She swallowed her doubt and smiled at Joe. “You’re right,” she said. “To hell with them. They don’t know who they’re messing with.” The lie tasted bitter on her tongue.

“That’s my girl.”

Anxious to change the subject, Lila said, “Tell me about your day.”

“Oh, you’ve already won the contest. My day was nothing compared to yours—although, I may be heading out on assignment.”

“Oh…? Where to?”

“A tropical paradise they call North Dakota. There’s a protest over a pipeline they’re building on Native lands. Things are heating up.”

“When?”

“Allison hasn’t decided if I’m going for sure, but if it happens, it’ll be soon.”

Lila turned to face Joe, the ache of his absence already creeping into her bones. She would hide that pain from him and watch him go if it came to that—one more secret to put with the rest. It was always harder when he was away.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulled his face to hers, and kissed him. It was what she needed more than anything else in that moment.

* * *

Early the next morning, in those dark hours when the rise of the sun remained nothing more than a promise, Lila awoke from a dream. Like most dreams, it was disjointed and random. She remembered being on her hands and knees amid a pile of files, the papers scattered around her like fallen leaves. Andi Fitch stood over her, arms folded in disgust. Lila was stacking the papers, but like the biblical fishes and loaves, they continued to multiply.

Then she noticed that Andi’s shoes had become a pair of men’s shoes, and Lila looked up to see Frank Dovey, a vengeful grin wrinkling the corners of his eyes. That’s when Lila woke up.

Joe lay with his back to her, his light snore drifting in the air. He was such a sound sleeper that he never noticed her nightmares. And while it had woken her up, the dream hadn’t been nearly as jarring as some she’d had. Her new boss held no candle to the faceless men who grabbed at her from the darkness.

Those dreams sometimes affected her for days. She would see men looking at her in that certain way as she passed them on the street. The scrape of sand underfoot in a parking garage could make her heart stop. Such was the fallout that survivors like her had to endure.

She curled an arm around Joe’s chest and listened to the sound of his exhales, felt the gentle rise and fall of his back against her cheek. How she loved the way his presence brought her peace. She pressed her face to his shoulder and whispered, “I need to tell you something.”

She paused to be certain that she hadn’t woken him up before she continued. Then she said, “Sometimes, I’m afraid.”

She tried to find more words to explain the labyrinth that lay between the woman Joe knew and the one who stared back at Lila from the mirror. How could she possibly explain it? She was too tired to form cogent thoughts. Her sentences broke apart in her head, the words becoming heavy and lost before she could speak them.