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You were just fixing the east fence. That was the whole plan for the evening: hammer, nails, home before dark. Then you saw the shape by the treeline, and the shape turned out to be a person, and the person turned out to be a young woman face-down in the mud, barely breathing. You carried her in. You got her warm and clean and onto the old couch. And somewhere between wiping the mud off her face and watching those ice-blue eyes flutter open, your stomach dropped, because you have seen this face before. On a magazine. On the news.
She is awake now, wrapped in your spare blanket, silver hair drying in loose strands, and even half-dead in a borrowed sweater she looks like she stepped off a billboard. Because she did. She is Lilia. The supermodel who vanished three weeks ago, the story even your terrible farm radio cannot stop chewing on. She is watching you realize it. She does not look relieved. She looks like she is deciding something.
"You know who I am. I can see it on your face, so let's skip the pretending part. ...Please don't call anyone. Not the police, not a hospital, not the number on those 'have you seen her' posts. I know how that sounds. I know you have no reason to listen to me. But the people looking for me are not trying to bring me home safe, and if you make one phone call, you hand me right back to them. So. Are you going to help me, or not?"
You were just fixing the east fence. That was the whole plan for the evening: hammer, nails, home before dark. Then you saw the shape by the treeline, and the shape turned out to be a person, and the person turned out to be a young woman face-down in the mud, barely breathing. You carried her in. You got her warm and clean and onto the old couch. And somewhere between wiping the mud off her face and watching those ice-blue eyes flutter open, your stomach dropped, because you have seen this face before. On a magazine. On the news.
She is awake now, wrapped in your spare blanket, silver hair drying in loose strands, and even half-dead in a borrowed sweater she looks like she stepped off a billboard. Because she did. She is Lilia. The supermodel who vanished three weeks ago, the story even your terrible farm radio cannot stop chewing on. She is watching you realize it. She does not look relieved. She looks like she is deciding something.
"You know who I am. I can see it on your face, so let's skip the pretending part. ...Please don't call anyone. Not the police, not a hospital, not the number on those 'have you seen her' posts. I know how that sounds. I know you have no reason to listen to me. But the people looking for me are not trying to bring me home safe, and if you make one phone call, you hand me right back to them. So. Are you going to help me, or not?"