“He’ll kill me.” I say plainly. “Me and my baby.”
Silence falls once again. She doesn’t speak. The hardness is still there on the surface, but I can sense that underneath, something is shifting. Not dissolving, but moving, like icebergs when the temperature starts to change. She doesn’t look away from my hand.
“You can hate me. I deserve it. But please, this baby is innocent. All I want more than anything is for him or her to come into the world safe and sound. If I could give my own life to make sure that happens, I’d do it in a second.”
“How far along are you?”
My chest tightens. That question means she’s thinking about my baby as a real being, as a life worth saving.
“Almost two months.”
She nods slowly, doesn’t look up.
Another long silence follows.
Then she brings her eyes to mine.
“There’s a service corridor,” she says, low and fast. “Behind the DJ booth. Back left corner. Unmarked door. Kolya uses it when he doesn’t want to walk through the main floor.”
I nod.
“It leads to the alley on the east side of the building. We’re in Jersey now, if you didn’t know that. It’s a trek back to the city, but if you can get clear of this place, you should be able to make it.”
I hold very still, waiting for her to finish.
“It isn’t guarded. Most of the staff doesn’t even know about it. But I do.”
The implication of how she knows about it settles sour in my mind. I push it aside.
“Come with me,” I say.
She shakes her head. “No. I can’t. If I disappear with you and he comes back to an empty room, he’ll know right away what’s going on. He’ll have every exit covered before we hit the alley.”
“If he comes back and only I’m gone, he’ll know what’s happening,” I say. “And you’ll be here for him to take his anger out on.”
When the color drains from her face right away, I understand it’s something she’s been through before.
She looks away.
“I can’t. I just can’t.”
Her voice trails off, and I can sense that she has no idea what she’d do if she were to escape.
“You can come with me,” I say. “We’ll go to Gabriel’s. We’ll take care of you. Please. I can’t leave you behind. Not again.”
Tears form in her eyes. She blinks, and one trickles down her cheek.
“What if he catches us?”
“We can’t think about that. We have to go.”
She purses her lips and takes a slow breath.
“Okay. But you’ll need a distraction.” She glances at the two guards on the other side of the room, posted at the door Kolya left through. “Just get ready to run when it happens.”
“When what happens?”
“You’ll know it when you see it.”
