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we can find a better way. You don’t have to put yourself at risk. We can get the job done and still be free to walk away.”
    She tilts her chin to one side as her eyebrows pinch closer together. “What do you want?”
    “The same thing you want,” I say, then add in a whisper, “And I want to make sure you don’t get killed or sent to prison for the rest of your life doing it. I swear I’m not here to make any demands. I just want to help.”
    Her frown deepens as she casts a glance over her shoulder at the clerk, whose calculator is still clicking and whirring, before turning back to me. “We can’t talk about this here. I was heading out of town for the day. You can come if you want.”
    I nod and my shoulders relax a little for the first time since she pulled the curtain last night. “All right.”
    “But I’m not making any promises,” she warns, hitching her backpack higher on her shoulder. “And after we’ve talked, if I ask you to leave again, I need you to listen and do as I ask.”
    I hesitate, but finally nod again.
    I’m not leaving until I know she’s safe, no matter what she says, but there’s no sense in having that fight right now. I learned to choose my battles when we were a couple and I sense that’s an even more important skill now that we’re…whatever we are now.
    Nothing. You’re nothing to her. She doesn’t care if you live or die.
    Ignoring the ugly voice in my head, I follow Sam outside into the bright morning light, where the air is already beginning to steam and the sidewalk to sizzle. Sam may not be capable of caring about me anymore, but that’s not her fault. It’s their fault, and maybe once they’re gone, things will be different.
    Or not. It really doesn’t matter.
    All that matters is making sure justice is served.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Sam
    “Know thyself? If I knew myself, I’d run away.”
    -Goethe
    We don’t speak much on the drive out to the abandoned airstrip.
    Danny stares out the window as city buildings give way to scrubby grassland on the way to the lush jungle not far from town. I concentrate on following the directions I wrote down last night and ignoring the Danny smell that fills the car, making every breath an exercise in forgetting.
    Forgetting how that smell was once the best, the safest, the sexiest smell.
    Forgetting what it felt like to wake up and have his spice and sea-salt scent be the first thing to fill my nose. Forgetting how I loved to burrow closer to his bare skin, press my cheek to his lightly furred chest, and relish the first few sleepy moments of the day with the man I loved.
    For the first time in months, I feel the ghost of the old me shift beneath my skin, whisper through my blood.
    By the time we reach the turn off to where I’ve planned to start my target practice, my body feels like a limb that’s been asleep too long, fighting its way back to life. The humming of long-dormant sensations prickling across my skin is as unwanted as it is painful and makes me resent Danny’s presence more than I did when we got in the car an hour ago.
    I don’t want to wake up. I don’t want to come back to life.
    I need to stay dead, cold, numb. I need to stay focused and having Danny around is going to make that impossible.
    It doesn’t matter if he approves of my plan or how much he wants to help. I need him to go. I should never have invited him to come with me today. I should have shown him the door and said whatever it took to make him leave me alone.
    At the end of the dusty road leading to the old airstrip, I pull in behind a few low trees near the chain link fence and shove the car into park with a rough jerk of my arm. My jaw is clenched so tight my teeth are grinding together and I suddenly want to punch something, the way I did in the early days, right after the trial ended.
    Back then, I was so full of anger I would spend hours at my punching bag, beating the shit out of the foam filled leather until I was covered with sweat and