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The door flies open.
A man—no, more than one man—rushes out. One of them slams me against the wall. I trip and slip to the ground. A third man stampedes by with a heavy step on my once-severed leg.
The door to Solo’s room is ajar. Something is wrong, terribly wrong. Solo isn’t one of the three men.
I climb up and rush into the room. Stupid, really, I probably should call for help or something. I think of this too late.
Solo is in a chair.
The first thing I notice is the blood.
The second thing I notice is the ropes.
“Close the door,” he says in a clotted voice. “Dead-bolt it.”
I do it. Then I rush to him, kneeling down so I can look up into his face.
“Gruesome, huh?” he asks.
He’s wearing nothing but boxers. Thin rivulets of blood have made it all the way down to his shoulders and onto his chest.
“I’ll get help,” I say. But I know that’s the wrong answer.
“No. There’s no help in this place. They’re just shook up because they didn’t expect you.” Solo works his tongue around his mouth. He grunts, and a second later spits out a tooth. “Sorry.”
I run to his bathroom, soak a hand towel in ice-cold water, and run back. Carefully I blot the blood from his head. It’s shockingly red on the white towel. I can’t do a very thorough job because his hair is thick.
I wipe the blood from his face. Forehead. Eyes. Mouth.
I go back to rinse the blood out and as the cold water runs, my brain is racing, then stalling, then racing again, like a very bad driver with a very fast car.
I bring the now-pink towel back and begin to wipe the blood from his neck and chest.
I expect more blood to flow—they say head wounds bleed a lot—but it’s barely a trickle.
I wipe down to the waistband of his boxers.
I look up at him and I’m a little startled. I’m disturbed in about six different ways. I haven’t seen this much blood since it was coming out of me on Powell Street.
I haven’t ever been knocked down, pushed aside before.
I’ve never touched a boy’s body before.
I’ve never knelt in front of a boy before, a boy wearing nothing but boxers and rope.
Rope? “You’re still tied up!”
“Yeah, I noticed that.”
I jump to my feet, flustered and scared and overwhelmed. My fingers pick weakly at the knots.
“There’s a Swiss Army knife in my dresser drawer.”
I find it beneath rolled socks. Carefully, carefully, because I don’t trust my trembling hands, I cut him loose.
He stands, turns, faces me, and says, “You looked at the files.”
But I don’t want to talk about it. Because all of that is so horrible and so complicated, and right now he is just so close.
