I hesitate, collapsing my hand around the phone, and contemplate this whole thing quietly one last time, making sure I want to open the lid on this issue.

I hand Izabel the phone.

Reluctantly, she takes it from my hand and peers down at the screen. After watching a moment, and looking back and forth between me and the feed, she asks, “Who is she?” and then she looks at the screen again.

“Her name is Cassia.”

Another long pause.

Izabel looks up from the phone and at me for a longer time.

“OK,” she says simply, waiting for me to explain.

“That’s a live video feed,” I say. “From my basement.”

Her eyebrows crease with confusion.

“You have a girl in your basement? I don’t understand.”

I sigh heavily, having a difficult time trying to figure out how to tell her. What do I start with? What do I leave out? I have to be careful because Izabel is smart and will pick up on gaps in my story easily.

“I’ve been using her to help me find Seraphina.”

“Using her how?” Already Izabel looks disapproving. “What does she have to do with Seraphina? How long have you had her down there? Wait—.” She stops abruptly and looks at the screen one more time. When she raises her eyes to me again, full of suspicion and criticism, she says, “Is that a chain around her ankle?”

“Yes,” I admit.

Izabel tries to shake off her initial feelings of disapproval to give me the benefit of the doubt. “OK, so you’re interrogating her. She’s involved with Seraphina’s life of betrayal and murder and God knows what else. I get that.” She sets the phone down in the console.

I can tell by the look of uncertainty on her face that she’s not so sure any part of the excuse she just came up with is valid.

“No,” I admit with hesitation. “Cassia is an innocent girl. I’ve been keeping her prisoner in my basement for about a year now. Since five months after the Hamburg and Stephens job went down in New Mexico.”

Izabel freezes.

“A year?” she says aghast. “And she’s innocent? Fredrik, what the hell is wrong with you?”

I shut my eyes softly. “Just calm down and let me explain.”

She takes a deep, concentrated breath and just looks across the small confined space at me. “Victor was right,” she says and it makes my head snap around the rest of the way. “When he sent you home from Seattle, Victor told me that he had suspicions about your involvement with Seraphina, that it’s what’s been distracting you. I didn’t even know she was still alive until the other night, Fredrik.” She shakes her head gently. “Hell, the only reason Victor told me anything at all was because I was so worried about you and the way you’ve been acting lately. But Fredrik, you can’t do this to this girl, no matter what part she plays in Seraphina’s life. Not if she’s innocent. You need to let her go.”

“Izabel,” I say softly, hoping I can make her understand without telling her too much, “Cassia doesn’t want to be let go. She’s terrified of Seraphina. She wants to stay with me.”

Lines deepen in Izabel’s forehead as her brows draw inward.

It takes a moment to get her words together, but she says, “Wants to stay with you? Jesus, Fredrik, she has a chain around her ankle. She’s locked in a basement.” She motions her hands, emphasizing the words, trying to make me understand how ridiculous they sound. “If she wants to stay with you, why would you keep her locked up?”

“It’s just a precaution. In case she tries to escape.” Even to me my own words sound contradictory and stupid.

And judging by the forced smile in Izabel’s eyes, she thinks so, too.

But then her expression shifts suddenly as if a reasonable explanation just crept into her mind. “You’re in love with her,” she accuses and it shocks me a little—I hadn’t expected that, of all things. “You don’t want to let her go because you’re in love with her. It makes sense. And I can see something in you, Fredrik—I could sense something was different about you, and it didn’t feel like anything…bad. Just different.”

I want to say, Izabel, you’re way off the mark here, because what she’s saying is ridiculous, but at the same time it’s a way out. If she thinks the only reason I’m keeping Cassia prisoner is because I’m in love with her it will seem less cruel and Izabel could possibly force herself to live with my decision and keep my secret, even if just for a little while longer, until I can get everything straightened out.

“And she must be in love with you,” she goes on, her face lighting up with realization the more she puts the pieces together. “Stockholm syndrome. Makes perfect sense.”

It actually amazes me how much everything she just said does make sense.

Only thing is, none of it is true.

