I wanted to throw up. They wanted me, but they didn’t know what I looked like. I was safe, for now, but that didn’t make me feel any better. I stopped eating as my stomach churned, telling myself that whatever happened, I wasn’t going to vomit. My spiraling didn’t help my case any. Why did they want me? I tried to think back to what I’ve done that might have put me on the radar of…I wasn’t quite sure what to call them. I put my hands between my thighs to keep them from shaking. Whatever happened, I needed to stay calm, I needed to show I had no clue what they had discussed.

Was it because of my father? He had begun to do shady things I never fully understood after he left the military. But as the oldest child, the only son, he slowly let me in on whatever it was. He showed me files with words I didn’t know, the only thing I recognized were the numerals behind the euro sign. I was in awe at the sums of money; with that we could have anything we wanted. It could’ve been a debt, it gnawed at me, the money very well might have been the payments my father needed to make. To whom? To them? Was I the defaulter?

I felt I couldn’t breathe, crushing under the weight of the amount of money. I saw three different files, if my memory served, equaling to fifty-three million euros. I hoped the debt was in euros. I drank my water to get myself to breathe, to keep myself from throwing up. It was starting to make more sense why my father taught me how to be thorough, cover my tracks. The last words I could remember him telling me was to protect my sisters.

It hit me that Mathias might look for my sisters. He knew of my family, or at least my father, well enough to know I had sisters. I hadn’t spoken to any of them in years, them all shunning me after I left. I hoped they stayed in that tiny little town, making families for themselves. I was pulled out of my spiraling by Luis addressing Mathias, “«Don’t hurt him too much. »”

Mathias gave a small chuckle, “«Too late. »” He grabbed my wrist to bring me out of the booth. The two of them said their goodbyes, and I dragged my right foot while holding onto Mathias as we left the restaurant. Outside, I asked him to give me a second as I calmed myself, got my stomach under control. He tugged me along towards the car instead. I took a step to keep up with his tugging, pain shooting through my leg. I stumbled, he caught me before I fell into the pavement. “You gonna be okay?” I shook my head, tears forming from the pain, and all the trouble I went through on calming my stomach failed as I began to dry heave.

We hobbled over to my car parked by a patch of grass. He told me to take deep breaths, holding me upright. His touch was gentle, only using as much force was needed to stop me from falling over. I gulped down as much air as I could, it getting easier as my stomach settled. When he deemed that I wasn’t going to throw up in the car, he had me get in. Strangely, a part of me didn’t want him to let go of me. His touch was different than the day before; he didn’t need to instill fear in an already terrified animal. As long as I didn’t make him mad, he could be kind. It was scary to think about how he could change his demeaner at a drop of a hat.

Looking at the dashboard clock showed we’d been in there for about two hours. It’d be around four by the time we got back to that cabin. He settled himself in the driver seat, opening the file. I couldn’t make out much from my spot in the passenger seat. There was the initial burned photo of my father he set aside; the rest of the file was filled with paper. Some full sheets, others ripped and browned from age. He tapped his finger on a page, as if to make a note of it, closed it, then set it across his lap.

The low volumed alt rock was something of a comfort, something that made the silence much less awkward. But it did nothing to drown out my thoughts. One of the people in their network must have known my mother personally, or someone who had known her. That photo was given to only her close friends, to show off how proud she was of my father for getting his promotion. If they had my name, that photo, they may already have information on my sisters. I prayed that wasn’t the case.

They all had their lives, and while they removed themselves from me, I never completely removed myself from them. From time to time I’d check in on them through our mother. In other cases, through the internet. My second and third sisters found their niches in the public eyes, one as a model, the other on streaming sites. The others had families to raise. None of them knew where I was, what I was doing, what name I decided to take and when. It was better that way.

There would come a time when the way our family would change, my father had told me at fifteen. I’d have to do things that I would feel were morally wrong, but whatever I did, I wasn’t to get caught. I was to keep going, no matter what. And I did, living a sham of a life again and again, my only comfort being Jaime. I loved her too much to name her anything but my love. J’aime, Jaime, «I love you, » I always told her when I came home, and she’d lick at my face. It was hard to think that I’d never see her again.

He pulled into a gas station an hour or two into our drive. He left the file on the driver seat, the doors locked. I watched him secure a black mask over his face, under his sunglasses, walk into the building. I had this one chance to look at the file. To get my questions answered. However, the thought of what he’d do to me if he saw me reading it caused me to pause. I assumed it was all written in French and two scenarios played out in my head: he’d do nothing if my pretending to not know the language was convincing enough, or he’d punish me twice for lying to him and looking at the file. I weighed the outcomes quickly as I saw him through the window.

