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  It was strange, thinking of him as someone with parents, a family, maybe brothers and sisters. He’d seemed almost like an alien from another planet until now. I couldn’t imagine him sitting around with friends at a café, for example. I couldn’t imagine him as a kid. He was too somber, if that was the right word.

  “Why me?” I asked. “Why did you choose me?”

  “You were alone. You looked healthy. We’d heard you say you were from the United States.”

  “Heard me? When?”

  “At the bus stop.”

  “You were there!?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t see you.”

  “I know.”

  “Were you specifically looking for a woman?”

  “Yes. I thought a woman might arouse more concern, and also wouldn’t force us to be too aggressive. A man would think it his duty to resist continually.”

  “That’s so sexist. You think all women are submissive?”

  “Not at all. Women are resilient, with many resources men often lack. Women don’t seem as interested in physical violence, however.”

  I pulled my floppy black hat down over my eyes and leaned my head back on the wall. “You obviously haven’t met my biology teacher. All she does in her spare time is watch kung fu movies.”

  “I suppose we were fortunate to abduct you and not your biology teacher.”

  “I guess you had a good laugh when I said I was diabetic.”

  “People will say whatever they can to get out of a situation like that. I’d have been surprised if you hadn’t said something along those lines.”

  “What if I’d lost it? I mean—I was pretty close to the edge. You can’t imagine what it’s like to be so scared.”

  He looked away from me and shifted in his chair. I felt that he was on the verge of saying, I don’t need to imagine it.

  “Aren’t you afraid that when you release me I’ll describe this place?” I asked.

  “You won’t be able to direct anyone to me, or to this place,” he said.

  “Were you nervous, when you took me?”

  “I have good control.”

  I laughed. “Yes, I can see that! You never smile, you never show any feeling at all. It’s weird. Your eyes are expressive, but not the rest of your face. Your eyes and your body.”

  I felt antsy; I wanted to move around, take a walk—even if only to the forest and back. I got up from my chair, did a few stretches, touched my toes. Then I did a cartwheel, before he had a chance to stop me. My hat fell off, but I quickly replaced it.

  “I’d prefer it if you sat quietly,” he said.

  “Sorry,” I said. I didn’t want him to change his mind about letting me go out. “You don’t know how lucky you are that you didn’t end up with Angie! It would serve you right if you’d captured Angie instead of me. You would have had your hands full.”

  “I’m sure I would have managed.”

  “You don’t know Angie. For one thing, she’s phobic about cockroaches—or any insect, for that matter. She would have been in a state of permanent hysteria—you’d have had to find a whole different location for her. And even if you gave her all the art supplies in the world, she’d never stop crying and moaning. You would have regretted the day you ever came up with this crazy idea.”

  I almost managed to get a smile out of him. I realized how triumphant that would have made me—as if I’d won some sort of victory. His detachment gave him power over me.

  But he only tilted his head. His eyes were amused, and even his hands seemed amused, but he stopped short of actually smiling.

  “I’m thinking of letting my hair grow. Do you think long hair would suit me?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “You actually have an opinion about my appearance!” I shrieked. “I’m not just a hostage to you!”

  “Please keep your voice down. You were never just a hostage,” he said.

  “The minute you take someone hostage, they become just a hostage. You can be in denial about that, if you want.”

  My hostage-taker shut his eyes and leaned his head on the wall. He seemed to be half asleep.

  I didn’t mind; it was enough to be out in the sun together. “I love you, I love you,” I whispered under my hat, but I couldn’t tell whether he’d heard.

  Angie Shaw’s first day of school was a nightmare. I kept crying all the time, police had to be called in to keep away media, but kids kept taking pics and recording everything, probably to sell to the press. Where is the no-gadget policy when you need it? People were so insensitive, as if it’s all a joke and not real and just some fake story. As if Chloe’s on vacation somewhere instead of God knows where and God knows with what sort of people. Lots of horrible jokes too. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it. Don’t want to go back to school tomorrow. And then being there without Chloe for the first time ever, so depressing. Help!!!

  15 minutes ago Comment Like Wall-to-wall

  Belinda Lyons yeah I couldn’t believe it either. I think there’s going to be an assembly about it tomorrow, that’s the rumor. Hopefully that’ll help. Hard to believe how nasty some kids are. People have already posted their videos all over the place. Interviews with teachers, everything.

  13 minutes ago Comment Like Wall-to-wall

  Angie Shaw Thanks Belinda, but I realized I don’t care about myself. Yeah my day sucked, but I don’t care as long as Chloe comes back. What’s a few comments compared to what she’s going through. I keep thinking of all the hostages who’ve been executed, it’s so horrible. I wonder if Patty Hearst can come and talk to our school. She’s been so supportive. One thing I know about Chloe, she won’t get brainwashed. I just really miss her. I feel her not being there so much more now that school’s started. Don’t know what I’d do without all of you guys. The worst thing is how guilty I feel when I have ice cream or pizza or take a long bath … enjoying stuff while Chloe suffers. I like what Chloe’s mom said—Two people suffering instead of one doesn’t improve the world. And it’s looking good, the legal team is doing a fantastic job!

