Mollified, Davis lowers the blade. For now, at least. “No,” he says in a slightly calmer tone. “I bet you didn’t think about me at all. Just like you didn’t think about your teammate, either.”
The mention of Malik is a dagger straight through my heart. I still remember the day he was taken to a different holding facility—for thetrulydangerous hostages, I was informed—and the words he said to me as they dragged him away.
“It’s going to be okay, Tink,”he told me.“Stay strong. I’ll see you soon.”
But he didn’t. Because not three weeks after that, he was dead. A fact my captors took great pleasure in informing me about, threatening that I’d be next if I didn’t keep in line.
“No, you didn’t think about anyone but yourself,” Davis adds. “You found a target, and played him so he’d give you special treatment. Arash, wasn’t it?”
I stare back at him, unsure if he wants me to respond.
“It was,” he answers for me. “Don’t think we didn’t all know what you were doing. Offering up your body so you’d get more food. An actual bed. Books, even.” He barks out a sharp laugh. “Books. I’m fucking getting beaten and you’re sitting in your cushy room, reading.”
I shake my head before I can stop myself.
It wasn’t like that. I was treated better than the other captives, but it wasn’t because of anything I did. I never played up to Arash. Icertainlynever offered my body in exchange for anything.
No, it was just a stroke of good luck in a shitstorm of bad. Arash was one of the men in charge of the facility where I was held, and for some reason, he took a liking to me. Maybe it was because I could speak Arabic, so we could communicate. Maybe it was my name, which has a Persian origin. Maybe it was because, despite the horrible things Arash did, there was a part of him that was reluctant to hurt a woman.
Whatever the reason, it probably kept me alive. It prevented me from being hurt worse than I was. But thespecial treatment, as Davis put it, never extended to letting me go, or any of the other captives there. Not when I was still the enemy.
Do I feel guilty about it? Yes.
Do I think it was my fault? No.
Does that make any sense? Not really. But that’s the thing about emotions. They don’t always make sense. They just are.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Davis says smugly. “I can see from your eyes you know what you did. Turning your back on your fellow soldiers soyoucould be comfortable. Turning your back on your own fucking teammate.”
He drags the edge of the knife down my cheek; not hard enough to break the skin, but close to it. “I know you gave up secrets, too. Told that dirtbag Arash all sorts of things while you were in bed with him. What’s a little pillow talk between lovers, right? What’s giving up a little top-secret intel when it means you get a mattress to sleep on instead of dirt?”
No.I shake my head harder this time. I never told Arash or his allies anything confidential. Never. Not in the beginning, when they tried to torture it out of me, or later, when they tried to bribe me.
I would never,everbreak my vow to my country. I would have given my life instead. And in those three months I was held hostage, I was more than prepared to do it.
But clearly, Davis sees things differently.
Davis sees me as the villain of the story. As the femme fatale, using my body and my wiles to manipulate my captors into giving me what I wanted. As a heartless traitor who cared only about herself.
“I know you could have helped us,” he says. The edge of the blade trails down to my neck, coming to a stop just above my jugular.
My pulse leaps so hard and fast, I’m afraid I might cut myself just from the motion.
“You could have gotten us out,” Davis continues. “Or at least convinced your dirtbag boyfriend to give us the same treatment as you. Kept us in the same place, with drinkable water and food. But, no. You didn’t care about us. All you cared about was yourself.”
I can’t shake my head to refute it. Not now. Not with the blade so close to slicing my vein.
Davis’s lip bares back in a rictus of a smile. “You turned your back on us. On yourteammate.” He stops. “He defended you, you know. When I told him you were nothing more than a traitor, he denied it. Even after you were rescued. But I knew. You could have helped. But you didn’t.”
The knife draws back.
My lungs seize.
Is this it?
Is this the moment my life comes to an end? Not in the Middle East, but in my own basement?
On the heels of that thought comes another, heavy with sorrow.
