He needed to know the truth about how we had met and the circumstances that’d brought me there in the first place.
“Now I need to go to my study,” Traes said.
“You’re not going to work now?” I said incredulously.
“Of course not,” he said. “I have to tell everyone we found you.”
He disappeared around the corner as he headed directly for his office.
Tell everyone? Everyone who?
An alarm bell rang between my ears.
“Wait,” I said. “Who are you going to tell?”
“It wasn’t only our household out looking for you,” he said. “I told my neighbors and they offered to help. I need to call them and let them know we found you. Then, of course, I have to call the police.”
I came to an abrupt stop at the foot of his office. He rounded his desk and picked up the communicator.
“The police?” My heart was in my throat. “What do the police have to do about this?”
“They’re out looking for the kidnapper,” he said. “We can’t let them waste their time if we’ve already found you.” He spoke into the communicator. “Computer. Call Quill.”
I didn’t care if he called his neighbors. It was good of them to try and look for us. But the police… It made me sweat to think about the awkward questions they might ask.
I crossed the distance between us.
“Don’t call them,” I said.
“I have to,” he said.
“Yes, but not right now.”
He looked at me and sensed something was up, that something else was happening.
I took a seat on the chair across from him.
“I think you should sit down,” I said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
Telling him the truth was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I licked my lips and my hands wrestled in my lap.
“I’m not sure where I should start,” I said.
“Start where all stories begin,” he said. “At the beginning.”
Yes, but which beginning?
“I guess the first beginning of the whole story was back on Earth,” I said. “I can’t tell you exactly when it happened because I honestly don’t know. Me and my friends were enjoying a party weekend. Hazel was getting married and we wanted to send her off in style. We were on our way home when this white light in the sky chased after us. It sucked us out of our minivan and the next thing I knew, I woke up in a shack in the middle of nowhere on Rang.
“My master chained me to the wall and made me cook and clean for him. He used to beat me for stupid things. Missing a dirty spot on the floor that he just made, or burning his meal when I used ingredients I’d never even heard of before. Then one day, he made a pass at me. He tried to grab me, to… take advantage. I got angry and hit him over the head. I managed to knock him out and chain him to the wall.
“I escaped and took what little money he had as payment for the work I’d done. I used it to buy a ticket. I wanted to head home, back to Earth, but it was too expensive. I didn’t have enough money, so I could only reach about halfway. That’s how I ended up here. I looked for a job and met with you. And, well, I guess you know the rest.”
Traes just sat there. He didn’t say a word. It was hard to read his expression. I forced myself to look away and focus on telling him the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
So help me, God.
“That’s why I wanted a hundred credits a week in payment,” I said. “So I could earn the thousand I needed to return home. But things can never be that simple, can they?”
I took a deep breath. Now was the hard part.
“The other day, when we were in town, that stranger that tried to kidnap us? He was the same man who kidnapped us last night. I guess you figured that out already. But there’s something you might not know yet…”
Here it came. The big reveal. I raised my eyes and focused on his expression.
“He’s the same guy who chained me to his wall,” I said. “He promised me he would find me one day. I guess he finally succeeded.”
I sipped from a glass of water on the desk and wiped my mouth. My foot tapped nervously on the floor and I could barely sit still.
Traes remained silent throughout my entire story. The blood drained from his face and he turned pale. He got up from his chair and moved toward the fireplace at the back. He braced himself on the mantelpiece.
“You’ve lied to me this entire time?” he said.
I took another sip of water. I might as well have not drunk it. My throat was still drier than the Gobi Desert.
“I thought I had to,” I said. “I thought you would disown me if I told you the truth.”
“It’s because of you this stranger came into our lives? Because of you, he kidnapped Cleb?”
He put it boldly, so bluntly, it was difficult to refute. But I didn’t want to refute it, I reminded myself. I wanted to tell the truth.
“Yes,” I said.
He turned on me, quick as a snapping viper.
“How could you do that to him?” he said. “How could you come into his life knowing you would leave him in ten weeks? Knowing this dangerous man was out there searching for you and not tell me?”
“I didn’t think he would find me,” I said. “You have to believe me. I thought it was an empty threat, that he wouldn’t show up.”
“And when he did turn up in town, why didn’t you or Cleb tell me you knew this stranger?”
“Because…”
This really was something I wasn’t looking forward to telling him. I