  7 minutes ago Comment Like Wall-to-wall

  CHAPTER 17

  No plan is foolproof. Not in films, and not in real life. I was sitting on my bed with the Italian textbook when I heard voices outside the warehouse.

  I thought at first that I was imagining things. But then the sounds grew louder: laughter, talking, whispering. Though I didn’t know what language was being spoken, I was sure the excited, high-pitched voices came from kids—mostly boys, as far as I could tell, about ten or eleven years old.

  I was relieved that they were only kids, but I still had to be careful not to let them know I was there. I read quietly on my bed, enjoying the chatter and laughter, until all at once the sounds stopped. They’d gone.

  It was only by luck that I hadn’t had my music on. But even if they’d heard it, they wouldn’t have known who was inside the warehouse.

  It was nearly dark when my hostage-taker arrived. He said as soon as he entered, “There was someone here. I found cigarette butts and an empty can outside.”

  “Yes, some kids. At least, they sounded like kids. Don’t worry, I was careful. Lucky the music wasn’t on.”

  He froze when I said that. He didn’t move at all. He just stood there and stared at me.

  “I told you I don’t want you to get caught,” I said. “I don’t want you to be killed, obviously, or even to go to jail.”

  He went on staring at me.

  “Don’t stare at me like that,” I said. “It’s creeping me out.”

  “You didn’t call for help?” he asked finally.

  “No, of course not.”

  “Why?”

  “I love you. And I don’t think you deserve to go to prison. You’ve broken the law, of course, and what you’re doing is wrong, but I don’t want you to be found. Let’s say I wanted to marry you one day,” I heard myself saying. “It wouldn’t be any fun if you were serving a life sentence.�
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  He was barely listening. He said, “They must have climbed the fence, looking for a private place to smoke.”

  “They’ll be back, in that case,” I warned him.

  “When were they here?”

  “Around two in the afternoon.”

  He looked at me even more intently. He was deathly pale, and it scared me.

  “You saved my life,” he said evenly. “You had a chance to be free, and you didn’t take it.”

  “If I were free I wouldn’t see you again. That’s too awful to think about.”

  He sat down and tried to regain his equanimity. He was very wound up.

  His nervousness was making me nervous. “I don’t seem to be making much progress in Italian,” I said, trying to change the subject. “I have all this time, and I’m wasting it. I used to hate wasting time, but now I’m starting to see that it has its own appeal.”

  He didn’t hear me. He was too preoccupied.

  “Why don’t you have some tea?” I suggested. “I’ll make it for a change.” I looked inside the bags he’d brought. “Oh, lemon squares! My favorite, how did you know?”

  “I’m sorry, I have to leave.” He got up abruptly, went out, locked the door. I didn’t hear him drive away. Maybe he had an escape route through a tunnel or under the floor of another warehouse, like in war movies. He’d probably considered all eventualities—except the simple one of a group of kids looking for a safe place to smoke.

  I felt more alone than ever, after he’d gone. I couldn’t really blame him for not trusting me—he had no way of knowing what I was thinking and feeling. But it was demoralizing all the same.

  The only way to escape the lonely room was to sleep, but I wasn’t tired. I paced, ate five lemon squares, had another shower, paced some more, tried to read. Finally I drifted off, but it was a light sleep, and I woke up as soon as I heard the key in the door.

  “You’re back! Were you hiding all this time?”

  He looked at me for a few seconds as if I’d changed, as if something was different about me. But what had changed, of course, was him. I could see it in his eyes. He finally trusted me.

  He plugged in the kettle. “I want to thank you,” he said. “You sacrificed your freedom for me.”

  “It wasn’t a sacrifice.”

  He made tea for me and coffee for himself. He was still wound up, but in a different way. His face was less impassive, though probably only I would have noticed it.

  “Your body’s telling me something,” I said.

  “My body?”

  “Yes. You don’t have an expressive face, but you have an expressive body. Sometimes I can read it.”

  “I’m sure it’s your imagination.”

  “Oh, no! Not at all. Your body says everything you don’t say with your face.”

  “What is it saying now?”

  “I’m not sure. No, that’s a lie. I am sure, but I’m not allowed to say. But I’ll say it anyhow because I have nothing to lose. That’s the definition of desperation, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What I’m reading in your body is that you like me.”

  “Yes, I like you very much,” he replied casually, trying to change the meaning of what I’d said. “You’re a beautiful person.”

  I felt a rush of happiness coursing through me when he said that. No compliment had ever meant anything, compared to this.

  Of course he didn’t know about my obsessive side, the side that drove people crazy. But it seemed to me that I was changing.

  “I think my personality is changing a bit,” I told him.

  “Hard experiences always change us, for better or for worse. Sometimes both.”

