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So, I had to play it smart, and I knew the key to that was at the hospital, a place where his men couldn’t follow my every move.

Which was why I sat on the end of that bed with my coat still on and thought about how I could get my hands on a pair of bolt cutters for a lock that would no doubt become my biggest obstacle. Just a regular night in the life of a girl with no name.

Although bolt cutters soon got replaced with the memory of the day and the unwelcome star of it. Which also meant self-loathing became the theme of the night, as I hated myself for how much he affected me.

I took a shower but even that didn’t help, because I couldn’t think of anything else but his hands on my waist, on my hips. The way he felt my weight loss and didn’t look happy about it.

I stood under the spray asking myself why his care affected me as much as it did… because you’ve never had it from a man before, my brain answered. At least not one who wasn’t related to me anyway.

My forehead rested against the tile, and I let the water go as hot as that useless little shower could manage. Then I went through the whole afternoon again, and this was the part I was least proud of.

Because I wasn’t thinking about all the blackmail like I should.

No, I was thinking about him and the hold he had over me. About being pulled in between his knees. About a fun-size candy bar and a man’s fingers against my bottom lip as he fed it to me.

Two months. Two months of being frightened and careful and completely alone. Then the first person to put his hands on me in all that time was a killer, and my body had gone to him like a flower leans toward the sun.

And I fucking hated myself for it.

But I hated where my hand started to move to even more. The way it went down of its own accord, the way it always did when I thought about him. Honestly, I had lost count of the number of times I had come to the ghost of his fingers over my skin… the ghost of him. To the fantasy of what he would do to me again should he ever get me alone behind another locked door. Something I had foolishly believed would never happen again.

But then my hand stopped the second I remembered I wasn’t truly alone anymore. Not after the threat of there being cameras hidden somewhere in this little rented room.

He had said my room, but he hadn’t said which parts of it. And well, as much as I would like to believe there is a line somewhere in that man, I didn’t know for sure whether privacy in a bathroom would make the cut.

So, I got out, left unsatisfied and I dried myself with my back to the room. Then I got myself dressed and into bed so I could pretend a good night’s sleep was in the cards.

Needless to say… it wasn’t.

I got four hours of sleep, and none of it was the useful kind.

There were bags under my eyes in the visor mirror that no amount of cold water was going to fix, and I gave up on trying somewhere around the second attempt. But I did leave twenty minutes early and pull into the drive-through on the edge of town. Then I sat in the parking lot and ate a breakfast sandwich and drank a coffee before I got anywhere near Corwin.

You have not been taking care of yourself.

That was why.

That was the entire reason I ate a proper breakfast and no amount of trying to convince myself otherwise made it any less true. Not even when I told myself it was a sensible thing to do if I wanted to function to the best of my ability as a nurse.

Of course, I didn’t miss the van that followed my every move, wondering whether my movements would get back to him. Would he be proud to know I had listened?

Fuck, but why did I care?

But more than that, why was it a thought that stayed with me, long after I had left my car and made my way inside Corwin.

I had no answer… or at least, not a sane one.

The day room on Cedar was the nicest room in that building, which told you a great deal about the rest of it.

They had tried, which I guess was something. Somebody with a budget and good intentions had been in there and put up warm yellow paint that had gone slightly chalky. They had hung two framed prints of fields at sunset high enough that nobody could reach them. They had laid a floor in a soft green vinyl that was easy to mop and didn’t hold a stain.

There were chairs with wooden arms and cushioned seats bolted down. There was even a bookcase filled with well-used board games with half the pieces missing and paperbacks with the covers gone. A television sat up on a bracket near the ceiling in a locked polycarbonate box, which was showing a cooking program with the sound down and the subtitles on. Because the sound belonged to whoever got to the remote and the remote lived in the office.

Big windows were the only part they got right. Tall Victorian ones, reaching almost floor to ceiling and letting in a great deal of light. The glass was laminated and the frames were screwed shut with a wire mesh set into it so fine that from the inside of the room you could almost persuade yourself it wasn’t there.

Almost.

At eight thirty that morning it held eighteen men, which out of twenty-eight was a good turnout. The rest were asleep, or refusing to come out, or down at appointments, or being somebody else’s problem for an hour.