"So, when is the next escape room?" Ash asked.

"Next..." Melanie started to say, but was quickly cut off.

"No, no, no," Troy laughed as he tried to casually push Melanie aside. "We haven't nailed down the date for the next escape room, but don't worry. I have your numbers. I'll call you once we pick a date."

Ash smiled and hoped it looked reassured rather than knowing. Troy wouldn't call. They already had the next three escape rooms on the books, Ash had seen it when they had checked in upon arrival, but she wasn't going to say so.

"Great. We'll wait to hear from you," she said.

Troy's shoulders relaxed and the smile he gave her was genuinely happy. Ash wasn't surprised. The moment the escape room door had closed and they had been locked inside, Troy had appointed himself as leader as he had read out the first clue and directed the conversation. Ash had sat back to watch how the group would work, and Zach had followed suit.

It took the group ten minutes to figure out the first clue under Troy's lead. Ash had figured it out in two minutes. Zach didn't say so, but Ash assumed he had figured it out even faster than she had. They continued to sit back and watch while the group worked on the second clue. It took the group even longer to figure out that one, and within that time Ash realized escape rooms were not for her.

When she let out a deep sigh upon making her realization, Zach asked, "Want to get out of here?"

"Isn't that what we are all trying to do?" she joked.

"That is what they are trying to do," he said, nodding to the group huddled around Troy and the second clue. "You're just sitting here."

She glanced down at her watch. "Should we time ourselves?"

When they had opened the door twenty-five minutes later the employee had sat there in stunned silence, looking from the clock to the door and back to the clock. Zach and Ash had cut the escape room record in half.

"I have a sneaking suspicion that he won't call," Ash said under her breath as Zach and she waved goodbye to Troy and the group leaving.

"I think he already lost our numbers," Zach said.

Ash laughed. "So...Escape rooms?"

"Not for me."

"Same. We are getting more efficient," she said, checking the time. "That took us less than an hour."

She had meant it as a good thing, but as she thought about the reality of it, she realized that their efficiency only meant she now had to figure out how to spend the rest of her night. There was always homework but her empty room didn't sound inviting.

"Want to grab some food?" she asked before she could think about it. "I think there's a basketball game tonight. We could go to the bar."

Zach remained quiet for a moment before he said, "I could go for a side of nacho cheese."

"Nacho cheese it is!" she cheered as she led the way to the bar.

She had been right. There was a basketball game but it was a home game so all the devoted fans were at the college's arena for the game. The bar was only half full of students who didn't care about basketball.

Zach and Ash sat at their usual back corner table but Ash knew a full scope of the bar wasn't necessary since there weren't that many people there. On the upside, it didn't take Sherry long to come over for their orders. Ash was surprised when Zach joined her in ordering a side of nacho cheese only.

"Only nacho cheese tonight?" she asked.

He shrugged. "The budget's a little tight this month."

Ash studied his face, trying to figure out if he was being honest or making a joke. As usual, she had no idea.

"Those therapy bills will kill you," she said, fishing for more of a response.

He just shrugged like she wasn't wrong and slowly scanned the bar. When his gaze reached the dart boards, it faltered for a moment. His eyes went big, then small as he scrutinized something then reset to neutral within the space of two seconds.

Something dropped in Ash's stomach at Zach's expression. Something had surprised him. Nothing surprised Zach. Except when they had been kidnapped.

She glanced sideways towards the dartboard, a nauseous feeling crawling up her neck as she imagined seeing her kidnapper casually throwing darts. But all she found were two guys who looked like college students.

"What?" she said under her breath.

Her quiet word startled Zach like he had forgotten she was there for a moment.

"I didn't say anything," he said, looking at her curiously.

"The people at the dartboard," she clarified.

He casually looked towards the dartboard and Ash would have believed the act if she hadn't caught the slightest hesitation before he looked.

"You want to play darts?" he asked.

"No," she said. "I'm talking about the two guys playing darts."

