But there was more to this story. That truth beat against my ribs with the rhythm of my pounding heart. “Duffy, listen to me. You can’t lock me in the tower. I have to help people. The women here. Even the staff is trapped in this place, aren’t they?”

Her march continued. “You heard what Thornhill said. You’ve gotten yourself into a tangle. I can’t just let you go.”

I dug in my heels, leveled my most authoritative voice. “You’re going to set me free. I have work to do. You know the people here need help, and I aim to give it. Need to give it.”

“I’m glad you see it that way.” She paused before the tower, taking a breath and shoving a key into the padlock. “That’s exactly what I plan for you to do.”

“How—”

“Up with you.” She planted her hand into my back, shoving me into the darkness and coming in behind me. Inside, she fumbled with a candle and matches until she had one lit, and it cast an eerie glow over her wide-eyed face. She was still afraid of the place. Even with gaslights running up the stairwell, the place was dim and cold. Eerie. “Up, I said. On with you.”

I climbed the twisting stairwell into the heart of the musty old tower, forcing myself not to shiver. “Someone will find me. I have people who care about me.”

Chaos. The reckless noise of silence. That’s the only song I heard in this place, and I was trapped in it.

“He ain’t one of them. And I promise you, Mitchell won’t be looking. He’s near the tipping point, ever since his wife, and it don’t take much at all to convince him he’s slipped a little to the one side, that things with you aren’t exactly as he remembers. It went the same with his wife.”

I froze on the step. “What do you mean?”

“He’s the one what found her, of course. Dead in the isolation chamber, with a bad reaction to the injection. No one caught it. He didn’t catch it. She died alone, and he can’t bring himself to let it go.”

The story ripped through me again. “I don’t think a man like that could ever forget,” I murmured, my fingertips brushing the moist stones as we climbed.

“Remembering only tortures him.” She was shaking now, staring intently. “A man like that . . . he deserves to forget. To move on, into the rest of his life. Into the warm embrace of a woman who’s alive and willing to help him heal.”

I turned, looking into her austere face. “And that’s you, I presume?”