Numbness radiates from where the man grips my skin. We approach the door, and a pair of sneakers and a T-shirt are visible in the first footwell. The back seat flows into the front, no metal grid barring the way. The driver wears a baseball-style cap with the word POLICE, too, pulled down low, obscuring his face as he scans the crowd. It’s a regular sedan. But for the duct tape and zip ties that litter the cushions.

I scream and shove the man away, then turn and tear through the crowd of tourists. Women cry out; my hands push through their photo op as I strain to hear footsteps behind me. I leap past a small hedge around a restaurant and run another twenty feet down the next street before I pause at a covered bus stop to suck air into my burning lungs. My hat is gone. From here everyone passing at the corner is visible—three taxis zip by; a stooped man with a rolling shopping basket waits at the crosswalk. Shaking spreads through my limbs, and my elbow throbs with the memory of the man touching me.

Green light. The man with the shopping basket hobbles across the street as a black sedan glides into the adjacent intersection—hesitating, slowing, searching. Someone honks from behind, and the sedan speeds up and out of sight. I collapse onto the bus stop bench, into a bed of fabric scraps and newspapers. My breathing comes jagged and the rags sit upright, eyes wild until they land on me.

“You okay?” the man asks in French, but I can’t speak. He repeats something, undeterred and alarmed. Comptez jusqu’à dix. Comptez jusqu’à dix. Count to ten.

Comptez. One, two.

That man came to abduct me. Three, four, five.

Possibly to kill me. Six, seven, eight.

He was in Manu’s building. Nine, ten.

Which means he’s been following me.

I fill my lungs with air, and a sob-hiccup escapes. A grimy hand touches me as calm settles over me like a blanket, shock spooling through my core.

“You okay?”

I nod. A yellow cab turns the corner, and I let fly my dad’s shrill whistle, the one that he taught me when we were thirteen and which I lorded over Angela because she never could do it. The taxi rolls to a stop beside us. I thank the bus stop man, and he repeats, “Comptez jusqu’à dix.”

I climb into the back seat of the cab, the plastic partition and prominently displayed ID already a comforting sign that this driver is legit. We veer left toward the hill. With every black vehicle we pass, I slide farther down in the seat until only the wide, leafy trees lining the road and approaching clouds fill my vision.