He stares at me for a moment, his eyebrows lowered as if he’s studying what I just said. “No,” he says. “You aren’t afraid of me. I see that clearly.”

“Why don’t you just let me go?” I ask. “I didn’t do anything to disrupt your livelihood. All I did was take a file.”

“Yes, and that’s what I am curious about,” he says. “Had you come out with syringes or medicine, I might have let you go, but the file intrigues me.”

“Lies, Stephen,” I say with a clenched jaw. “Raiders never let someone go. If you are true to what you claim then you would have just killed me and taken my stuff. Truth is, you or someone above you runs the village or town where we now sit. You’re trying to scare me to get some truth out of me because you saw that I was alone. And if I’m a woman and alone, I must be scared already, so why not tie me to a chair, take my shoes, and tell me you’re a raider?”

“You speak as if you know everything, yet you woke up in a drafty, cold room, tied to a chair,” he says. “You’re not in a position to dictate to me.”

“Neither are you,” I say. “So let’s be through with this. Either be the raider and shoot me, rape me, whatever you want to do, or be the regular surviving townsperson and let me go, or kill me to make you and your people feel safer.”

“Why were you looking for Jessi Paxton?” he asks.

“I wasn’t…just pulled a random file from the maternity ward, hoping for a good read.”

“If you want to be released, you’re going to talk,” he says. “So, maybe I’m not a bandit, maybe I’m not going to kill you, but that doesn’t mean I won’t leave you in this room until you’re ready to talk.”

“Good,” I say, barely above a whisper. “At least I will be safe.”

Stephen leans forward and rests his hands on the table. He’s wearing a gold wedding band, so he’s either still married or can’t let go of the fact that his wife has long since died. “You will talk to us eventually,” he says. “Why not save yourself the trouble?”

“What would your wife think about you tying me up and leaving me in here?” I ask. “What if it was her sitting in this chair?”

He looks slightly confused.

“You wouldn’t want her sitting here with rope so tight against her wrists that she’s lost feeling in her fingers, would you? Wouldn’t you want to kill the man that did that to her? The man that hit her in the head, tied her up and stole her shoes? The man that left her in the dark until she told him something useful?”