.
"Give me a name," he said. Close. His breath on my face. "One name. That's all this has to be."
I was shaking. Full-body tremors I couldn't control, my muscles seizing against the cold and the fear and the annihilating wrongness of his hands on me like this. The same hands that had traced my collarbones like they were something sacred. The same fingers that had tangled with mine in the dark while he whisperedI've got you, little bird.
Those hands were now instruments of something I couldn't reconcile with the man I knew.
"There is no name," I whispered. "There's nothing to give you."
His fist tightened in my hair. My scalp screamed.
"Don't make me keep asking."
"Then stop asking!" The words ripped out of me, hot and ragged. "Because the answer doesn't change. It doesn't matter how many times you hit me or how hard you pull or what you do to me in this room—the answer is the same. I. Don't. Have. A. Contact."
From the wall, Viktor's chair creaked. He shifted his weight forward.
"She's stubborn," Viktor said. "Or stupid. I can't decide."
