She heads towards the stairs. She responds to harshness. She’s probably been conditioned that way. Threats, abuse, humiliation. It gets her moving.

I get moving as well. I stock up all three wood stoves that heat this house and then go into the kitchen and start looking for food. I grab a bag of chips and a soda, ready to head upstairs and see what I can do for her hand, when a thought comes to me.

I might catch more flies with honey.

So I put the bag of chips back and open the fridge to see what I have. Not much. I haven’t had a lot of time to cook the past few weeks. But I have some elk meat thawing. And some potatoes in the cold room that are still good. I stick all that shit in a roasting pan and shove it in the oven.

A hot meal is nice. I could use one. And I’ve been feeding her shit for the past few weeks. It can’t hurt. I make some coffee too, then take a pot and two mugs up the stairs.

She’s sitting on the bed, still looking at that stupid acorn. She still has her winter gear on, and there’s so much sweat running down her face, her hair is all wet.

“Sydney,” I bark. She slowly raises her eyes to meet mine. “Take your fucking—” Honey, Merc. Try honey. I take a deep breath and beg myself to be patient. “Come on,” I say, pulling her to her feet and taking that stupid acorn away. I toss it on the bed and her eyes follow it as it rolls along the white down comforter. “You need to take off your coat and snow pants.”

I unzip her coat and slide it off her. Her shirt is soaked with sweat. She just stands there, so I guide her back until she bumps into the bed and she takes a seat again. I bend down and start unlacing her boots. She kicks them off when they get loose enough.

I wait, but she doesn’t stand. I’m not a patient guy. I mean, I have my moments when it’s necessary, but generally, I don’t like to coddle people. I didn’t coddle Sasha, and she was a good ten years younger than this girl here when we did that big job. I’m really not interested in coddling Sydney.

But honey, Merc.

“Take off your snow pants, Sydney.”

She messes with the button and zipper, then slides them down her legs. Her pants should be dry, but they are soaked with sweat as well. She takes those off too, and then she’s bare from the waist down. She looks up at me and takes off her sweat-soaked shirt. That leaves her naked, since I didn’t give her underwear when I left her clothes at the cabin. I’m regretting that now. She’s a cute girl. And her body…

I take the hand suffering from exposure and it’s still very cold. I touch her cheek with the back of my other hand and it’s warm. She leans into that like she’s starving for a gentle gesture.

It makes me close my eyes for a minute. She’s so needy. It would be easy to just take care of that need.

Instead, I kick off my boots and take my shirt off, then place her hand under my armpit. She tries to pull away but I hold her still and smile. “It’s a nice warm place, Syd. You have to heat up this hand. I’m pretty sure it’s gonna blister no matter what, but it needs to be warmed up.”

“It’s gross,” she says. “I can do it—”

“No,” I tell her back, sitting down on the bed and pulling on her at the same time, so she can’t remove it. “I’ll do it.”

I scoot all the way back on the half-moon-shaped bed, which takes up roughly one half of the circular room, making her crawl along with me. Her tits are nice and firm, and hang down and bounce a little in a very alluring way. I keep pulling her until she’s sitting next to me, her frozen hand slipping out of place. So I put my arm around her and place her hand under my opposite arm, making her hug me a little. She stiffens when I do this and that makes me laugh a little.

“You afraid of intimacy, Sydney? Tough girl like you?”

“You’re tricking me somehow, I can feel it.” But even as she says this, she rests her head on my chest.

“Probably. If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I don’t give anything away for free. So now that I’m taking care of your mistake out there, let’s talk about that deal. I went above and beyond. I didn’t let you freeze, I came out of my nice warm house to save your ass. So the way I see it, you owe me. Start talking. What do you know about Sasha?”

“You kidnapped me.”

“You came to me,” I correct her.

“I left. I wasn’t coming to meet you.”

I let that go for now. Time and place, Merc, is what I say in my head. Time and place.

“You sprayed me with a hose. You—”

I wait for it. The ultimate accusation. But she doesn’t finish. “I what? Raped you?”

She holds her words in.

“I hope you don’t think that. Because you were the one filled with secrets for that little affair.”

“I wasn’t gonna say that.” She takes a deep breath. “I was gonna say, you disappointed me.”

Usually I’d laugh at that. But I’m using honey. So I don’t. I think about it for a moment instead.

“You were supposed to save me, Case. You were supposed to show up that night, kill Garrett and his buddies, and take me out of there. That was the deal.”

“My end of the deal was over the minute I realized your militia friends knew I was coming.”

“I didn’t tell them. I saw you out there and I lied to Garrett about it. I let you get close. If I had told, you’d be dead. I saved you, Case. I saved you when you were supposed to save me.”

I say nothing. If she wants to talk, I’m gonna let her talk.

“And then you left me there. He—”

I wait for her to go on, but she doesn’t. “He what?” I prod.

“Forget it. It’s over. I’m not going back.” She shakes her head to emphasize this. “I’ll leave here, but I’m not going back. I’m not. I’ll kill myself first.”

I look across the room and realize I can see her in the window. It’s still dark outside and will be for hours, so the glass that surrounds this room on all sides is like a mirror. “Were you supposed to go back? After the wedding?”

In her reflection, her eyes dart back and forth, like she’s thinking hard about this question. “I don’t think I was ever getting married that day.”

“What?” I’m officially confused.

“I thought you wanted to know about Sasha?”

Interesting factoid about the marriage. But I need to keep her talking. “I want to know about you first, Syd.” She notices me in the window now too. Stealth trick over. “And what you know about the hush.”

That makes her tremble, and I have a moment of regret for bringing it up. “It does something to me,” she whispers. “Makes me feel things.”

“What things?”

“I dunno. It makes me feel out of control. It’s a trigger, I think.”

“So you know about the brainwashing they did?”

She stares at my reflection in the window. It puts me on edge a little. “I don’t understand that word.”

“Why not?”

“Because Garrett never said it.”

“Then how could it affect you?”

“I said it.”

She removes her hand from my armpit and looks at it for a moment. I take it in my hand and feel it. Much warmer. And the coloration is better too. I press down on her skin and the indent turns white, then a slight pink color returns after a few seconds. “That’s better. But I’ll need to wrap it before the blisters form. I’m one hundred percent sure it will blister. Now how did that word affect you if you never heard it?”

“Why are you being nice all of a sudden?”

I laugh. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, wildcat. This is just a debrief.”

“I hate that name.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s the word that Garrett used. And then I’d say hush in my head to make it stop.”

“Make what stop, Sydney?”

“The urges.”

“So you knew? You were aware of the trigger and that it was implanted in you?”

“I’ve been conditioned since I was three years old, Case. I’m twenty-four. I lied before. I know what you did in the army. Garrett reminded me all the time. You were PSYOPS too. You brainwashed people. You tortured them and got information. You turned them into sleepers by making them dissociate from reality. You caused them to go crazy and then you triggered them and made them do your bidding.”