The Detachment

from Union Station, where he parked in front of the busted chain-link fence in front of an abandoned warehouse. He got out with Kei’s mailbag and looked around, squinting against the sun and the heat. Someone had spray-painted No Parking, Tow-Away in now-faded red on the boarded-up doors of the building, but amid the weeds growing through the cracks in the pavement and the garbage collecting at the bottom of the teetering loading dock, he didn’t think he was likely to encounter any objections.
    He walked around to the trunk and opened it. Kei shut her eyes and lifted a hand to shield her sweaty face from the sudden invasion of light.
    She squinted up at him fearfully. “You’re really going to let me go?”
    He wondered if he could feel more low. He was never doing something like this again, no matter what the stakes. Never.
    He held out his hand. “I promise you, I am. And I’m sorry, that was a long drive. I can see where you might have started to doubt me. Plus, it must have been god-awful hot in there.”
    She paused for a moment, then took his hand and sat up. She looked around.
    “We’re a few blocks from Union Station,” he said, “but, as you can see, not in the most upstanding of neighborhoods. If you don’t mind, I’ll just follow you in the car while you walk the few blocks to make sure you make it all right.”
    She put some weight on his hand and stepped out of the trunk. She looked around again. “Okay.”
    She was still holding his hand. He squeezed hers briefly and then let go.
    “I know it’s pretty lame under the circumstances,” he said, “but I apologize for what we did to you. I shouldn’t have let myself get caught up in it. It was wrong, and I’m truly sorry.”
    She said, “Thank you.”
    He shook his head, ashamed. “You don’t have one single thing to thank me for. I did a terrible thing to you.”
    She looked at him. “I knew you wouldn’t hurt me. You were the reason I wasn’t scared.”
    That only made it worse. “I don’t think that’s worth very much, actually.”
    “It was to me.”
    “Darlin’,” he said gently, “are you familiar with a thing called the Stockholm Syndrome?”
    “I know what it is. And I don’t have it. If the police had kicked in the door to that room, I wouldn’t have shielded you with my body, I can tell you that.”
    He smiled. Ordinarily, he might have taken an opportunity like that to comment on the possible upside of her throwing her body over his. Instead, he said, “Well, now you’ve gone and burst my bubble.”
    She laughed, just a little. “It could have been a lot worse for me. You made it better. I kept looking at that scary guy, Larison, and thinking, ‘Dox wouldn’t let him.’”
    He wondered if she was playing him. “You really thought that?”
    She nodded. “I did.”
    He looked down at the ground. “If I did something to make this a little less worse of an ordeal for you, I’m glad. But it was still an ordeal, and I was still a part of it. Trust me, I know you’re bursting with relief and gratitude right now, but later? It’s all going to settle in. You’ll realize what you’ve been through. Being held like we held you is no joke.”
    “You sound like you know.”
    He wondered whether he should say more, and then did anyway. “Not so long ago, some men held me. I’m not going to tell you what they did, other than that it involved electric shocks, repeated drownings, and threats to Nessie. So yes, I’m not unacquainted with what you’re going to be dealing with in the coming days and weeks. I wish there were something I could do about it, but I can’t, other than to say again I’m sorry.”
    She raised an eyebrow. “Nessie?”
    He shook his head, knowing he shouldn’t have joked like that, determined not to follow up. “Never mind.”
    He handed her the mailbag. She took it.
    “What did my father do to you?” she said.
    He shook his head again. “I don’t want to talk about it. It never should have had anything to do with you. I want you to tell me something else, instead.”
    “What?”
    He looked around at the cracked road, the barbed wire, everything baking under the unblinking Los Angeles sun.
    “What are your plans? I mean, for the future. Film school…you want to make movies?”
    She smiled. “That’s what I want. Pretty far afield from my dad, huh?”
    “I’d say. But I’m glad. I like movies. When am I going to get to see yours?”
    “I don’t know. I wrote a script I