He said, “Our mother is—was—a paranoid nutcase. Straight up pathological, probably should have been institutionalized, delusional. Until, you know, she wasn’t, and it turned out all the crazy was just a difficult version of truth. I don’t want to be her,” he said. “But it’s not easy to walk away from that legacy when everyone either wants you dead or wants to use you to make other people dead.”

“They’re not going to give you what you want,” she said.

“I think they will.”

“Not as some sort of trade for me.”

“No, but because of what you symbolize.”

She sighed on the inside. She’d seen too much to view him as naive or credulous, and for that reason alone, she refused to write off hope completely, but even still, she found it difficult to see a path forward.

“I wish I could stay longer,” he said. “It’d be nice to talk.”

She nodded and tried to ignore the Stockholm quality in her agreement.

He said, “We might still get that opportunity.”

She gave him a wry dose of side-eye. “As much fun as that might be, it’d mean I’d still be here,” she said, “like this. And I’m ready to be done.”

“Well,” he said, “you never know.”

He headed toward the door and stopped.

“I’m sorry about your friends,” he said.

She glanced up.

“In Prague,” he said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

He stepped out, and she was left staring at the floor, confused and hurt, but a strange kind of confusion and a strange kind of hurt, and she didn’t have words and had no way to explain. She swiped angry tears from off her cheek.

Outside, the car doors slammed and the engine rolled over and she was alone again, and then a voice reached out from the silence, high pitched, distant, muted, almost as if it’d come from behind soundproofed walls.

Kara cocked her head to listen.

Pounding came from far away, and a woman’s voice screaming for help.

Kara beat fist against wall, spelling out an SOS in Morse, the one pattern that even the densest, most panicked person would recognize. If Liv was smart, she’d catch on that this was a path to communication. The yelling stopped. Kara raised her fist to begin again, but a reply came back. Name? Who?

Kara spelled out her name, but beyond that what was there to say?

She’d been offered assurance that freedom was imminent, and she believed the promise would be kept, but she had no idea what fate held for Liv—hadn’t even known they’d already taken Liv until she’d heard the yelling—and had nothing to offer the woman other than the knowledge she wasn’t alone.

She rested her head against the wall.

Through her bones, questions came.

Where?

Why?