“You have no idea what you’re missing.”

“Want to fill me in over lunch?”

For a moment, Bridget forgot about the assassin, Margarit, and Jancy. She forgot to think at all. There was only Ajay, standing close enough she was aware of the warmth emanating from his skin and the faint smell of ginger on his clothes. Ajay, with his thick black brows and friendly dark eyes. Ajay, who had been whispering little asides to her all fall. Ajay, who was now shifting from foot to foot, waiting for her answer.

If she were a character, what would she do? Simper? Flirt? Turn down Ajay and leave him disconsolate? More than nearly anyone in the world, Bridget could imagine how she might handle this situation if it were fictional.

But it wasn’t. And she wasn’t a queen or a peasant girl or a courtesan. She was just Bridget. And all she could think of to say was a faint, “Sure.”

BOB

How Far Would He Make It?

Bob’s eyes fluttered open. Someone had shouted.

It might have been him.

His head hurt. With effort, he traced the memory back. Derrick had hurt him. Derrick.

Was his skull broken? With a groan, Bob pushed himself up on one elbow. He was in a bed in a room he didn’t recognize. He stared in horror at the stains obscuring the pillowcase’s tiny faded blue flowers. Blood. His blood.

Gritting his teeth, he touched his scalp. The wound was about an inch long, just above his temple. He pressed his fingers on his crew cut, tacky with blood. The skin had been split, but the skull underneath seemed intact.

A surge of relief rolled over him, followed immediately by a pulse of anxiety. What if he’d just exposed the wound to new germs? What if that half-formed scab was the only thing protecting him from a nasty infection right next to his brain? Back in the Middle Ages, you might not die from the battlefield wound, but from the infection that followed.

His stomach roiled as he thought of something else. He’d shouted as he woke. What if Derrick came back and hurt him again?

Bob strained his ears, but heard nothing. After pushing himself to a sitting position, he looked around. He was in a small bedroom, about twelve by fourteen feet. The walls were yellow pine, dotted with brown knotholes. The door was closed. The fir floor was bare.

Bob still couldn’t believe what had happened. Derrick snarling at him to get in the trunk. The Is that real? gun that now seemed likely to be. The sickening crunch against his skull as he felt his bones turn to jelly. The engulfing darkness.

Bob was trembling, and it wasn’t just from the chilly air. Things were horribly wrong.