reaches around the curtain, grips my arm tight enough to hurt, and uncuffs me without letting go. He pulls the curtain open so I’m standing in front of him in my damp panties, back turned, bra clasped in my hand.
“Hurry up,” he says gruffly.
“Let go for a second. I’m not going to do anything.”
He releases me reluctantly, but I feel him behind me, tense.
I pull on the bra, then he passes me the T-shirt and sweats without making me turn around. I use my moment of two-handedness to dry my hair in the towel, then finger comb it. I don’t look great, but I feel a little more human than I did bound and gagged in the back seat of his truck.
My stomach rumbles, reminding us both there’s pizza waiting, and he leads me to the living room. The haze outside has parted to reveal a sky tinted with the glowing purples and oranges of sunset, a pretty vista for a not-so-pretty day.
“Let’s eat on the balcony,” I suggest.
He snorts. “Let’s not.”
“I’m not going to jump off.”
No comment.
“Or try to push you.”
A dubious look.
“I’m pretty sure I’ll be handcuffed, anyway.”
He doesn’t agree to the balcony, but he does open the doors, drag the dining table closer, and shackle me there. At least I can feel the breeze. Stick out my tongue and taste the freedom.
He’d opted for the basics on the pizza, but I’m too hungry to complain about boring pepperoni. He takes a bottle of beer for himself, pours me some in a paper cup, and we eat and drink silently.
“Have you ever done this before?” I ask eventually. I focus on freeing a piece of pizza clinging to the box with a tenuous piece of cheese.
Chris reaches over to pinch off the string and doesn’t pretend not to know I’m referring to his hostage-taking hobby. “No,” he says.
“It seems like you have.”
“Not quite like this.”
“But similar?”
“In a way.”
“Did you like Alex?”
He’d been concentrating on his own pizza, but now he lifts his gaze to mine. Those green eyes, so fathomless. Like there’s no depth, no deception. Or too many depths, too much deception.
“Yes,” he says. “He was a nice kid.” The lines at the corners of his mouth are deeper, sadder.
“I know.” I sip my beer and watch the sun sinking over the horizon. “Do you like my dad?”
I feel his stare on my cheek.
“No,” he says.
“But you talk to him.”
“From time to time.”
“More often than I talk to him?”
“Depends.”
“Are you a police officer?”
“No.” Chris pushes back his chair and goes to the kitchen for another beer.
“Were you? Ever?”
“No.”
“Law enforcement?”
He sits back down, cracks off the cap of the bottle, refills my cup, then drinks. His non-response says enough. I suppose I already knew.
“But you’re not now,” I say.
Again, no reply.
“Why can’t you go home?”
His mouth curls slightly and he takes another sip of beer. I watch his throat move. “Dumb and Dumber,” he says.
“What?”
“Johan and Davor. Your brother’s friends.”
“They’re your roommates? Are they not nice?”
“They never empty the dishwasher.”
“Assholes.”
“At least they don’t bite.”
“Assholes.”
I’m rewarded with a sliver of real smile.
“Alex told me you were funny,” he says, after a bit.
I want to ignore him, deny him, pretend I don’t care, but what comes out is, “He did?”
“Yeah. I thought he was full of shit. I saw your pictures. The magazines. The websites. Your pink car.”
I laugh at the memory of the Maserati. It feels like a different lifetime.
“I thought, there’s no way that girl’s funny. There’s no way she’s smart enough to do what we think she’s doing.”
“What did you think I was doing?”
“Laundering your father’s stolen money to pay off your brother’s gambling debt.”
I shake my head. “Nope.”
“That’s where I’m getting stuck, Reese. Because you are funny. And you are smart.”
I rattle my chained wrist. “Obviously.”
“But there’s no trail. No connection between you and the money. Not the stuff they recovered, not the stuff that’s still missing.”
“If you’re not law enforcement, how did you get them to raid the Food Bank?”
“What are you talking about?”
I’m sure he knows, but I remind him about the not-so-health-and-safety-oriented inspection. The more I speak, the deeper the crease between his brows gets.
“I had nothing to do with that,” he says.
“I thought we were done lying.”
“Of course I looked at the Food Bank,” he says. “But that was a while ago. Before we met.”
I think about the receipt I saw in his apartment. Then I think about the first night I drove Rodney home, how he and I had to stay