That scream the first night. Angela’s scream. She was there just below the window. All that stood between us then was two flights of stairs and a mercenary. “I gave that homeless man my change.”

“You chose this trip to be generous?”

Watching him miraculously heal from a limp when police arrived was bewildering; I thought it was the fever. She’s right—he was watching me the whole time for Seb. “Then you left me a message under Nour’s doormat, told me to go to the nightclub by hiding it in a to-do list. You wanted me to find Chang.”

“Yes.” We’re each silent a moment, gathering our thoughts. “What day is it?” she asks.

“Not sure,” I murmur. “Saturday or Sunday, July 29. I was supposed to fly out tonight.” Past tense. Dirt has crept down the back side of my jeans, into my shirt, under my fingernails. Slowly invading every part of me. Burying me from the outside in. “How did you survive this last time?”

Angela meets my gaze, finally. “I got lucky. When he left to go to the hospital for something, the scissors were out, and I was able to cut myself free.” A harsh edge sharpens each word she speaks. “I don’t want to die in here. I can’t. Not after escaping already. And not with you.”

“What—?”

“Most of all,” she resumes, her voice taking on a gravelly, thick quality. Her eyes become watery. “I don’t want to die in here before I hear you say it.”

I stop breathing. Her words linger, flat in the enclosed air. Every muscle in my body stiffens, fearful of what comes next.

Angela takes my silence for confirmation and nods. “Auntie Meredith told me, right after the funeral. I’ve known ever since that summer. You needed Mom and Dad to pick you up from somewhere because you drank too much. Again. On their way to rescue you, they were hit.”

Cold shame roils across my body, unfurls in a cloud of anguish, and I don’t even protest her words. The phantom taste of bourbon, my drink of choice then, along with the feel of the scratchy wool blanket I was sleeping on when the police officer called, stirs from my memory. Angela’s easy summary is a punch to the gut, too reduced and too clinical, without the ensuing self-hatred that followed. More than anything I want to tell her she’s wrong. But I can’t.