This time there was no hesitation or tell that Zach knew what she was talking about as he casually observed the guys. "What about them?"

"Stop!" Ash said, the word coming out louder as her anxiety grew. "You recognize them."

Zach chuckled and shook his head like Ash was making a joke. She cut him off before he could lie.

"I know you do," she said. "I saw it. Don't try to lie and say you don't because I won't believe you. Tell me who they are. Now!"

"Ash," he said, giving her a consoling look that made her want to rip his head off.

"The last time I saw a similar look on your face, like the one you just gave those guys, was right before we got kidnapped. After that, I had a gun held to my head and then witnessed you kill a man. Then we had to run for our lives until your CIA girlfriend could come save us," she said, staring him straight in the eyes. "So tell me who those men are right now or I will walk over to them and ask myself. And don't for a second think you can call my bluff because it's not a bluff. Let me remind you I was crazy enough to critique our last kidnapper's accent."

"They are just old co-workers," Zach said, leaning in and talking in a soft voice. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. They aren't a threat. They aren't dangerous. You aren't in danger. It's just...complicated running into old... co-workers." He emphasized the last word and something in his gaze was asking Ash to understand. "I am sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. Are you okay?"

Was she okay? The question surprised Ash. Why was he asking about her? But then she looked down and realized she was holding onto the edge of the table so tight her knuckles were white and every single muscle in her body was tense, as if preparing to fight.

She released her grip on the table and let her body turn to jello as she sat back in her seat. She looked over at the two guys playing darts. They didn't look like a threat and she realized she might have overreacted.

"Ash, are you okay?" Zach asked again.

"I'm fine," she said, trying her best to force herself to sound at ease.

She wasn't successful and she took a sip of water so she could hide behind the cup. She took the moment to think through what Zach had said. Those two guys were his old co-workers. Zach's last job had been at the CIA which meant those guys worked for the CIA.

She understood why Zach had acted like he didn't know them. It might not be safe for any of them to reveal they knew each other. She glanced over at Zach and found him watching her.

"I'm fine," she said, setting her cup down loudly on the table and she meant it.

He had every right to be concerned because she had been spiraling towards a panic, but she could feel herself reaching a level of calm again.

"It was just a minor trigger because I got kidnapped. I don't know if you know this, but I was kidnapped," she said, trying to diffuse his concern. "Actually, you were there. Triggers happen. It's not the end of the world. You're in therapy. You're a psychology major. You should know about this."

"You're right," he said. "I don't know what I was thinking."

"It seems like you weren't thinking at all."

He nodded and they both let that be the end of the incident. Sherry arrived with their nacho cheese and free chips and Ash dug in and watched Zach's old co-workers. She never would have picked them out of a crowd for being anything other than college students, but then again, she could say the same thing about Zach. She wondered what had brought them to North Carolina.

Zach cleared his throat and Ash looked at him.

"You're staring," he said casually.

"Maybe I think they're hot," she joked, wiggling her eyebrows teasingly at Zach.

But she refrained from staring directly at them again, and instead, searched for reflective surfaces she could use to observe them discreetly. Her eyes went to the front window of the bar and with the bright indoor lighting she could just make out the reflection of the two figures at the dart board.

She tried to take in all the information she could about them solely based on their dim shadows until she realized one of the guy's shadow was staring back at her through the reflection of the window. She started and turned her gaze as quickly as she could, but she knew their eyes had met in the window.

"We really need to work on your surveillance skills," Zach said under his breath.

"What?" she asked defensively. "I wasn't staring."

"Not directly," he corrected her.

"I was just looking out the window," she tried to argue even as she realized it was pointless.

There was no way he didn't know exactly what she had been doing. But before she could decide whether it was worth trying to deny his observation someone called out to them. They both turned to see both of the guys heading towards them. The one in front had a big smile on his face as he waved at Zach. Ash sat back as she looked at Zach, curious how he would handle this situation.

