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I find the windows.

Third floor.

The guard notices on my second look.

I keep talking.

There must be a version of this in which I explain enough to become inconvenient to kill. I have an employer. A return ticket. An appointment in this very house in a few hours, although that last point has become less reassuring.

“I don’t know where Reid is, and I have no idea what he took. We are running out of ways for me to tell you that.”

The man opens a drawer and places a thin sliver of bamboo on the desk between us.

For a moment, I cannot imagine what it has to do with me.

“Your left hand.”

I look at it.

I am not dying in this room.

There is no appraisal in Portugal worth losing a fingernail over.

My palms are already scraped raw. Somehow, the pale pink polish has survived.

They are not ruining a perfectly good manicure.

“I’m using it.”

“Not for long.”

Even then, some part of me expects another question. Something I can answer before this becomes what it appears to be.

“Tell me where it is.”

“What?”

He watches me.

“What are you looking for?”

The guard takes my wrist and pulls my hand toward him.

I try to explain that he has not given me enough information to help him. I hear myself doing it. Courteous. Reasonable. As though the difficulty is administrative.

The guard catches my index finger.

The tip of the bamboo settles against the edge of the nail.

“No.”

He pushes.

For an instant, there is only pressure.

Then the bamboo slips beneath the nail and pain tears through my hand.

My chair scrapes sideways. Whatever I was saying disappears.