She's already made it clear she won't stay in her room. She walks where she wants in this house, sits where she wants, and treats every unlocked door as a dare. She can't leave and she knows it, but she'll be damned if she acts like a prisoner inside these walls.
That kind of defiance would get her recruited by every cartel in the western hemisphere. It also makes her the most dangerous person in this building, and I include myself in that assessment.
"You're staring," she says without turning to face me.
"You're wearing my shirt."
"Mine smells like a hostage situation. You're welcome to do my laundry if it bothers you."
"It doesn't bother me." It does, but not the way she means. It bothers me because she looks right in it, like she belongs in my clothes, in my space, at my table drinking my terrible coffee. That thought is a complication I can't afford, so I do what I do with every inconvenient thing. I put it somewhere dark and close the lid.
"I'm going to see Alejandro," I say.
She turns from the table, her face shows the sharp line of her jaw, the eyes that held pure terror last night and have already hardened into something more calculated.
"You said that yesterday," she says.
"And now I'm going." I move away from her. "The detention center has visiting hours. I need to get there and back before dark."
"Because you told me you'd be back by dark."
"Yes."
She studies me. "You mean that."
"When I say something, I mean it."
"That's an interesting quality in a kidnapper."
"I'm a complicated person."
"You're a person who makes people disappear for a living and cooks me breakfast and gives his prisoner a knife. Complicated doesn't begin to cover it."
She's right, but I don't want to explore that territory right now. I have to focus. The visit to Alejandro is the hinge that everything swings on. If I can look my brother in the eye and ask him directly, if I can see what Sofia sees in the evidence and match it against what I know about the man I raised, then maybe I'll know what to do next. Maybe the doubt that's been building in me since she started talking will resolve into something I can act on.
Or maybe Alejandro will explain everything. Maybe he'll have the answers that dismantle her case and restore the foundation I've built my life on. Maybe I'll drive back to this farmhouse tonight with my certainty intact and a plan that doesn't end with either of us dead.
I don't believe that. But I'm going anyway, because I have to know.
"Stay in the bedroom after I leave," I tell her. "The front and back doors will be deadbolted from outside. I've got the only key. If anyone comes that isn't me, barricade the door with the dresser and use the knife."
"Barricade. Knife. You already gave me this speech." She almost smiles at the absurdity of it. "You realize this is insane,right? You're leaving a kidnapping victim alone in a house with instructions on how to defend herself from your own associates."
"Would you prefer I tie you up?"
"I'd prefer you drive me to the nearest FBI field office and turn yourself in." She says it mildly, as if suggesting a restaurant for dinner.
"Maybe next week."
She almost smiles. Like me, the instinct seems to surprise her. She turns back to the table and I see her jaw clench, the moment of near-levity replaced by something harder.
"Be careful," she says. "At the detention center. If the cartel has people inside, and they always have people inside, they'll know you visited. They'll wonder why."
"Let them wonder."
"You're not as invincible as you think you are, Mr. Reyes."
"I'm not invincible at all. I'm just careful."