"It is you, right?" the guy in front said, pointing at Zach with an excited smile. Ash noticed how he avoided using a name. "It's Cal," the guy said, pointing to himself, "and Henry," he added as he pointed to the guy behind him.

They were both tall and built. Cal was good-looking enough to catch people's attention as he walked by while Henry was similar to Zach, in that nothing about his looks were captivating. Ash wondered if Zach and Henry fulfilled similar roles when they had worked at the CIA.

"It's good to see you," Henry said, giving Zach a friendly slap on the shoulder when they reached the table.

Ash saw both guys' eyes dart between herself and Zach, trying to decipher her connection to Zach.

Ash decided to give them a helping hand. She turned to Zach. "Josh, are these your friends?" she asked, staring Zach directly in the eyes.

He looked back at her blankly like he wasn't going to play along with whatever she was trying to do. It didn't matter. She could do it on her own.

She turned to Cal and Henry and extended her hand with a bright smile.

"I'm Ash," she said. "Please, join us."

She motioned to the two empty seats and they took them.

"It's nice to meet you," Cal said, shaking her hand.

"So, how do you know Josh?" she asked, curious to watch how smoothly they could come up with a story on the spot.

"We know Josh from way back," Henry said, as he shook her hand.

Ash nodded. That was an easy and boring answer. She wondered what would happen if she started supplying specific details they had to work with.

"Wait!" she said, sitting up excitedly as if she had just put the pieces together.

"You aren't the Cal and Henry from Idaho are you?" she asked.

There wasn't even a moment of hesitation before Cal slapped Zach on the back playfully.

"You told her about Idaho?" he said.

He made it sound as if he were recalling an inside joke, but Ash could see he was fishing for information from Zach. Before Zach could say anything, she jumped in.

"Of course, he told me about Idaho. He said the summers he spent with you guys at band camp were the best," she said, pulling out an activity that didn't fit with how they all looked now.

"You told her about band camp?" Cal laughed.

"I hope you didn't tell her too much," Henry added jokingly.

Both remarks perfectly fit the conversation of old friends thinking about the past, but Ash suspected they were asking Zach for some information so they would know where to take the conversation.

"Cal, you played trombone, right?" Ash said before Zach could lead the conversation where he wanted to. "And Henry, if I'm correct, you played the flute."

She knew she was being hard on them. She wasn't giving them cool instruments like the drums or guitar.

"Have you told her our whole life story?" Henry joked.

"Should I be worried by how much information she knows?" Cal added, fishing for help.

"Don't be too concerned," Ash consoled them. "Remember, Josh was the one who played the piccolo." She smiled brightly as she looked at Zach. He was sitting with his arms crossed, giving her a questioning look. "It was the piccolo, wasn't it?" she asked Zach directly.

He could stop this narrative any time he wanted, but he just shook his head like he couldn't believe she was doing this.

She grinned and turned back to Cal and Henry.

"And what was the name you guys gave yourselves?" she asked them. "You three had a group name, didn't you?" Ash looked between Cal and Henry questioningly.

She had freely offered them a lot of details about the fictitious life she was making up for them. Now, she wanted to see what they did when it was on them to produce the details.

"I think if I tell you our trio name I will be forfeiting my last chance to maintain a little mystery. You haven't even asked me on a date," Cal said, winking at Ash. He leaned against the table and looked at her with a flirty look in his eyes. "And here you are, having managed to remain a complete mystery. How about evening the playing field?"

Ash could feel her face heating up under Cal's direct attention, and she dropped her gaze, suddenly feeling flustered.

"How do you know Josh?" Cal asked.

He had dropped his voice just slightly, bringing out a husky undertone that would have easily pulled an answer out of her, but her attention snagged when he said Josh.

"Who's Josh?" she asked.

Zach cleared his throat and Ash looked over at him. Right! Zach was Josh.

She laughed to cover her mistake and turned back to Cal to find him way too close for comfort.

"Right," she laughed while pushing her chair back and loudly scraping it along the floor.

