Casey spends a passionate evening with Kurt, and when he leaves his apartment to pick up some takeout for them she follows him on a gut feeling he might be in danger. A stranger emerges from the shadows and a gun fires—a “present from Mr. Saratori.” Kurt has been shot.

After a night at the hospital with Kurt, Casey returns to her apartment to find Diana bloody and unconscious. Graham has attacked her.

Diana insists that they need to find the mythical town she’s heard about in her women’s support group that will hide people like her. To save her friend, Casey agrees to disappear too.

One

Three days after Graham beat Diana, she and I are set to meet the people who say they can take us to this magical town where the lost can stay lost. I can’t believe how fast it’s happening, and that’s not a pleasantly surprised disbelief—it’s a growing certainty that we’re walking into a trap. Twelve years of waiting for the worst means I don’t just look a gift horse in the mouth—I want DNA samples and X-rays, and even with those I’ll convince myself there’s a bomb hidden in its Trojan gut.

Diana had started with the woman from her support group. I don’t know where it went from there, but twenty-four hours later Diana got a phone call. Then we scanned and sent supporting documentation from Diana’s hospital visits and official complaints against Graham and newspaper articles on my attack and a copy of the police report on Kurt’s shooting.

Her story is the truth. Mine is that those who attacked me in the alley years ago had mistaken me for someone else, and they continued to stalk me, culminating in the attack on Kurt. Do I expect anyone to believe that? No. If there’s any chance this town is legit, I’m hoping these people will call bullshit on me but grant Diana admission. She’ll be safe, and that’s what counts. Then I’ll transfer to a new city to protect Kurt, and then … well, whatever. The point is that they’ll both be safe.

We meet our contact, Valerie, at 10 p.m. in a random office building. Yes, an office building. She even looks at home there: middle management, late forties, greying hair cut in no discernible style, decade-old suit.

There’s no small talk, no offer of coffee or tea. She ushers us straight into a meeting room that’s as stark and impersonal as my apartment. Rent-an-office? Never knew there was such a thing. It does come with an interesting feature, though: one-way glass. I walk to the mirror and pretend to fuss with my hair. Then I wave, mouth “Gotcha,” and take a seat.

Valerie is pulling a folder from her satchel when the door opens. A guy stands there. He’s around my age with dark blond hair cut short, and a beard somewhere between shadow and scruff. Six feet or so. Rugged build. Tanned face. Steel-grey eyes with a slight squint, crow’s feet already forming at the corners. A guy who spends a lot of time outdoors and doesn’t wear sunglasses or sunscreen as often as he should.

“You,” he says, those grey eyes fixing on me. He jerks his chin to the door.

“We’ve just started—” Valerie begins.

“Separate interviews.”

“That’s not—”

He turns that gaze on her, and she freezes like a new hire caught on an extra coffee break. He doesn’t say another word. Nor does she. I follow him out.

He takes me into the room behind the one-way glass and points to a chair.

“Local law enforcement, I presume?” I say.

He just keeps pointing. Now I fidget under his stare, like I’m the misbehaving new hire.

“You’re not getting in,” he says.

“To your town, I presume. Because I don’t take direction well?”

“No, because of Blaine Saratori.”

I sit down. I don’t even realize I’m doing it until it’s too late. He takes the opposite chair.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t figure it out?” he says. “You and Saratori get attacked, and he runs, leaving you to get the shit kicked out of you. Then, apparently, the guys who beat you up come back and shoot him … two months after your attack. Which is also a week after you get out of the hospital. And the person who called in the shooting? A young woman. I got hold of the police report. They questioned you but, considering your condition, ruled you out. Which means they were fucking lousy detectives.”

No, I was just a fucking good actor. The broken eighteen-year-old girl who could barely walk, couldn’t even think straight yet, certainly couldn’t plan and get away with murder.

I could deny it. He can’t have proof. But I’m tired of denying it. I just say, “I understand.”

I don’t really. There’s a little part of me that wants to say, Why? For the first time ever, I actually want to defend myself—to point out what those thugs did to me because of Blaine, to say I didn’t intend to kill him, to say I’ve punished myself more than Leo Saratori ever could. Instead I only say, I understand.

“Good,” he says. “Saves me from a bullshit interview. Now we’ll sit here for twenty minutes.”

I manage two. Then I glance through the one-way glass. Diana is talking to Valerie.

“Will she get in?” I ask.

“No.”

I look at him, startled. “But she needs it. Her ex—”

“I don’t like her story. Not enough supporting evidence. You’re the detective. Would you believe her?”

“Given that I’m the one who’s had to mop up her blood? Yes, I would.”