I sit up straight so I can look him in the eye—the man I’ve respected my whole life. The man whose footsteps I’ve wanted to follow in since I was a little girl. The man who taught me love and justice and honesty. My stomach twists, and I realize something terrible is about to happen. “Oh, no. Dad, pull over.”

“What is it?”

“Dad just pull over the damn car!”

He swings the station wagon over to the side of the road, just in time for me to push open the door and part company with the contents of my stomach. I throw up so hard my eyes cloud over with tears. Dad places his hand in the center of my back and rubs up and down, just like he did when I was sick as a kid. The action doesn’t make me feel any better. It makes me feel even worse.

I hear a car pull up behind us and the crunch of footsteps on the gravel at the side of the road, then a deep voice saying, “We can’t stay here. She can throw up back at the field office.”

I don’t know the man that voice belongs to, but I already hate him. I swat the tears from my eyes and look up into the face of the tallest guy I’ve ever seen. His generic SUV is parked right behind us, the passenger door still yawning open. Lowell’s at the wheel, staring at me with an impassive, unaffected look. The same one she was wearing when she showed me the bodies of the many men she says Zeth killed. I flip her off, and then I spit on the ground, ridding myself of the foul taste of vomit.

“Tell your boss she can go fuck herself,” I inform the giant in front of me. I swing my legs back into the car and then slam the door so violently the whole car rocks.

“You don’t know the truth, sweetheart. I think as soon as I explain everything, you’ll understand,” Dad says softly.

If he thinks that, then he has another thing coming. “I don’t care what the truth is now, Dad. It’s too late. Both you and Alexis have totally betrayed any trust that might have existed between us. You’ve destroyed everything. I just…I just don’t wanna hear it.”

A car horn blares behind us—Lowell bitching about our lack of movement. Dad puts the station wagon into gear and pulls back out onto the road. We’re apparently headed to a field office. Somewhere I can be righteously preached at about my recent life choices. I wouldn’t have gone anywhere with my father or Agent Lowell given the choice, but it was either this or getting my ass arrested and my assets seized until I complied. I haven’t touched my bank account in weeks. It seems that whenever I’ve needed something it was simply there, provided to me by either Zeth or more often than not by Michael. But at some point I am going to want access to my money, and I am definitely going to want to go back home. But when the hell will that ever happen? The very thought of being able to step back inside the sanctuary I created for myself without towing a whole heap of trouble right after me is laughable.

Besides, my father promised me he’d drop me off wherever I wanted after I’d heard him out, so this seemed like the best option at the time. We drive for another forty minutes passing turnoffs to Mountlake Terrace, Lynnwood and the Paine Field Airport until we arrive in Everett. I haven’t been here since I was a kid—a birthday party for either Alexis or myself, I can’t recall now. The place reminds me of screaming children and the smell of hamburgers.

Dad pulls the station wagon into the parking lot behind a liquor store of all places. He kills the engine and removes the keys from the ignition. “Sloane, you have to know that I’m sorry. I didn’t withhold anything from you to deceive you, or your mother. I—”

“How about you just show me what you so desperately need to show me and then you can take me back to the people who don’t lie to me and abuse my trust, huh, Dad?” It strikes me as very strange that this is actually the truth. Zeth has never asked for my trust and then let me down. He’s never hidden anything from me. If I’ve wanted to know something, if I’ve found myself in a situation where he has control over me, if a situation’s been bad, he hasn’t hurt me or betrayed me. He’s been honest, and he’s kept me safe. Zeth, a man I know to be a criminal, has treated me with more respect than my own father, a man of the church.

Oh, the irony’s so bittersweet, I feel like I’m choking on it.

“Just keep an open mind, okay, kiddo?” Dad tells me.

Lowell and her subordinates have pulled up in their hulking great SUVs, and are already out of the vehicles, waiting not so patiently for us to get out, too. I don’t answer my father. I get out of the car, shooting an evil look at the woman who seems to be at the heart of this whole fucking mess. Lowell gestures toward a flight of metal stairs that zigzag up the side of the liquor store, wearing a grim smile. “After you,” she says. The diamond tread on the steps of the staircase have almost worn clean away in the middle, a slick silver patch of steel in the center of the otherwise rusted metalwork. My footsteps clang out, echoing around the parking lot as I climb up one, two, three flights, and then I can’t go any farther.

We’ve reached the top of the stairs, and in front of me a solid, reinforced steel door covered with dark green chipped paint bars the way. Lowell slips by me and punches a code into the keypad on the wall; the door shunks open, and an alarm sounds from within the building, a single-pitched ernnnn noise that reminds me of prison gates. The ones I’ve seen on TV, and hopefully not the one I will soon be calling home.

Lowell hurries into the building, not bothering to check behind her to see if I’m following. I wouldn’t have a choice even if I didn’t want to; my dad is right behind me, followed by the giant who told us to hurry up on the side of the road before, and two other guys in immaculate suits. Dad smiles sadly at me, and I don’t smile back. Inside, the building smells like Pop Tarts. Burnt ones. Someone’s obviously charred the hell out of their late breakfast.