“Let me go,” she grits out. “Let me go or kill me. Those are the only two options I’ll accept from you.”
“Patience,” I say, close to her ear. “Zayka.”
She shudders. “Don’t call me that.”
My hand finds the inside pocket. Phone. And beneath it, small and hard with a crack along one corner, the drive.
I pull both and step back immediately, putting the length of the cell between us.
She spins with her back to the wall, her chest heaving and something in her eyes that I stop myself from cataloguing.
She looks at the drive in my hand and her face does something terrible for just one second.
Something young and stripped bare.
It lasts less than a breath then the fury is back, but I saw it and I can’t unsee it.
He gave it to her.
Right before they killed him.
I walk to the chair.
Pick up the cut zip-ties and the spare ones on the floor.
She doesn’t fight me this time when I secure her back into the chair. She’s looking past my shoulder with her jaw tight, doing exactly what I’m doing.
Refusing to feel it in front of someone watching.
I straighten, pocketing the drive and the phone.
“You have one more day,” I tell her. “I’d think carefully about how you spend it.”
I walk to the door.
“I’ll kill you,” she says behind me. Quiet this time. No screaming. Just a woman making a promise she intends to keep.
I stop at the door and stand there for one beat longer than I need to.
Then I walk out.
The lock clicks behind me and I stand in the corridor staring at the wall, the drive burning my pocket.
She is on the other side of that door and I have absolutely no idea why she isn’t already dead.
5
LENA
One more day.
That’s what he said.
One more day, savor it, then he walked out and the lock clicked and I’ve been sitting here doing the math on what that means ever since.
And he called meZayka, fuckingZayka. Who does he think he is?
Why would a sane man call his captive “little bunny?”
