It was nice having hot water pound down on my shoulders. Michael's loft never had seemed to have perfect water pressure to me before, but compared to the drizzle of frigid water in the prison, I loved it. Six months of being behind bars, with the guards whacking me with their sticks if they thought that I had looked at them wrong. One arm had been broken twice, the other once.
I preferred fighting back and getting the bruises or the broken bones to letting them drag me down to the basement where they had a scummy mattress set up. The first three weeks when I had still been in the custody of the FBI had been the best. There I got decent food, and they ignored me when they were not pumping me for information.
At the other prison, my hair color and length had gotten the other women to beat me up on occasion. The fact that I was not an American citizen led to more fights, which usually ended in a hard whack of the guard's stick to my abdomen.
But that morning, when the guards would have been lining us up to get a disgusting bowl of colorless slop for what they called breakfast, they had come straight to the cell I shared with the one girl in the place who didn't seem to loathe me. They had fasted handcuffs around both of our wrists, with our hands sticking out between the bars before opening the door. Then to my surprise, they had undone my cuffs and pulled me away from the wall. The cuffs had of course been redone, trapping my hands behind me as they marched me down the hallway and out.
They never strapped handcuffs on us if they wanted to drag us down to the basement, or between rooms. Even the month I spent in solitary had not been led up to by handcuffs.
I had been yanked silently to a transport van and strapped in, alone. Some guard or another climbed in on the other side of the metal screen with a box, and the van pulled away from the prison. During the ride, I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, I was yanked down from the van. Keeping my eyes on the ground in front of me, I inspected the three pairs of legs that seemed to be waiting for me. Two black slacks with matching perfectly shined shoes, and a pair of black pumps on the third.
Inside the cool air-conditioned building, they marched me into an elevator, and then down to some room. Only the woman entered with me, shutting the door firmly behind us. I finally lifted my head, expecting another interrogation room.
Instead, it was Agent Pierce with a cardboard box that she set on the table before pulling the blinds over the window.
"In here should be everything that you had with you when you went to the FBI. Get dressed and got into the hallway. One of the agents outside will take you to the lobby where you will wait for me to finish with Michael. Do me a favor, and don't blow anything significant up over the next couple of months." Agent Pierce nodded to me and left me alone in the room.
I could not bring myself to look at Michael when he had taken me from the agent; could not bring myself to look up during the drive to his loft. I was afraid that I would start crying, or do something else completely embarrassing like throwing my arms around his neck. Punching him had seemed like a good idea, but it had ended up with me throwing my arms around him and crying. Though it had helped to confirm that it wasn't a dream, unlike the dozen or so others I had had over the last six months.
With a sigh, I turned off the water to the shower and stepped out. My hair dripping down my back, I slipped back out into Michael's loft, clutching a towel around me. Ignoring him, I pulled clothes out from the drawer and slid into them. Michael slid his hands around my waist. I turned to face him and he wrapped the towel around my hair, squeezing out the water. He tossed it over a chair and turned me around to work a comb through the tangled ends.