She said, “I’m not going to do it.”

He said, “Do what?”

“Tell me I’m wrong,” she said. “God, please tell me I’m wrong. But I’m not. I know I’m not. My brother did not go to all this trouble to push you and me together and get himself abducted just so he could walk off alone into the sunset. No. Today was the beginning.” She swung her legs off the bed. “He told you more than you’ve told me.” She searched the floor, looking for footwear. “There’s more coming, and whatever he has planned, I’m not doing it.”

Holden pointed toward the opposite wall, where her boots were lined up neatly, toe to baseboards, beside his gear. She stood, wobbled the couple steps it took to reach them. She struggled to get a foot inserted, gave up, and sat on the floor.

He said, “I don’t know what John has planned, but I think he thinks you do. Something about how having you on the outside was the only way he’d get back out alive. Said the reason he couldn’t tell you ahead of time was that you’d sabotage the whole thing to keep him from going.”

“Well, I guess now he gets to learn how right he was.”

“You’re serious?”

She loosened the laces. “One hundred percent.”

Holden slid down the wall and sat beside her. “I don’t know what it’s like to grow up with a sibling,” he said. “Closest I got is the guy who’s been my best friend since we were fourteen, but he’s my brother, you know? In the truest sense he’s my brother, just like John is your brother, and it wouldn’t matter if he sold me down the river for thirty-three pieces. I’d still rather die than leave him in the hands of people who’d grabbed him. The rest, we sort out after.”

She shoved foot into boot. “John will be fine. He can take care of himself.”

“So can Baxter, but that doesn’t give me a reason to abandon him.”

She tightened the laces.

“If John wanted my help, he should’ve included me in.”

Holden shifted to put space between them and looked at her hard. “Is it me you’re lying to, or is this just something you do to yourself?”

She grabbed the second boot, shoved it on.

He said, “You know you do shit behind his back to sabotage him, and yet somehow you can’t see that maybe because of the constant war, he felt he had no choice?”

She tied off the laces. “He had a choice.”

“So did you when you went to France.”

“Totally different.”

“How different?”