chapter 4

She froze for a second and blurted, "What do you mean?"

I yanked the blanket over and lay down, pretending to sleep. I felt her presence linger for a long while, until she was satisfied I had slipped back into sleep. Only then did she left.

In the swallowing dark, my eyes opened. I checked with thief's silence. My belongings—shifted. My phone—ghosted with unfamiliar fingerprints.

Lois, of course. She saw me as a simple housewife. She hadn't even bothered to hide her tracks. The cat was about out of the bag.

A whisper of movement in the corridor. I became a shadow at the door, my ear to the cold wood.

The footsteps passed. Stopped, definitively, outside her room.

A few days later, Juan suddenly announced that he needed to leave the hospital one evening.

"Lois, something urgent at the office. I have to go."

A spark of delight flashed in her eyes—there and gone—smothered by a performance of concern.

"Don't worry about me. I can take care of myself. Go ahead."

"Wait for me. I'll be back soon."

He kissed her forehead, and left like a man tearing himself away.

He didn't know. Not long after his shadow faded, another slipped into her room.

A tall, lean man. Practiced silence. When he removed his cap, the dim light fell on a face that should have been rotting in a coffin.

Mark Kelly. Lois's long-dead husband.

They crashed together, a frantic tangle. She beat her fists lightly against his chest, a parody of anger.

"You bad! Where have you been? I've missed you so much."

"That fucking Juan is always around you. I couldn't get a chance."

The man lowered his voice deliberately, as if terrified someone might hear him here.

"The net is tightening. It's not safe to move."

Lois rested her head against his shoulder, but the words drained her. The light in her eyes dimmed into weary frustration.

"How much longer do I have to keep up this act? I'm sick of this place. I got Juan to divorce her, but he's careful. I can't pry anything useful from him."

"What about the wife? A way in?"

"I went through her things. She's clean. Just a… simple housewife." A calculated pause, then her trump card, voice dropping to a conspiratorial gleam. "And now I'm carrying your child. That fool thinks it's his. It's almost too easy."

She looked up, pleading. "Mark, take me with you. They're nobody. There's nothing here. I can't stand another day of this performance."

She had thought Juan would be the key. But he was a locked box with nothing inside. These weeks had been a waste.

"Mark, let's leave the country," she urged. "Once we're out, they can't touch us. You'd be free."

Mark nodded slowly. The plan had taken root.

But she was heavy with his child now. A liability. Not built for the brutal, rootless life he was living.