I laugh, but the sound comes out raw and empty. “Love? No, of course not!” I’m not sure what gave her that idea, since I have been trying to avoid talking about Julian at all. The more I think about him, the more I feel like the wall of ice around me might crack, letting the pain drown me.

“Of course not,” my dad says, watching me closely, and I see that he doesn’t believe me.

Somehow both of my parents can sense the truth—that I’m far more traumatized by my rescue than by my abduction.

25

Nora

Over the next four months, I attempt to pick up the pieces of my life.

After another day in the Bangkok hospital, I’m deemed healthy enough to travel, and I go home, back to Illinois with my parents. We have two FBI escorts on our trip home—Agents Wilson and Bosovsky—who use the twenty-hour flight to ask me even more questions. Both of them seem frustrated because, according to their databases, Julian Esguerra simply doesn’t exist.

“There are no other aliases you’ve heard him use?” Agent Bosovsky asks me for the third time, after their Interpol query comes back without any results.

“No,” I say patiently. “I only knew him as Julian. The terrorists called him Esguerra.”

Beth’s guess about the identities of the men who stole us from Julian’s clinic turned out to be correct. They were indeed part of a particularly dangerous Jihadist organization called Al-Quadar—that much the FBI had been able to find out.

“This just doesn’t make sense,” Agent Wilson says, his round cheeks quivering with frustration. “Anyone with that kind of clout should have been on our radar. If he was head of an illegal organization that manufactured and distributed cutting-edge weapons, how is it possible that not a single government agency is aware of his existence?”

I don’t know what to tell him, so I just shrug in response. The private investigators my parents hired hadn’t been able to find out anything about him either.

My parents and I had debated telling the FBI about Julian’s money, but ultimately decided against it. Revealing this information so late in the game would only get my parents in trouble and could potentially cause the FBI to think that I had been Julian’s accessory. After all, what kidnapper sends money to his victim’s family?

By the time we get home, I am exhausted. I’m tired of my parents hovering over me all the time, and I’m sick of the FBI coming to me with a million questions that I can’t answer. Most of all, I’m tired of being around so many people. After more than a year with minimal human contact, I feel overwhelmed by the airport crowds.

I find my old room in my parents’ house virtually untouched. “We always hoped you’d be back,” my mom explains, her face glowing with happiness. I smile and give her a hug before gently ushering her out of the room. More than anything, I need to be alone right now—because I don’t know how long I can keep up my ‘normal’ facade.