My heart’s beating so fast and loud he can probably hear it from over there. I can’t take it anymore. “Aiden!”

He looks up from the file. “What?”

“What do you mean ‘what’?! What do you think?!”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

“What do you mean ‘Let’s not jump to conclusions’?!” I practically yell.

“Thea, stop quoting me with the preface ‘What do you mean.’ I mean what I said. Let’s not panic, we don’t even know what it means.”

His voice is calm and his face is unreadable, but that’s his tell. He only guards his emotions from me when it’s bad.

“I know exactly what it means.” I wrap my arms around my chest, trying to keep myself together.

“It can’t be as bad as it seems,” he says, but it sounds more like he’s trying to convince himself, to speak it into existence.

He turns his face away from me and back to the papers, but it’s too late: I saw it. It’s just a quick, barely there glimpse, but I saw it.

He’s scared.

He’s trying to be strong for me, to reassure me that my world isn’t crashing down around me. He’s trying to do what he does best and take care of everything, but it’s too late; we both know we’re screwed.

We stare at the file: a file full of information on Tony. My Tony: The man I’ve spent a year running away from. The man who locked me in a basement for three days. The man who’s trying to kill me. Tony.

There are pictures of him, although they look older. Polaroids of him with a bunch of people, dated on the backs to almost twenty years ago. There are other men in the file as well, but none featured as much as Tony, although he’s referred to by his real name, Anthony DeRosso, in Luke’s notes about him. Does Luke know who I am? Is he looking into me? What could he possibly want with information on Tony?

“What are you guys doing here?” Annalisa’s voice cuts through my thoughts, causing me to jump.

She peers into the room from the doorway, a frown on her red lips. We were both so absorbed in our thoughts and worries that we didn’t hear Annalisa sneak up on us.

Aiden turns to face her as well, casually sidestepping so his large body blocks the file sitting on the desk, blocks the connection she has to Tony, the man making my life hell.

“I—uh—forgot my house key here last night. This is the last room I searched so I figured it would be here,” I answer, praying that it sounds as smooth and believable aloud as it did in my head.

“Oh.” She tilts her head, my words turning over in her mind.

“Hey, what happened at the convenience store?” Aiden asks before she can decide that I’m lying.

He walks toward her, and I casually lean on the desk and slide over so that my back is covering most of it.