“If you were so tight with my brother and his bald friends, we would have met.”
“You think you’d have noticed me back then? Liked me? With your blond hair and your manicures and your high heels?”
“I was blond, not blind.”
“Would you have noticed?” He sounds sincere, like he really wants to know.
I look him over. Two days’ worth of stubble, the flattened nose, broken more than once, probably well-deserved. The worn Henley, non-designer jeans, rough hands. “No.”
He sinks back into the cushions, satisfied. “We never met.”
“Why not?”
“Because we couldn’t find anything on you.”
“There’s nothing to find.”
His lips curve into a humorless smile. “There are twenty million things to find, Reese.”
I gesture to the map on the window, infinite possibilities mottling the paper. “Well, good luck.”
16
AT SOME POINT, I FALL asleep. When I wake up, I’m sprawled on my stomach on the couch, my hand cuffed to the coffee table, a blanket covering my legs. The sun is still up, and I can see the green lights on the microwave glowing 6:01 p.m. I yawn and inch my way to a sitting position, turning to find Chris playing a game on my laptop a few feet away.
“Why are you still here?” I mumble.
“We’re roommates, remember?”
I catch a whiff of my breath. Yikes. A hank of oily hair hangs against my cheek. It’s hard to believe I showered twenty-four hours ago in anticipation of a big date/torture session, and now I’m hunched at an awkward angle to accommodate my shackled wrist.
“I want to take a shower,” I say. “And not be handcuffed anymore.”
“Sorry.” Chris strolls over, unfairly attractive and clean in jeans and a white T-shirt. “You can’t be trusted.”
“I can’t be trusted? You hypocrite.” I try to imbue the word with venom, but I have neither the energy nor the appropriate level of hypocrisy.
Chris crouches next to the table, out of kicking range, and unfastens my hand. “You can take a shower if you want. I’ll order pizza. What do you want on it?”
“A gun and a lock pick?”
He tugs me down the hall to the knob-free bathroom. “Have you ever shot a gun?”
“No. You?”
He lifts a brow but neither confirms nor denies, just unzips my dress and unfastens the back clasp on my bra. “You want a hand with the rest?”
He did that so fast I barely had time to register what he’d done. No more than my back is bared, but I clutch the fabric to my chest like a maiden. “No!”
“Okay. Pull your arm out of the sleeve, then put it over your head.”
“Why?”
“I told you, I don’t trust you.” He doesn’t wait for me to obey, just pulls the left side of the dress down and works my arm out of the fabric, then does the same with the bra strap. I’m still clasping the material over my breasts when he seizes my left arm and cuffs it to the shower rail. “Can you reach the tap?”
I can’t even close my gaping mouth. “This is ridiculous!”
“You’re the one who tried to bite and run. Twice.”
“You’re the hostage taker! You’re the bad guy!”
He reaches in to turn on the water. “You’ve got five minutes.”
“Twenty.”
“Six. Use them wisely.” He walks out before I can argue further.
For a long moment I don’t move, just stand beside the tub while my hand goes numb in its cuff, staring at the slowly rising steam.
“Six minutes,” Chris calls through the door.
“Get away from the peep hole!”
He laughs, but I can’t tell if he’s watching or not, and I can’t reach the door to check. I get in the tub, dress and all, and pull the curtain shut behind me. It’s got a cheery rubber duck pattern, a holdover from my bathroom growing up, one of the few things that wasn’t confiscated when the FBI raided our homes. The stupid smiling ducks make me want to cry. Hell, they make me want to bawl my head off. I sniffle and shimmy out of the dress, watching it absorb the puddle of water at my feet before belatedly realizing I’ll have no dry clothes waiting when I get out.
I step under the spray and scrub at my face, trying to convince myself I’m not crying when really I am. My shoulders shake so hard I have to hold onto the shower rod to avoid falling down, and I turn my face into the water and hope