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What do you like doing? she asks, pathetically eager.

I like spending a lot of time alone , I type. It gives me space to think.

It’s not a lie.

I’ve had a lot of space to think since I came here.

And the conclusion I’ve come to is that it was sheer fucking bad luck that I wound up being captured.

The Banderos, from what Turbo let slip during our week together, recognized me in the Leetham pub from an old contract in circulation that had my photo on it.

The contract specified capture, not kill.

My guess is that it was Rodrigo Cardenas who put out that contract years ago, along with my picture.

It’s the kind of brash, boastful move Rodrigo would make.

He was always trying to appear more important than he really is, to live up to the legend of his father.

But I would also guess that Jacey knew about that contract. That he never stopped watching it, and that he knew the moment I was captured.

Rodrigo is probably bewildered somewhere in Colombia, furious because I disappeared after he went to the trouble of finding me.

Meanwhile, I’m just rotting away in the jungle, waiting to discover my fate.

Correction: I know my fate.

I know I will die here .

I just don’t know how or when.

I don’t matter to Jacey. I’m just a loose end. Someone who saw what they should never have seen. He’ll simply squeeze whatever value he can from me, for as long as I have anything of value to offer.

Then it will be a shallow grave in the jungle beyond the compound, and Abby Chalmers will fade from the world forever.

I could pretend there’s a way out of this. But I’m not an idiot.

I know there’s no way out.

“Abby?”

I’m almost grateful to have my morbid line of thinking interrupted by Yrsa, a Danish girl who survived the shipping container from Australia with me.

“Can you do a live call for me with one of my marks?” she asks. “He thinks I’m Australian, and my accent is too thick.”

“Sure.” I stand, following her through the vast office to one of the private rooms they use for video calls.

Each room has pull-down green screens we can project any background onto.

Today Yrsa has chosen a Brisbane suburban apartment as her background.

It’s cheerful and sunny, looking out over a peaceful blue sea.

In reality, the windowless room stinks like old sweat and is hot as Hades thanks to the glaring studio lights set up to make it look natural.

“Ten minutes.” The supervisor glares at us suspiciously. “We will listen.”

I smile sweetly. “Of course.”

Like that’s news, asshole.

They listen to everything. Watch everything. Even when we shower. For all I know, they monetize that footage, too.

Everything inside SK is for sale. It’s like some great human supermarket .

At least so far they’re only selling my soul, instead of my body. Or the organs inside my body.

They do that here, too.

“The client’s name is Paul.” Yrsa hands me the file, and I read it quickly, absorbing the basic facts and the specifics of their recent online chats. All it takes is one mistake, and Paul will be gone, which means that Yrsa will have to run the dreaded Loop.

Yrsa had been backpacking around Australia for over a year when she answered an ad for remote work on an outback farm.

She’s estranged from her family and split from the boyfriend she came to Australia with, no doubt the reason the traffickers targeted her.

She thinks it will be a long time before anyone might start looking for her.

They’ll never find her, of course. These people don’t leave tracks.

Yrsa is model beautiful, with a sheet of white-blonde hair and a body made for the catwalk, so she does a lot of live calls, which we make whenever a client gets suspicious because they haven’t spoken to their online date in person. She also speaks six languages, which makes her even more valuable.

I make the call, trying desperately not to think about the shy man on the other end of the line who is just desperate for company.

I work through the day. Scam after scam, chat after chat. I’m working three different clients at once, two men and one woman. All in the same time zone, so I can work them on the same shift. Three screens, three open chats that I feed all day.

We work a twelve-hour shift, with quick breaks for food and the bathroom. If we make target, we are allowed to take physical exercise outside for half an hour. If we haven’t, we run the Loop.

By the time I make it back to my bunk beneath Lucky’s, I’m shattered from the long hours of lies and emotional manipulation.

I share a bunk space with Lucky, Yrsa, and Mary, a Filipino girl who was recruited by a so-called friend, who traded her own freedom for Mary’s capture.

It’s one of the only ways people can escape from here—offering to recruit others to take their place.

Our bunk space is one of the better ones in the huge dormitory.

It’s at the opposite end to the bathroom, in a dark corner.

