"H-hi," he says.
He stammers it. Actually stammers it, this man who just threatened me in a concrete room, and something hysterical bubbles up before I can stop it.
"Hi?" It comes out sharp and slightly unhinged. His eyes widen.
"How was the couch?"
I look down. Faded paisley print gone grayish-brown, springs visible through the cushions, the specific ugliness of a couch that has been in storage since approximately 1987. "Where am I?"
"Safe. For now."
For now.
"Did you leave the note? Is that what this is?"
"No." His eyes move to my purse on the floor, then back to me. "I know about the note. It wasn't me."
"Then what do you want?"
"I—" A pause, jaw working. "I don't know."
"I don't have money. I'm no use to you."
Something shifts in his expression. "I beg to differ." Low, quiet, and something underneath it that raises every hair on my body for reasons that have nothing to do with fear. Or not only fear.
He steps closer. Unhurried. Patient in a way that is somehow worse than urgency.
"You've seen me before," he says. "The mail room. The bar Friday night. Tell me what you remember."
"Let me go." My voice cracks down the middle. "Please. I won't say anything. Just unlock these, I need to?—"
"Tell me what you remember first."
I yank the chain. It bites. "The mail room. You bumped into me. Friday night, the bar, and then I blacked out. That's everything. That's all I have. Please?—"
He watches me. No sympathy. Just that cold, steady assessment, like he's weighing something.
Then: "Good girl."
It drops out of him low and quiet, almost gentle, and I hate that my body responds to it before my mind does. My yanking slows. My breath hitches.
"Now listen," he says. "Your boss is dead. The cops think it was you."
The room goes very still.
He reaches into the bag he set down and kneels in front of me. I flinch back but he just drapes a clean towel across my lap and wipes the mess from my sweats, careful and methodical, hands never lingering. Almost like tenderness, if tenderness could exist in a place like this. He hands me a paper bag when he's done.
I look inside.
Donuts. Two of them, full and perfect.
"Boston cream," he says, nodding at the bag.
"Why?" I say, before I can stop myself.
"You have to eat."
"I need to go home."