She turned, one way and then the other, like a fashion model walking the catwalk, trying to display her features. She gave a comical little shake of her head, then her chest, before tossing her hair and fluffing it with one hand. She fluttered her eyelashes, the motion barely visible in the dim lights.

“Please…” Ilse tried to say, her voice still heavily muffled. She exhaled through her nose again. She needed her lips. Needed to speak. It was the only real tool she had. She was unarmed, bound, trapped. She knew she had spent time in that basement, back in the Black Forest in Germany, with others. Brothers and sisters she had called them. Had they been biological siblings? Stepsiblings? Strangers who she had bonded with? She couldn’t quite remember. For Ilse it wasn’t play acting, nor was it pretend. So many of her memories had been washed away like sand castles on the shore, hit with a tidal wave. So many of the things she wished she could recall, and even more of the things she was grateful she couldn’t, were hidden, submerged beneath the murky thoughts of her subconscious.

Regardless, now it seemed clear enough. Samantha wasn’t a client at all. She’d been lying, pretending. She had been in that basement in Germany, too. The postcards, of course, had been sent by her. But beyond that, Ilse wasn’t sure how deep it went.

Still, she knew she was in danger… terrible danger. She shuddered, picturing the bodies strewn across the floor of the basement in that shack. She needed her words, needed her voice. But how could she get Samantha to remove the gag? She didn’t even know who Samantha was anymore. She’d been so very, very wrong. About everything. About the paranoia. About the killer. Was there even a killer?

The thought alone sent a shiver up Ilse’s spine.

There was a killer because there were corpses. But now, she realized with a start, nothing Samantha had told her could be trusted.

She couldn’t piece it all together. Not like this, not struggling with her thoughts, as the chemical weight of the chloroform lifted. One thing at a time. She needed to be able to speak. If she wanted to survive, to make it another ten minutes, she knew she needed the ability to talk.

And so she began to speak quietly. She leaned back instead of forward, and kept her expression very serious and solemn as she took on the tone of a chiding mother, trying to correct her errant daughter. The words, of course, were muffled and gibberish. It wasn’t about what she was saying, just the tone she was saying it in. Her wrists still ached behind her. Her hands throbbed with pain.

“What did you say?” Samantha taunted. She tapped her ear. “I can’t quite hear you, little sister.”

Instead of rising to the bait, or showing any more fear, though, Ilse kept her expression calm, placid. She kept her shoulders squared, her chin high, leaning back again, everything in her posture suggesting she was actually in control. It was the posture of a businessperson during a job interview. The posture of a banker, refusing to approve a loan. The posture of a teacher ready to reprimand a child. The posture of a mother facing her daughter. Nonverbal cues, placid expression, all of it designed to irritate, but also to attract attention.