Izabel leans over the console and pushes herself into view. “But Fredrik, this is crazy, even for you—“

“Oh, well thanks for that,” I cut in with a faint smirk, trying to lighten the mood.

She smiles.

“You know what I mean.”

Of course I do, but I couldn’t help myself.

Then just as quickly as I had managed to inject a joke, I go back to the darkness and turn my eyes away from her, staring through the windshield at the cold, gray day.

“You know that Victor—hell, even I—will help you find Seraphina.” She rests her body against the seat again, still facing me. I don’t look back at her. “I know you think this is something you feel you have to do on your own—I completely get that—but it doesn’t have to be that way. Not at the cost of that innocent girl. Fredrik, why do you need her to find Seraphina?”

My shoulders rise and fall with a heavy sigh and my gaze strays toward my lap where my fingers fidget restlessly. And then after a moment of quiet contemplation, I tell Izabel the same story that Cassia told me last night about how she and Seraphina met. Izabel listens the entire time with parted lips and an ever-growing look of horror and sadness slowly twisting her features. I try not to look at her eyes at all because I can sense how much the story is affecting her personally. And I begin to feel regret for telling her, Izabel of all people, who lived nine years of her life under the rule of a notorious Mexican drug lord who molested and raped and kept her prisoner long enough to turn her into the killer she is today.

By the time the story is over, Izabel can’t speak for what feels like an hour but is just mere minutes. I see the raw emotions eating away at her brought on mostly by the things that Seraphina went through, the memories of her own life with Javier Ruiz and all the things from her past that she—just as I do with my similar past—tries every day to shut out of her mind. But also like me, no matter how hard she tries, the deepest scars never fade.

“Fredrik…,” she says softly and then turns her head to face me, “…you have to let that girl go. You have to, now more than ever.”

I shake my head no, though I didn’t mean for her to actually see me do it—it was a reflex. I can’t let Cassia go, and I won’t, no matter how hard Izabel presses me.

Why did I tell her any of this? What could I have possibly gotten out of it?

I feel her hand on my forearm as I grip the steering wheel. Her fingers tighten around my bone. “You listen to me.” Her voice becomes sharper, determined, and I finally look back into her eyes. “Look what she’s been through. Think about what you just told me.” She shakes my arm. “That cold bitch—regardless of the horrific things she went through—killed this girl’s mother and father. She was traumatized as a child because of what your ex-wife did to her. She went through something that no one, goddammit no one, should ever have to go through, and now she’s being kept a prisoner, chained inside a basement like an animal, and what makes it sicker is that she thinks she’s in love with you!” Her rising voice fills the car, her fingers are digging into my arm over the top of my coat sleeve.

Izabel looks a lot like I do when I need to torture and kill someone to appease the painful memories.

I can’t look at her anymore.

My fingers are white-knuckling the steering wheel.

Finally, I feel her hand loosen and then fall away from my arm.

“I’ll help you,” she says gently. “I’ll do whatever you need me to do, but you have to set that girl free. We’ll put her in a safe-house to protect her until Seraphina is caught—”

“No.”

Silence fills the car.

Consumed by regret and guilt and a plethora of other negative emotions slowly eating away at me, all I can say is, “I’m sorry for what you went through when you were with Javier Ruiz. And I’m sorry that I dragged you into this—I don’t even know why I did—but I’m not letting Cassia go. I need her to find Seraphina. She’s the only way I’m ever going to find Seraphina.”

After a moment, Izabel says somberly, “Then you’re not who I thought you were.” I hear the door click open and a rush of cold air escapes into the car.

“Where are you going?” I ask carefully without moving a muscle.

She swings the door open all the way and gets out of the car. Leaning over and inside with one hand propped on the edge of the door she glares in at me, her eyes full of anger and disappointment and pain.

“If you won’t let that girl go,” she says through her teeth, “I will.”

She slams the door shut, cutting off the frigid air filtering through the car.

“Izabel, wait!” I’m out of the car in seconds and walking around the front and toward her on the other side. “You can’t do that. You have to trust me on this!”