Rainy made a noise in the back of her throat. “Well, I’m glad Taured’s dead...he was a monster.” She tried to clear the emotion out of her voice but gave up on it; it was just the two of them at the table today, and she owed Braithe her truth. “He kidnapped my mother and in turn kidnapped me. He tied me up, he drugged me, he took photos of me that he used to blackmail my mother. But I can sleep now...now that he’s dead. I don’t feel bad about that, either, because he was the first monster. And I ended him.”

Summer had been there for all of it. She saw what he did to the minds of those children and what he’d tried to do to her. If you weren’t there, you couldn’t speak on it.

Rainy decided that there was very little difference between her and Ginger; she’d just chosen to put her anger in a different place. She’d gone to the source and shut off the tap. Braithe would reject the idea of her being like Ginger, but there it was.

Braithe nodded. “Everything else happened like you said it did?”

“Pretty much.”

Braithe stared at her, hard, before nodding.

And then she was looking over Rainy’s shoulder at Viola, jumping to her feet to greet their friend.

“Let’s welcome back Rainy Ives, the woman who took down Tauredia.” The host had big teeth. She nodded around at her unseen audience before turning to Rainy, growing serious.

“Why did you risk your life instead of walking away from Braithe?”

“It was fight or flight, and I was tired of flying. Braithe was there because of me, because Ginger happened to see her with me that night. I didn’t see another option, because Sara saved my life all those years ago. And once someone has extended that courtesy, the wealth of gratitude never goes away.”

“Do you regret not going back for Sara? And do you think it would have made a difference if you had?”

“I don’t know. I’ll live there forever, though, wondering. I was too afraid to think about her back then, but I’m not afraid to think about her anymore.”

“Rainy, can you take us back to that day when Sara helped you escape from the compound? We know now that Sara later became the victim of a serial killer who, fifteen years later, kidnapped your friend Braithe and held her captive. My God, the twists in this story!” She turned to the audience. Looking back at Rainy, she said, “Is there something you wish you could say to Sara and your mother all these years later?”