“Oh don’t be so hard on yourself,” Nora says. “I’m good at what I do. I could’ve sat down in the booth with you and engaged you in conversation and you wouldn’t recognize me later unless I wanted you to.”
My mind is running away with me now, hundreds of images flashing across my thoughts, trying to pick her face or her voice or any part of her out of the thousands of people I’ve come into contact with. Could she have been there, in Mexico with me at some point? It doesn’t seem likely—I doubt she even knew who I was until after I fled Mexico with Victor. But none of that stops me from relentlessly trying to spot her face in any part of my past.
I glance over at Victor, and then Niklas, and judging by the deep looks of concentration on their faces, they’re doing the same thing.
“I lifted your fingerprints from your glass,” Nora says. “You used to be Adam Barnett of Katy, Texas. Arrested multiple times as a juvenile and spent most of your teenage life in the system. Cared for by adoptive parents until they couldn’t deal with you anymore and later gave you up—nothing everybody else here doesn’t already know, I’m sure. I kept searching. But your info trail ended abruptly at the age of sixteen. It was like you fell off the face of the planet. No driver’s license or work record, no tax information, not even a credit card purchase—under either name. The point is that”—her eyes harden with focus—“you’re in a way like me; a person with no real identity. And I wonder why that is?” Her question is heavy with accusation, as though she already has a good idea of the answer—considering the reason she’s here, she probably does.
“Look at what I do,” Dorian says exasperated, pressing his back against the chair. “I’m not supposed to be easy to find or to figure out. If I were, I wouldn’t be any good and I’d probably already be dead by now.”
“This is true,” she says with a nod, “you are good. You’re good because I couldn’t find anything. I was getting worried you wouldn’t get to play the game with everybody else because I had nothing on you, nothing to force you to confess”—she smiles wickedly—“but then something extraordinary happened, something I never expected. When Tessa first saw me she said something that really got my attention before she was chained to the furnace. Do you want to know what she said?”
Dorian looks nervous.
Nora looks increasingly sly.
Niklas’ eyes actually meet mine for a brief moment of question, but fall away just as quickly.
Victor stands stock-still, looking into that screen as if what he’s about to hear is the most important thing he’s going to hear all day.
“What did she say?” Dorian asks reluctantly, turning his blond head slightly at an angle and narrowing his eyes on Nora.
Nora smiles sweetly.
“She said, ‘I won’t tell you anything’, before she was even asked any questions.” Nora pauses, cocking her head to one side. “Now that’s not something an innocent person, uninvolved, would usually say in a time like that, is it?”
Dorian’s fist slams against the table, knocking the apple onto its side. It rolls awkwardly a little ways before stopping near the edge.
“Tessa is innocent,” he rips the words out angrily, “and if you hurt her—”
“Oh, I’ve already hurt her,” Nora cuts him off snidely. “I hurt her enough to get what I wanted out of her, but what happens to her later will depend on what happens in this room today, as you’re already aware.”
“She has nothing to do with anything,” Dorian growls, growing more incensed, trying so hard to keep his murderous rage contained.
“Anything, meaning what exactly?”
Dorian hesitates, seeming in search of words—words of truth, or maybe words that just sound like truth.
“Look—Tessa knows what I do, all right,” he says, appearing to give in a little. “She’s smart; she knew I was leading a double life. She found my guns. She started following me, thinking I was into some drug shit. I was afraid she was going to get hurt, so I told her the truth.”
“And what is the truth?”
Dorian raises both arms out at his sides, opening his hands palms-up. “That I’m part of an underground organization.”
“What kind of underground organization?”
His eyes harden and he shakes his head in perplexity.
“This kind,” he says, pointing downward.
Puzzled, I look to Victor. “So, that’s his secret, that he told his ex-wife about us?” While that’s a bad thing and Victor won’t like it, I still feel about as confused as Dorian looks.
“No, there’s something more to this,” Victor says cryptically, staring at the screen.
Nora shakes her head and sighs.
“So you’re sticking with that story then?” she asks.
Dorian blinks confusedly.
“Yeah. I am. I don’t know what else to fucking tell you.”
“How about the truth?” Nora suggests.