Lucky organized it for us. She’s a computer programmer, so she gets certain privileges.

Lucky doesn’t work the scams—she writes the code that sets up fake replicas of popular online payment websites.

I lie on my side, my heartbeat tired and thready, wondering how long I will survive this weird, dystopian place.

I’m not Lucky. I can’t write code. And I’m not dead inside, like many of the poor fuckers who have been here too long.

You’ve survived worse, Abby. Remember El Buen Pastor.

It’s true. I have survived worse. And there was nobody coming to look for me then either.

I’ve considered all the possibilities, of course. Gone through the false hope.

My parents?

Unlikely. The way I disappeared is too similar to the way I left the first time. I doubt they’ll even find the car I was in. Something tells me the Banderos were smart about getting rid of it.

Darya?

She has a newborn baby. And I told her I needed space. I told her I wasn’t sure I’d ever come back at all.

Darya knows what it is to run. She’ll miss me, and thinking of how hurt she must be by my silence twists my insides into such knots it physically makes me sick, so I try not to.

But she will understand, even if it makes her sad. She’ll think I’ve cut ties to keep her safe, as well as myself.

Which leaves Dimitry.

My body hunches in on itself, sadness clawing at my gut .

There’s nothing worse than the pain of regret.

I thought I’d learned that, during the years I was in El Buen Pastor and in the time I was estranged from my parents.

But I had no fucking idea. No idea at all.

If I think of how close I was to calling Dimitry the day I was kidnapped, it will drive me mad.

Instead, I close my eyes, forcing myself into the half-waking, half-sleeping place that has become my only refuge. My memories of Dimitry are like titles on a streaming platform that I mentally scroll through before sleep every night, choosing which to indulge in.

Our last night in Madrid?

No. Too painful.

Darya and Roman’s wedding, when I was a bridesmaid and he a groomsman?

No. I can’t think of Darya, or I will just cry.

Back to the start, then?

But I’ve gone back to the beginning too many times. The beginning was easy. Or rather, it was just so gloriously bright that it’s easy to forget the moments of darkness that lay between us even then.

Now, after all that has happened, recalling the joy without acknowledging the shadows feels dishonest. Incomplete. It’s like when somebody dies and the bad memories fade, leaving only rose-hued nostalgia.

I’m not ready for Dimitry and me to be a dead thing.

Whether I want to remember them or not, the dark times are the primary reason I came back to Australia in the first place. And if I ever manage to find a way out of this mess, those dark places will still exist between him and me. They’ll still destroy us, if they haven’t already.

The truth is that the darkness came for us right from the beginning. It came in the middle of those heady first weeks, somewhere between the first night we slept together and before I began working at Pillars full-time.

And it was all my fault.

I turn on my side, my entire body aching, and let the memories come.

Malaga, Spain

Two years ago

“Tell me about these.” I’m naked, sprawled across the wall of Dimitry’s chest, tracing the puckered scars that cover his torso, many of which have been disguised by ink. “I want to know how you got them.”

“Not important.” His hand closes over mine, and he brings my fingers to his lips, teasing them with his tongue until I’m squirming. “I’d far rather do this again.”

I giggle, which turns into a moan as his mouth shifts to my nipple. “You always want to do this again.”

It’s late in siesta, and soft golden light filters through the filmy curtains, turning the chipped tiles and wrought iron bed to a scene from an old sepia movie.

My hand roams over his shoulder, pausing as I find another of the smooth round circles of scar tissue.

“I mean it, Dimitry,” I say softly. “How did you get these?”

He stills. “Come on, Abby.” He avoids my eyes, brushing his lips over my breast. “Scar stories are boring.” One large hand spans my waist, his thumb stroking my belly in the slow, deliberate way that always makes me shiver.

He’s trying to distract me.

I’ve asked him about the marks on his body more than once. He always avoids the question, just as he does any about his childhood, or about what exactly he does for Roman Stevanovsky.

I understand the childhood thing. It’s clear he’s been through it, and I get he doesn’t want to dwell on the memories.

And when it comes to Roman, part of me wants to play along. After all, do I really need him to spell it out for me? It’s blatantly obvious that Roman runs an immense criminal empire and that Dimitry is neck-deep in every aspect of it.