1

Two glasses of water.

One meal.

Four white-washed walls.

No windows.

One seamless door with a tray slot.

One blinking red light in the corner. Definitely a camera.

One table.

Two hardback chairs.

Three bathroom breaks.

Seven hours.

I'd slept away some of those hours. Woken with a crick in my neck, slumped over in the chair with my cheek plastered to the table, eyelashes damp with the tears that had escaped my subconscious like little thieves in the night.

I wasn't in rehab.

Yet.

This wasn't the Center for Reform and Rehabilitation.

I was still at the Guard station by the wall checkpoint. After I'd been discovered and hauled off the back of Roman's truck, the guards had marched me straight into this cell and I hadn't been moved.

Discovered. That wasn't the right word. I hadn't been discovered. I'd been turned in by Roman. Betrayed by the man I'd trusted with my life.

The scene played over and over inside my head like a haunted movie clip with a will of its own.

Roman cutting the engine at the Guard checkpoint just inside the wall. He hadn't done that on the way out, he'd just let the engine idle for a couple of seconds before driving on.

Silence. The guard hadn't asked him to stop. Hadn't demanded he step out of the vehicle. That's not how it had happened.

"Who's the officer on duty?"

"Sergeant Mackintosh."

"I need to see him."

And I'd thought, Seriously, Roman? Your business couldn't have waited? Of course it couldn't have waited. Not when that business was turning me in, handing me over to the Guard.

There was no room inside me for doubt.

No margin for me to grasp for with desperate, hopeful fingertips.

Roman had stood there, side by side with the decorated officer, watched without guilt or regret or shame, as I'd been marched right passed him and into this cell.

My world had shattered and, hours later, it still felt like that, all splintered edges and rapier points and jagged holes and the movie clip played on and over and over and on and over.