She needed some distance if she wanted to think straight. He had been trying to cast some secret-agent flirting spell on her and for a moment it had worked. She needed to do something in order to gain some control back.

She turned to Cal. He was still looking at her in that attentive but not creepy way. It was like he was ready to be fascinated by anything she had to say.

"What was the question?" she asked, letting her voice rise to a more feminine pitch. "How do I know Zach?"

It was only a second, but it felt like an electric current passed between Zach, Cal, and Henry, like they were silently communicating. And then it was gone and Cal and Henry were looking around.

"Who?" Cal asked, looking back at Ash.

She smiled. He was well-trained. He didn't shy away from direct eye contact as he confronted her.

"Zach and I met in psychology class," she said casually, pointing at Zach. "Well, technically we met at the Busy Bean. I work there part-time. I'm a barista, although Zach has questioned the validity of my barista status since I only work in a college coffee shop, but don't worry I set him straight with some statistics, but that's a different story. He likes to study at the coffee shop I work at and we also happen to be in four psychology classes together."

She let the words tumble freely from her mouth as she watched Cal and Henry try to wade through the information she was spewing at them.

"I guess that doesn't really answer your question though because I'm sure there are a lot of baristas and customers who don't end up being friends, but once we got kidnapped together that really cemented our friendship into place. Zach will try to deny we're friends and act like he doesn't always want me around, but I think that's just some lingering thing he has after working for the..." She paused to look around and make sure no one was close enough to hear before she whispered, "...the CIA."

Silence fell on their table as she looked from Cal then Henry. Cal looked ready to start laughing like Ash had told the joke of the century, while Henry was as blank as Zach at his best. Before they had to figure out how to handle Ash's word vomit, Zach stepped in.

"Alright, you had your fun," he said, giving Ash a scolding look, but she only smiled back.

When she had originally used her word-vomit tactic, it hadn't earned her any reaction from Zach. She felt gratified to know it was at least a little bit effective on Cal and Henry.

"You read my Mykola debrief," Zach said to Cal and Henry.

It took them both a moment to switch their attention from Ash to Zach.

"What debrief?" Cal questioned, his eyes slipping sideways to Ash, as if trying to remind Zach they weren't alone.

"The new one?" Henry asked casually. He was better at controlling his expression than Cal was.

Zach nodded. "I got kidnapped with a civilian," he said. He held his hand out to present Ash.

"I'm the civilian," Ash said.

"Ahhh," Cal said.

He and Henry looked at Ash as if they suddenly completely understood who she was and what she had put them through for the last ten minutes. It made Ash question what Zach had said about her in the debrief. Or had it been what Agent Morgan had written about Ash?

"And I had you thinking I was just your average civilian," she teased.

"I don't think so," Zach said.

"You did," Cal admitted.

She grinned. "Does this mean I'm good enough to join the CIA? I have been thinking about applying."

"You would never pass the psych evaluation," Zach said.

Ash shrugged off his remark like she hadn't been seriously considering it.

"Probably. But enough about me. What about you?" she asked, turning her attention back to Cal and Henry. Here were two more people from Zach's past who could add a few more puzzle pieces to her profile on Zach. "Are Cal and Henry even your real names?"

"Yeah," Henry said, but that reassurance meant nothing when he had spoken with the same sincerity about band camp.

"Okay," she said. She would pretend they were telling the truth. "Zach said you used to be co-workers? Do you still work for the company?" she asked discreetly.

"We worked with Zach," Cal said. "We had some good times, didn't we?"

He slapped Zach on the back like he was preparing to take a trip down a memory lane that didn't exist, but Ash cut him off.

"Did you also go to Zach's fancy boarding school?" she asked.

"Ash..." Zach warned her, but she ignored him

"The boarding school where they taught you world studies and also how to shoot a gun?"

Cal shot Zach a quick look while Henry never broke eye contact with Ash.

"Don't worry, Zach told me all about it," she said. "It turns out you have a lot of time to talk about secret past lives when you get kidnapped together."

