All that now remained were the sounds of our footsteps in this barren place.

* * *

“You’ve changed,” Adam said. We had paused for a moment, at another fork. He had his hands on his knees. With my good hand supporting my wrist, I had been gently bending and straightening the elbow of my battered arm, trying to gauge the extent of the injury. So far, I was certain only that the bones remained intact.

Thankfully, the painkillers were still working. “How so?”

“Since I found you with that dead woman. You’ve been… different.”

For a student and practitioner of poetry, he seemed to be having inordinate difficulty expressing his thoughts. Nevertheless, I felt a familiar unease at his concern—the fear an actor might feel at having inadvertently slipped out of character.

“We’re both in shock,” I said.

He put a hand to the small of his back and stood upright. “No, that’s not it. Not it at all.”

My mind scrabbled back over the course of our flight from danger. Had I done or said anything that might have led him to suspect my true identity? If he had even the slightest inkling…

My fists clenched.

“Then, what?” I kept my tone deliberately neutral, wondering if I truly had it in me to kill him here in cold blood, with my one good arm.

“I’m in shock,” he said, “but you’re not. Not really. Ever since I found you, right from the moment you took that dead woman’s shoes, you’ve been calm and methodical. It’s like you know what to do, like you’ve been in situations like this before.”

“I’m just trying to get us out of here alive.”

He shook his head. “It’s more than that. I didn’t see it last night, but now… It’s in the way you hold yourself and the way you speak. It’s like you’re a… a… soldier.”

I turned my head to look back the way we’d come. There were still no signs of pursuit, but I needed a moment to quell the surge of adrenalin triggered by his suspicion.

“You’re too perceptive for your own good.”

“What does that mean?”

Despite the sick, anxious feeling in my chest, fatigue and discomfort weighed on my shoulders like a heavy cloak. Slowly, I turned to face him. His eyes were wide and anxious. His forehead had been grazed, and dark whorls of grime smeared his cheeks where he’d tried to wipe away tears.

I let out a ragged sigh. “It means you’re right. I’m not who you think I am, and I never have been; and once there was a time I’d have killed you to preserve that secret.”

He started to back away. I raised my palms in a placatory gesture. “Don’t worry. These old hands have enough blood on them already. I don’t need any more.”