Chapter 8

The window went up.

The dark glass took him away, and took her own pale, braced face with it.

The car pulled out, and Lily stood there until it had been gone from the corner for some time before the last thing he’d said caught up to her.

You’ll come.

He hadn’t been guessing. He was certain.

What was he planning?

She couldn’t get a read on him at all, and the unease kept climbing.

She stood there a while longer, then turned back to find Jenny.

They ran into each other near the bus stop.

Jenny’s eyebrows went up. “What are you doing here?”

Lily told her.

Jenny went quiet for a long moment.

Then she sighed, and when she spoke there was weight in it. “Lily. Maybe you should think about leaving.”

“You haven’t been here long, so you might not get it yet. In this country, to people with that kind of power, people like us don’t really count as people. We’re tools. Or toys.”

“If something happens, nobody comes.”

“If we walked into a station right now, we couldn’t touch him. The police won’t do anything. There’s no one here who can help us.”

“He already knows where you sleep, which means he’s been on you for a while. There’s nowhere in this country you can go where he can’t reach. If he wants you, it costs him nothing. And—”

She stopped, looked at her, then went on. “And it won’t only be you. The way he talks, it sounded to me like he’d use the people around you to make you fold.”

“So for your own sake, and for everyone else’s, you should go. Try another country.”

That put Lily back into silence.

She couldn’t go.

She hadn’t come here to make money. She hadn’t come here to build a life.

She had a reason to be in this country, and it wasn’t negotiable.

Jenny sighed again. “I know you didn’t come here for fun. So you need to decide for yourself what matters most. If you’re staying, I won’t keep pushing. But I hope whatever this is doesn’t end up landing on someone who had nothing to do with it.”

Lily understood exactly what she meant.

She pressed her lips together. “I know.”

The air between them had gone heavy.

Jenny produced a smile to break it up. “Anyway. Maybe he’s just talking. Don’t get ahead of it. One thing at a time.”

“Come on. Bed. I’m dead.”

She paused, and dropped her voice. “Whatever you do, don’t let Thomas find out. He hates trouble more than anything. If he hears about this he’ll let you go on the spot.”

The next day, the order came in from across the river.

Jenny stood there with the printed ticket, deciding whether to hand it over.

Kevin came past, caught the address, and lit up. He plucked it out of her fingers. “There he is. My best customer.”

Jenny opened her mouth and closed it again.

She liked Lily.

Taking her in had been an impulse, a soft moment. But a few months of living together had turned into something, and Lily was relentlessly useful — since she’d moved in she’d taken over the housework entirely, right down to washing Jenny’s underwear along with her own.

A roommate like that. If something happened to her, Jenny was going to feel it.

Anyway, all of this was the worst-case version. Maybe the man was just talking.

She handed Kevin the bag on the strength of that. “In and out. Don’t dawdle.”

“God, you sound like Thomas.” Kevin made a face, picked it up, and went.

Lily was eating, and not paying attention to any of it. Her head was full of what the man had said and what Jenny had said on top of it, and she never noticed what happened at the register.

When she finished she came over. “Anything from across the river today?”

Jenny pointed at the door. “Yeah. Kevin took it.”

“Oh.” Something crossed Lily’s face. “He’ll be okay, won’t he?”

“He’s a grown man, what’s going to happen to him.” Jenny shook her head. “Worry about yourself. If that guy finds out it wasn’t you today, does he come looking for you again?”

Lily’s fingers worked against each other, and the unease got worse.

Everything he’d said last night was still going around in her head, and it came to a peak now, and she couldn’t sit with it.

“No. I don’t like this. I’m going to go check.”

If Kevin got hurt covering a run that should have been hers, she was going to carry it forever.

“You’re actually going?” Jenny asked again.

Lily walked around behind the register, crouched, and dug a heavy adjustable wrench out of the junk cabinet underneath.

Jenny grabbed her wrist. “Are you planning to fight him to the death?”

“No. It’s for my nerves.” Lily pulled free. “I’m not going inside. I’ll watch from across the street, and if Kevin doesn’t come out I’ll call somebody.”

Jenny let go and exhaled. “Fine. Go.”

Lily shoved the wrench into the back of her waistband, pulled her jacket over it, and went out fast toward the bridge.

Kevin wasn’t on it, which meant he was already inside.

She sped up.

She’d just reached the far bank — hadn’t even come off the bridge — when Kevin walked out of the house.

He was grinning, and he was flapping a crisp fifty.

Lily let out everything she’d been holding and sat down hard on the bridge parapet. The hand around the wrench was soaked.

Kevin came up and spotted her.

She was staring at him, so he put the bill in his pocket. “Jenny sent me. I’m not stealing your runs.”

“I’m not here about that.” Lily glanced back at the house. “Did anything happen in there? Anything at all?”

Once he understood she wasn’t after the tip, Kevin relaxed and grinned. “Nope. Same as always.”

“Why? You catching Jenny’s thing about the mystery hunk?”