Anna pointed right. “That way,” she said.

He followed her finger to near-distance signage, which he couldn’t quite make out, but he understood. They were past midnight, when the last of the restaurants and cafés shut down, but bars sometimes stayed open until the early morning hours.

“Go,” he said, and she walked, and he followed.

He knew even before they reached the place that it still hummed.

If he could guarantee Anna would find her way to safety alone, he’d leave her there, but abandoning her, only to find her grabbed again, wasn’t worth the risk. He said, “Do you have a friend with a car? Someone you can call to come get you, to help you?”

“Help only me?” she said.

“Only you.”

“I can call. Ask. What happens next, I don’t know.”

“Try,” he said.

She moved toward the door.

He pointed to her hair. “You have to fix that first.”

She ran her fingers through the tangled strands, smoothing, if not straightening them, turned for the door and, realizing he wasn’t coming, stopped.

“It’s better if I wait outside,” he said.

Less attention, fewer people to get a good look at his face—and with the condition she was in, they would look—and fewer chances of being picked up on CCTV.

He said, “I’m not leaving. I’m right here.”

She studied him for a long second. Unspoken accusations and unasked questions filled the silence, and she sighed and opened the door. Music, noise, and light spilled out onto the sidewalk, and she stepped out of sight.

A minute or two dragged into five.

Five minutes dragged into ten.

He leaned against the wall, gaze toward the pavement, fighting against impatience and the unknown, and was debating the need to follow her in when the door opened and Anna stepped out, alone. He couldn’t tell if she’d succeeded or not.

She joined him against the wall.

“Maybe twenty minutes,” she said. “My friend will come.”

“This is someone you trust? With your life?”

Her expression, incredulous, said there was no possible way someone willing to come help her in the dead of night could screw up her life any more than he already had.

He said, “This wasn’t meant to happen. I’m sorry.”

She sniffed, effectively calling him a liar.

She said, “I thought first, maybe this was big mistake, or maybe something with mafia or drugs that goes bad. But I see how you move. You kill like execution, and a man who moves like this, who kills like this, who asks stranger to be girlfriend for a day, maybe this man does not intend, but he knows this is all possibility.”

She was right, of course, and nicer, kinder than he deserved.

He’d known they’d be grabbed. Just hadn’t expected the rough treatment.

Denying it would only make him a bigger dick.