Under the blanket, I reach my hand overhead to the door and find the lock. I try, slowly, to slide it back, my heart beating against my ribs, wondering if it will be this simple, if I’ll be able to open the door and drop to the road and run. Nothing happens, the lock won’t move, it’s on a childproof setting. I pull my knees into my chest, close my eyes and try to follow the turns. We’re still traveling south. After a few more turns, I lose track of our direction. It feels like we’re driving into a tunnel, farther and farther down, with the quiet and the pressure, but when I open my eyes, a few inches from my face, the wool fibers of the blanket are burning with sun.
I remember Finn last week, turning his hand in a beam of sunlight filled with dust motes, watching them slowly revolve.
I can see him very clearly, and calm comes over me. I know that I’m going to keep myself alive until the security service or the police find me. I’m going to talk my way out of this. Last week, Finn moved his hand, so the dust motes orbited away, and looked at me, his own hair bright. I’m going to come home for him.
One of the men clears his throat. “You can sit up,” he says.
We’re racing down a road between wide farm tracts. They must not be worried about traffic cameras out here. Through the back windscreen, I can see the Mournes. They take up most of the sky behind us. We’re somewhere in Armagh, then, southwest of Greyabbey.
“What’re your names?” I ask. Neither of them answers. “My name’s Tessa.” Past the window, frozen wheat bristles through the snow. “Thank you for not hurting my son. Do you have children?”
The passenger shifts in his seat. They’re listening, at least. “Do your children love their mam? That’s how it is in the beginning, right? In a few years I’ll probably have to tackle him for a hug.”
The driver’s eyes lift to meet mine in the mirror. “Why is this happening?” I ask.
Neither of them speaks. They don’t tell me not to worry, that everything will be fine, which is good. That would scare me more, if they were comfortable lying to me. They’re not sociopaths. Because of them, Finn will be with Fenton now, in a police convoy, being driven someplace safe.
“Has someone told you to kill me?” I ask.
The driver clears his throat. “No.”
I look out the window, and the silence thickens in the car, growing uncomfortable. I force myself to wait, and finally the passenger says, “We’re bringing you to an interview.”
“Will you be the ones interviewing me?”
“No.”
“Who will?” I ask, and the passenger taps his fingers on the door. “Can I trust them?”
The farms are smaller now, broken by dense stands of trees. We’re farther in the countryside. A track appears ahead, and the driver downshifts. He follows the track through the woods until it ends at a farmhouse in a clearing. A river runs behind the house.
When the car door opens, there’s this smell in the air, of snow and pines, and I can’t get enough of it, I can’t breathe it in fast enough. We walk across the clearing toward the farmhouse, the men on either side of me. I’m not shaking, it’s more continuous than that, like water shimmering. I try to force one of them to look me in the eye. They haven’t cuffed my hands, which is interesting. They aren’t expecting me to fight.
The farmhouse has stone walls and a split red door. Something about it feels familiar, like I’ve been here before. Inside, a few waxed jackets hang from hooks by the door. They lead me across the house to an ordinary, old-fashioned kitchen, with a hanging basket of wrinkled apples, and a tea tin, and a row of chipped yellow mugs. The driver fills a glass with water from the tap for me.
“Thank you.” I look him full in the face, and realize that I recognize him. He’s a bouncer at Sweet Afton, in the Linen Quarter, where our office sometimes goes for drinks after work. I can’t decide whether to mention that. It might help for him to remember me in a different scenario, or it might make him feel cornered.
“Why did you join?” I ask.
“Freedom,” he says.
I nod. He’s younger than me. His eyes are hazel, with long lashes. “Not for this, though,” I say. “You didn’t sign up for this.”
Before he can answer, the other man appears in the doorway. He’s older, and has one deep groove across his forehead, like it’s been scored in half. “Come on,” he says. I look at the bouncer, but he’s turning away from me, placing my empty water glass in the sink.