  “I sometimes felt when I was growing up that I was the parent and Mom was the kid. I don’t mean in a bad way. It’s just that Mom was the one who believed in being spontaneous, taking chances, enjoying life. I was the opposite. I was always checking the time to make sure we weren’t late, I kept a list on the fridge of things we had to buy, and if we were going out I wanted to make sure we knew the way. I don’t think Mom would have let me go into gymnastics if anyone there had turned it into boot camp. But the club I joined was run by the sweetest, funniest coach, Luanne. She wore her hair in a braid that reached down to her waist, and she sang along to country and western music while we trained. But anyhow, finally she retired. We all cried on her last day.

  “It wasn’t the same after that. The coach who took over was nice too, but much more ambitious. Mom said ambition was about something outside of you, something that didn’t even exist. Whatever. The real reason I quit was that I was getting sick of giving up sixteen hours of my life every week. I wanted a normal life.”

  I knew I was rambling. It was excitement. The way he was looking at me made me hyper and also happy, and being happy made me talkative. I wanted to be close to him, I wanted him to know me better, now that he knew I loved him. I went on, “I take more after my father, he was a biologist. He died when he was only thirty-seven—he had a heart defect … So, do you have to contact all your revolutionary friends now and tell them about the close call? Do you guys have a name, by the way? You know, like the Gourmet Liberation Front, or something? Working to release prisoners who’ve been convicted of withholding recipes … Sorry. I don’t mean to make fun of you.”

  “Jokes are allowed by the GLF.”

  “If the police had come, would you have shot at them?”

  “I don’t own a weapon.”

  I laughed. “You’re joking!”

  “No.”

  “You studied martial arts, though,” I said, remembering our fight in the forest. “You really don’t have a gun?” I asked.

  “There wouldn’t be any point. If I’m caught, I’m caught.”

  “You could hold the gun to my head and pretend you’re going to kill me,” I suggested.

  “It’s a good thing we have films to give us valuable information,” he said.

  “So … I could have escaped right there in the limo?”

  “I don’t think so. I would have found a way to hold on to you.”

  “I was sure I’d be killed if I didn’t cooperate.”

  “We were counting on that.”

  “Well, it was worth being terrified out of my skull. It was worth everything, even … It was worth it, to find you. I knew you wouldn’t shoot at the police. Do you think it’s wrong to kill someone for the greater good?” I asked.

  “Is this a test?” Absently, he cut off a piece of lemon square with a fork, but he didn’t eat it.

  “Well, do you?” I insisted.

  “You don’t kill innocent people to help humanity. It’s a contradiction in terms. At least that’s my view.”

  “But what about a dictator, for example?”

  “That would not be an innocent civilian,” he replied.

  “So you might believe in assassinating someone.”

  “If you assassinate one person, someone else will just take over. Even if they’d succeeded in killing Hitler, probably Goebbels would have taken his place, though it would have been worth a try.”

  “What about in a war? I mean, when you bomb a city, you kill innocent people, but sometimes it’s the only way to win a war.”

  “Is it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “It would be good to prevent war in the first place.”

  “Well, no one would argue with that! But it’s unrealistic. There are terrible people in this world. And sometimes they have power.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” he said. “Anyhow, bombing a city is a war crime.”

  “You’re one to talk about crimes! Taking me hostage is a major crime.”

  “Yes, but maybe not as serious as burning infants to death.”

  “You think you know everything.”

  All at once, out of the blue, I wondered whether the sadistic man who had nearly killed me was dead.

  I don’t know what made me think it at that moment—whether it
was his tone of voice or his eyes or his body. Angie believed that images sometimes passed from one person’s brain to another. Or maybe there had been lots of clues that I’d noticed only subconsciously, and that had suddenly come to the surface.

  He seemed to know what I was thinking, but he didn’t ask me what was wrong, even though I was suddenly staring at him.

  “Did you kill him?” I asked. I was afraid of his answer. I had no idea how I’d feel if he said yes. I hated the man who had hurt me, I wanted him dead, but I didn’t want to be in love with someone who was capable of murder.

  There was a long silence. Then he said, “Yes, in a way.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He was an addict. We gave him a huge amount of money and he bought a huge amount of heroin. He died of an overdose.”

  My reaction took me by surprise. I began to cry. “I’m glad,” I said. “I’m glad he’s dead. Of course if you weren’t a criminal yourself, you could have had him arrested.” I began pounding my leg with my fist.

  “Chloe.” I was so startled to hear my name that my arm froze in mid-air. He had never said my name before. “It’s not your responsibility. There’s a long and complicated story behind this, one that started many years ago. Sometimes you try to save people who don’t want to be saved. And you finally realize that they’ll push you and push you until they get what they want.”

  “Is that why you were away for so long that time?”

  “No, that was something else. He was already dead by then.”

  “I feel so weird. As if the world’s tilting a little.”

  “Someone once told me a joke,” he said. “‘I’d like to be a pacifist, but people keep getting in the way.’ I made a decision to fight for my friend in prison. It was a deliberate decision. It isn’t the only way—it’s just something I decided.”

  “But how can you trust your judgment?” I protested. “How can one person decide which laws count and which ones don’t? Laws have to be decided on collectively, by a society.”

  “Sometimes breaking the law is just the best of several bad options. Sometimes a situation is so desperate that you can’t go by the rules.”