There was a fancy-ass composting toilet in the corner, but no heat.

For that Jen had given her all the coats that were waiting for them with the car in Chicago, and all the blankets that were waiting in the house, and as some token toward warm food, a tiny microwave, and enough water and packaged edibles to make a prepper properly proud. “I don’t expect we’ll be gone more than a couple days,” she’d said, “but I know how fast food runs out when you’re sitting out time without much to do, so I brought a lot of extra.”

Kara had nodded thanks, hated herself for it, and hated herself for hating it.

This was how Stockholm syndrome set in, thanking kidnappers for basic necessities, but it wasn’t that, exactly. What she’d acknowledged was the genuine kindness. And then Jen had left, Jen and Christopher both.

Chris was a whole other side of this.

Kara had suspected since Cleveland that he was involved, but Jen had never mentioned him, and only when he’d rolled that wheelchair into her cabin a few minutes before they reached Chicago Union Station had she finally laid eyes on him. He was taller in person and so god-awful charming that the choice he’d offered between sitting and behaving or taking a long chemical nap hadn’t been a choice at all.

It’d been interesting watching him and Jen interact.

A jealousy-making thing, or maybe what she’d felt was envy.

From so young an age, she’d had to fight for every scrap, every skill.

She’d escaped into the navy for the education, and to help her sisters into better situations, but it’d just been a different version of the same nonsense. She’d never had a chance to be a kid, or even a girl, really, and yet here was Jen, glittered and glammed, charming and feminine, younger by a half dozen years at least, treated like a full equal by a man as skilled as she was, a man who also treated her with that same respect of equals, minus the handcuffs, of course. And that was the thing, goddammit.

She worked for the good guys, these were the bad guys, and yet they were kinder and treated her better than anyone she’d worked with other than Nick.

That ate at her, made her wonder what it said about who she really was.

She paced the floor, blanket wrapped tight, and for the umpteenth time strained to see out that narrow window. The sun would soon set. She hated the idea of being alone here in the dark. Not because she was afraid of the dark or afraid of being alone, but because this was day two and they were still gone. To be able to release her, they had to survive, and so here she was again, wanting the wrong team to win because her fate intertwined with theirs.