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“Perhaps,” he murmured. “For now, it is safer to be out of sight and place some distance between us and them.”

Us?

Of course they were after him too. He would know where to run and hide. His English was flawless, but there was no American in it. He could have been born anywhere.

“How old are you?”

He began to wind a black leather belt around his hand.

“Thirty-four.”

He didn’t look that old. Which made me wonder if Adrián had even attended school. I knew how he could afford his car now. He might not have been the age he claimed.

“I’ve showered,” Tau said. “If you want to go in.”

I glanced down at his shirt. I didn’t have any clean clothes to change into.

“We can go shopping as soon as we’re out of Texas.”

I felt my lip tremble, and I nodded. He crossed the room slowly, the way you approach a skittish animal, and stood before me. When I didn’t look up, he placed two pairs of socks in my lap.

That should have made me cry, but it didn’t. I was Mwikali’s daughter. Mwikali’s daughter did not cry over socks or major life changes. Not in front of strangers, anyway.

“I want a good toothbrush,” I muttered as I pulled one pair on.

One date had led me to all this. Unbelievable. I had sucked up every sweet word for three weeks. For what? A professional charmer? A gang member involved in human trafficking?

“I’ll make it right for you.”

I glanced up, the second pair of socks in my hand.

“I don’t even know your name.”

“Tau.”

“Tau,” I repeated, sounding it out. “It suits you.”

He stared at me. Not packing, not moving. Waiting for—oh.

“I’m Zuri.”

One nod, and he began to move. I poked a finger beneath the cotton wrap and scratched my scalp. Tau. The silent, strange one.

I smiled to myself and pulled on the second pair. Fine and nearly weightless, a smooth natural weave that felt like nothing at all. Better than anything I had worn on my feet in days.

Chapter 14

Tau

I quickly realised that I did not know very much about women outside of a bedroom. My admiration for Iskra, and her friendship towards me, did not translate into depth. I could see that now. Iskra spoke in short, careful sentences, the way people did when every word had once been weighed against a consequence.

Zuri spoke in paragraphs.

While I was looking for tails, cameras and police cars, running a full four-point plan to get her in and out of a gas station restroom, she went from sad to happy to excited and, God help me, chatty. The sedan hummed along the highway. East Texas pines rolled by in dark green walls. Heat shimmered off the asphalt ahead, and the air conditioning breathed against my wrist.

She did not even need me to speak. When she got bored of my silence, she fiddled with the radio and sang. Off-key, unselfconscious, flipping between English and Swahili, her sock-clad feet tucked beneath her on the seat or the dashboard. Her voice cracked on the high notes. She did not seem to mind.

But I listened.