Assuming Names: a con artist's masquerade (Criminal Mischief Book 1) by Tanya Thompson Page B

her inhaler was little help. She was being suffocated by guilt and fear; and though I didn’t recognize it at the time, I do now, she was having panic attacks.
    She seldom left the house anymore, so we spent our days at home. Daniel began spending more nights, paying for rent and groceries, and Sergiu came more frequently too. When they weren’t driving to New York, he and Daniel would take over the kitchen and cook for hours. Sergiu was always trying to draw me into their spirited task, wanting to teach me something, like how to use a knife so every attempt didn’t end with my blood staining the cutting board.
    I’d pick up the knife and he’d cross himself, say a prayer to heaven, and then hover over me insisting, “The garlic no fight. Is nice garlic. You no try to kill.”  But he couldn’t bear to watch and was too afraid to turn his back.
    After the second mishap requiring liquid sutures, he wouldn’t let me near anything sharp. Instead, he tried to show me how to core a head of lettuce by striking it once “at the base of skull, no, of root, this here.”
    “The stalk,” I offered and noticed the punch exploded through the head to splay the leaves out like a bowl.
    “Now it is cooperative.”
    He was boisterous and gregarious, dominating the scene, pulling everyone in, always animated and holding a laugh just beneath the surface. And he was passionate about dinner. It was the high point of every day. He complained that he could not fully express himself in English and if only I knew another language: Romanian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, even French would be better. “How you only know English?”
    But even so, we never spent less than two hours at the table.
    It was very different than eating with Rick.
    Sergiu and Daniel had been in New York when Rick called. There was something we needed to discuss.
    We were in a chain restaurant, and I was following Rick’s subdued lead. The meal was one of good Southern manners, full of restraint and general pleasantries. At the end, he explained that my case was public record and had “gone out on the wire.” Straight through October and now most of November, the Associated Press and a number of other reporters had harassed him to reveal my location. He had steadfastly refused, putting them off and making excuses to protect me, but he couldn’t very well tell them he didn’t know where I was, as, “That would make my office look unprofessional.”
    He didn’t seem comfortable with the idea, and he was happy to keep turning them away, but if I wanted to speak with a reporter, there was a journalist from Austin whose inquiries were far more polite than the others.
    I didn’t know what to think of it. It sounded like I’d be putting myself forward for further scrutiny without benefit, but it also appealed to me as potentially diverting. I was torn, so I was ambiguous, responding with nothing more than an acknowledging smile.
    Rick asked, “So, you’ll speak with her?”
    I raised my eyes in a wordless expression of Should I ?
    “Do you want to talk with her?”
    I didn’t know, so I wasn’t helping. I’d found silence to be the best tactic when in doubt so far.
    And when Rick finally recognized I wasn’t giving any more, he said, “I’ll give the journalist Tricia’s phone number and you can think about it.”
     
    ~~~~~~
     
    Tricia couldn’t think of a reason why I wouldn’t talk to Patrice. It sounded quite exciting. Patrice was from the Austin American Statesman and she’d already spent an hour on the phone with Tricia privately discussing my story, asking Tricia what she could expect from me, how to approach, no doubt discussing the sensitive topic of my life as a submissive prostitute.
    She came at the start of December while Sergiu and Daniel were away.
    It had been over two months since anyone had questioned me, and I’d forgotten where the line of inquiry inevitably led.
    Patrice’s playful insistence that I had sex with the unnamed