“I can slip out of here anytime I want.” I didn’t really believe that.
“You could,” he said, looking at me again, “but you won’t”—he held up an index finger—“you won’t because you know you’re safer in this room than anywhere else, and you won’t risk running without your sister. And since you have no idea where to look for her, you’re going to bide your time in this room while you try to figure out a way to find her, rescue her, and then leave the city without getting caught.” He dropped his hand on top of the desk and shook his head. “But let me save you the trouble of going through all that shit just to end up back here”—he tapped the tip of his index finger against the wood—“right where you started, except with ropes around your wrists and ankles to make another attempt more difficult.”
He turned back to his notebook and slid a hand in-between the pages.
“Besides, if I really wanted to lock you in here, and I thought you were stupid enough to try running, I could easily do so by moving the thousand-pound safe in the room next door, over in front of the door—it does open into the hall, you know.”
I bit down on the inside of my mouth and frowned. What an infuriating smartass!
“Then tell me that my sister is okay.” I stepped up closer to him. “Look, I won’t run, I won’t do anything stupid, but I need to hear someone say that Sosie is all right. I’m begging you—”
“I don’t know anything about your sister,” he said, looking me dead in the eyes. “I don’t know, and I don’t care, and neither should you.”
I threw my hands up beside me. “How can you say that?! What if that was your sister—sir?!” I spit out the formality as if it was something revolting in my mouth. “Or don’t you care? If that was your sister or your mother, you’d just send them packing to the closest whorehouse and—”
The desk jolted, and Atticus’ chair skidded across the floor as he shot into a frightening, towering stand. His eyes churned with what seemed like anger and punishment and…pain?
I shrank backward and away from him.
“Forget about your sister, Thais,” he said, and the sound of my name on his lips quietly stunned me. “Both of you can live long lives and be free like everyone else in this city if you just accept the way things are…”—he calmed, and slid slowly back into the chair—“…the way things have to be.”
I said nothing.
“You’ll be fine when the Overseer returns,” he added, going back to the previous discussion. “No one will dare touch you when he’s made you his.”
“But I don’t want to be his!” I cried into my hands. “Why are you forcing me into this?”
“It’s the way things have to be.”
“But why!”
“BECAUSE THE WORLD IS CHANGED!” he roared, sucking the oxygen out of the room; I jumped at his booming voice.
Then he gathered his composure, turned back to his work. “And because we have to change with it,” he said in a calmer voice that sounded more like an apology than a statement.
He seemed to find what he was looking for, repositioned his gun holster strapped around his chest, and left the room promptly.
I locked the door behind him and fell against my cot and cried.
16
ATTICUS
I rapped on Evelyn’s door, and she ushered me into the room.
“How is she?” I asked. “Any progress?”
Evelyn shook her head glumly; she didn’t approve of what I was doing with the blind girl she’d been keeping in her room for nearly two weeks.
“The girl is fine,” Evelyn said with a trace of criticism I was used to. “As fine as she was when you brought her here, anyway. She still won’t talk, she drinks little and eats even less—wouldn’t even do that if she wasn’t worried about her sister.”
She paused and turned to see the girl sitting on a chair by the window.
“I’m telling you, Atticus, this one will never break. I’ve seen dozens of girls come and go in this business, but this one”—she glanced back at the girl again—“it’s not gonna happen, not today or five years from now. She’s broken, yes, but not in the way you want her to be.”
I felt Evelyn’s fingers clamp down on my elbow.
“The men are starting to talk,” she went on, her voice low and harsh. “It’s not like they haven’t seen her; I can’t hide her under the bed when they visit me, y’know.”
I sighed.
“I can’t keep telling them she’s in training,” she went on, “or that she’s sick, or whatever other ridiculous lies I come up with to buy her time. Sooner than later, Atticus, they will start demanding her services—blind or not, she’s a beautiful girl. This is a mistake. A huge mistake.”
“If she’s going to be here,” I told her, “I want her to choose to be here.”
“It doesn’t work that way, and you know it.”
“It has to!”
Evelyn took a deep breath.
“They’re going to kill you if they see this weakness in you, Atticus.” She stepped up into my personal space and bent her arms between us, resting them against my chest. “It scares the hell out of me to see you doing this. They’ll see that weakness and pounce on you like lions on a wounded animal.”
I stepped away from her, and she crossed her arms under her plump breasts, sighed and then glanced at the door.
“Why aren’t you doing this with any of the other girls?” Evelyn asked, not with accusation, but with interest. “Or is that what you plan to start doing?” She pointed at me before tucking her hand back against her arm. “I’m not going to keep doing this, so don’t get it in your head to bring me anymore.”
“Most of the others don’t care, Evelyn,” I said. “They either come here grateful to be given a place to live and don’t care what they have to do to earn their keep, or they accept it soon after.” I looked across the room at the blind girl again. “But girls like that one are…different. And I can’t, on good conscience, force her to sleep with these men, or it’ll feel like I’m the one raping her”—my voice rose —“I can sort them, I can even visit them myself the way I visit you, but I can’t become the Devil, Evelyn.”
“But you can be the Devil’s advocate,” she accused, and it cut the fuck out of me.
I clamped my hand around her elbow and took her with me out into the hall, closed the door behind us.
“One more week,” I whispered urgently. “Just give her one more week.”
Evelyn stood in front of me, a frown manipulating her pretty pouty lips, concern etched in her face—I knew she thought me reckless and crazy to be doing this, but I was her friend, and no matter how much she disagreed with me, she would always help me.
“And what if she doesn’t break?” Evelyn said. “What do you plan to do then?”
I looked at the wall, lost in my deep thoughts made up of a dozen questions with zero answers.
“I don’t know,” I finally spoke. “But that’ll give me a week to figure it out.” My hands collapsed around her thin arms, and I squeezed them gently. “Think of this one as your toughest case yet—you can talk her into it, Evelyn; I have confidence in you.”