One chance, that’s all I had. Whatever he’d make me do couldn’t be any worse than the bullet he dug out of my leg. I leaned over and gingerly opened the file. I flipped through the full sheets, stopping at the one I thought he had tapped. I hastily read the paragraph, looking for anything that he might consider important in finding me. My sister’s name popped out at me, and I swallowed. Margot was modeling. Here. In just a few days. I looked through the windshield to see him leave the building. I closed the file, trying to position it just as he had left it.

I could feel my heartbeat, each gush of blood flow into my veins watching him walk to the passenger side. I closed my eyes, breathed evenly to get my heart under control. Cold air flushed my face from him opening the door. “Here,” he said, and I finally opened my eyes. Outstretched in his hand was a bottle of water. I took it with shaking hands. He closed the passenger door, filled the tank, then got back in. He removed his mask, shoving it in his jacket pocket.

He looked over at me, my head down, squeezing the water to keep my hands from trembling. To give me something else to focus on than my deafening heartbeat. “How’s your leg?” I lifted my head, unsure how to answer. To lie that it didn’t really hurt or tell him that every accidental tensing of the muscle made me want to double over in pain. He never let me respond, instead sticking two fingers under the hat to rest them on my forehead. He pulled his fingers away in a way that made me feel like something dirty just happened. “I think you’re starting to get a fever,” he said, pulling away from the pump, back onto the road. As if it was an afterthought he muttered, “Let’s get back before the snow starts…” He turned up the heat on my side of the car.

I rested my head on the cold window, closing my eyes to feel the bumps in the road. He had turned the radio up just a bit, making it easier to hear the music, and to hear the weather announcement that there was supposed to be snow over most of the northeast. Every few songs, I rubbed my forehead where his ungloved fingers had touched me. I could still feel them lingering on my skin. It unnerved me how hot his hands ran.

If I wasn’t sitting with my eyes closed, I sipped at the water, going between watching him drive and watching the towns fade away into forest once more. As he drove closer to the darkening sky, he pushed his sunglasses to his head. The radio was turned off when he turned into a dirt road that looked like nothing more than a wider space between two trees. When I was driving, I never noticed, more worried about the gun he had pushed into my side. In the passenger seat, however, I understood why I never realized we crossed the border. But looking at the trees from the windshield, it wasn’t the same path I had taken.

I let out a chuckle through my nose. Cover your bases. Multiple points of access, off the grid. An old phone, no other electronic I knew of in the cabin. It made sense. He wasn’t to get caught, just as I wasn’t to. I finished the last of the water when the first flake hit the windshield. I heard him whisper a random word as a curse. He sped up and I worried for the sake of my transmission and my tires over frozen dirt.

The snow started out slow, a flake or two here and there, and his expression seemed to soften just a bit at the sluggishness of the storm. But he didn’t decrease his speed; the storm only getting faster. He only relaxed all the way when he pulled off the dirt into gravel. We were getting closer now that everything was started to look familiar. But the snow sticking to the pine trees made it feel like it was my first time on this road. It was peaceful, or could be, if I didn’t know that my life was in his hands.

He pulled into the driveway of the cabin, getting out of the car, and locking me in it while he walked off behind the house. I told myself he wasn’t leaving me to freeze in my own car, but as time ticked on, snow sticking to the ground, I really started to think he was. Panic set in; I rattled the handle in hopes of getting the door to open. I tried undoing the door lock, only for that to fail me with realization that the child locks were on. I couldn’t reach the unlock just from leaning over the center console. It hurt my leg too much to climb over the center console. I was stuck.

Mathias was my savior, my heartbeat becoming irregular for just a second. He shook the snow gathering in his hair off. He clicked the keys as he came closer, the locks unlocking and freeing me. I threw the door open, the snowy smelling, freezing air hitting me in the face. I struggled to get out of the car, holding onto the top of the door to keep me steady. I was barely on my feet by the time he swooped in and picked me up, his newlywed bride.

It was utterly embarrassing for him to carry me into the cabin. To set me back on my feet and take my coat, hat, gloves off. He tapped the snow off his shoes on the entryway mat, then whisked me to the couch to take my clunky boots off. I couldn’t look at him as he laid me down, inspected my bullet wound. Instead, I stared at the ceiling, feeling him unwrap the bandages, poke, and prod at the skin around the sutures. I heard him walk off, then come back, slather something around the stitches, wrap it up again. He put a thermometer in my mouth while he worked on the cut on my temple.

He removed the thermometer from my mouth, looking at it intently. “You’re getting soup.” I pressed my palms into my eyes at his words. I wanted to cry. I wanted to smoke. I wanted to hug my dog. I wanted to do anything else than eat the soup he would make me.