Page 39 of The Rook’s Obsession

Her purchase made, we head out to the car, where she slams the door harder than necessary before staring straight ahead, both hands wrapped around the bottle like it holds the answers she needs.

By the time we pull back onto the highway, still headed south, the tracker is spinning in a sewage pipe somewhere beneath a rest stop in the middle of nowhere. For the first time since Prague, nobody on earth knows where we are.

It should feel like freedom.

Something tells me, from the passenger seat, all of this looks a lot more like just another betrayal.

IVY

Maybe I need to slow down with the drinking.

Maybe I need to drink more so the know-it-all voice in my head will finally shut up and stop telling me what to do.

I uncap the bottle—really, why do I bother putting the cap back on in the first place?—and raise it to my lips to take a sip. The whiskey burns on the way down. I welcome it like an old friend.

The Jack Daniel’s is doing what Jack Daniel’s does. Smoothing the edges of my rage. Blunting the sharp corners of every thought in my head until the situation is almost tolerable.

Almost.

Because underneath the warmth spreading through my chest is something much hotter. Burning, searing, corrosive.

And the liquor isn’t drowning it. It’s feeding it.

Twelve years. That thing was inside me for twelve years, and I didn’t have the first clue.

I take another drink while the thought sits in my head along with so many others. Buried under my skin. Nestled against my shoulder blade. Transmitting my location to a man who looked me in the eye and told me I was free.

Free. What a joke. I was never free for a single day. Every city I traveled to, every time I thought I was making my own choice about where to go and how to get there, he knew. He was watching. Tracking me like a dog with a chip in its neck, except the dog doesn’t have the luxury of understanding, either way. That chip is for its own good.

Maybe Vincenzo told himself the same thing was true of me. Though really, it doesn’t make me feel much better. Knowing he thought of me as a dog. The cruelest part? The illusion. He didn’t lock me in a room or chain me to a bed, the way Nick did. No, he was smarter than that. He gave me the appearance of autonomy. My own apartment, my own routines. My own missions planned with what I believed was my own strategy. He let me think I was choosing. That I was in control.

The whole time, he was looking over my shoulder. I just never saw him.

Another drink. The bottle is more than a quarter gone now, which is only the result of what’s left of my good sense making one last desperate plea at being heard. Otherwise, I would be much deeper into it than I am now. My head is starting to feel loose and floaty. Nick keeps glancing at me from the driver’s seat. I can see him calculating—how much I’ve had, how much more before it becomes a problem, whether or not he should say something.

He doesn’t, because he’s a smart man. Anything he says right now will come back at him with teeth.

Staring at the road, I’m almost consumed by memories of all the times I felt proud of myself. The jobs I completed without supervision. The cities I navigated alone. The moments I thought, I built this. This life is mine. My apartment in Prague. The safe houses across Europe. The languages I learned, the skills I honed. The reputation I earned.

None of it was earned. It was allowed. Now I understand the difference, and the difference is eating me alive.

Vincenzo allowed me to have an apartment. He allowed me to travel. He allowed me to feel independent because it made me a better tool. A weapon that believes it’s free is more dangerous than one that knows it’s caged. I was more effective and loyal because I believed I was choosing loyalty instead of having it forced down my throat.

He was the engineer behind everything. Right down to the tracker in my back.

Another drink, and it hits my stomach like a lit match. The eggs and grits from the diner aren’t enough to soak up the damage I’m doing, not by a long shot, if the warmth in my cheeks is any indication.

“You should eat something else,” Nick suggests. It’s the first thing he’s said in over an hour.

“I’m fine.”

“You never finished your food at the diner.”

“I said I’m fine.” I take another gulp to make the point, and the look he gives me is somewhere between concern and resignation. He knows better than to push it.

Another hour passes before he pulls off at a hotel. Another mid-range chain, like the one before. Another lot where he parks behind the building, away from the main road. Another room paid for in cash under a name that doesn’t exist. This routine is becoming familiar in a way that should bother me, but doesn’t, since I’m used to routines. My old life had them, too. Different cities, same patterns. At least this time, I know I’m not being watched.

Unless I am, and I just haven’t found that tracker yet.