"Maybe I should have made you sign the NDA," Zach said.

"They've read the debrief," she argued. "I'm sure I'm not saying anything they don't know. Right?"

She looked at Cal and Henry so they could confirm what she had said but they just stared at her blankly. She suspected Cal was blank because he didn't know how to handle her, and Henry was blank because that was what he did in unknown situations.

"You went to the boarding school too," she stated it this time to see if they would contradict her.

Cal laughed as he shook his head in disbelief. "You are as crazy as the debrief said you were. Amazing!"

"Who gave me away? Zach?" she said, shooting him an accusing look but he held his hands up like he was innocent.

"Was it Agent Morgan then?" she asked, looking back to Cal and Henry.

She already suspected it was Agent Morgan who had called her crazy, but Ash wanted to see what would happen if she mentioned Agent Morgan.

Cal smirked. "You met Agent Morgan?" he said as he looked at Zach.

"Agent Morgan is one of the lead agents on the Mykola case," Zach said as if that was enough of an answer.

"Agent Morgan debriefed me," Ash said, to round out Zach's non-answer. "At first she suspected I was part of the kidnapping plot, but I set her straight. To be honest though, I don't think she liked me. But who cares about Agent Morgan," Ash said. "Back to you. Are you legacies like Zach?" she asked Cal and Henry. "Is the 'company'," she said, adding air quotes, "a family business for you too?"

This question was enough to get Henry to look at Zach. Nothing in his look gave away his thoughts but a look was more than what he had been giving.

Cal chuckled and slapped Zach congenially on the back.

"No one is a legacy like Zach," he said. "All my mom ever did for my career was make sure I passed the twelfth grade."

There was a rustle under the table and suddenly Cal didn't look too pleased but Ash wasn't trying to decipher his expression. Her eyes were on Zach.

There was a knot forming in her stomach, as her eyes moved frantically over his face, to the corners of his eyes, to the space between his brows, to the tilt of his head. Once she had passed over his face three times and been unable to read a single thing, her eyes went to the tilt of his shoulders, the angle of his arms, the position of his hands.

But she got nothing.

She looked back up to his face, certain her eyes had just momentarily wigged out and she would be able to read something on his face. He might still hold his words in and he still wasn't an easy person to read, but over the last couple of weeks, they had built up enough trust that there were times she caught him revealing small expressions.

She hadn't received the infuriatingly neutral look in a while.

But when she looked at his face again, the neutral stare was all she found, staring her dead in the eyes.

Suddenly, she wanted to scream and cry and she wasn't sure why, but everything felt wrong and she hated him. She hated Zach and the neutral expression he was giving her.

She curled her fists and stood up, knocking her chair backward. It clattered to the ground but she didn't notice it as she stared at Zach. She couldn't even put into words what had just happened. All she knew was he was gone.

But even that she couldn't fully describe and the word "gone" did not sufficiently describe the absence she suddenly felt.

She shook her head as she looked at him, as if silently begging him to stop whatever was happening.

But the longer she looked at his face, void of everything, the more her anger grew until she couldn't stand to look at him for a second longer. She hated this. She hated him.

"Go to hell," she told him before she stormed out of the bar.

**********************************************************************

Oh hot dog! That just happened!

I know I always say this but OH DANG! SHE SO DAMAGED! Like someone get the duck tape and super glue because this girl is in pieces and needs to be patched up.

I'm curious what you're take on this is? 🗯💭💬😶

For me, I'm like girl! Calm the flip down. So Zach is completely retreating to his mind palace where you're not allowed but that's nothing to freak out about. Breathe. Maybe just chill a little.

But asking someone like Ash to calm down feels like asking a tiger to back away slowly and not attack when it's already planned to do so.

I love Ash, I don't think I could love her more but it's very interesting how she handles life so differently than I ever would. But I don't have the past that she does so that makes my view of life completely different.

Man I love this story so much! Hopefully you do too, even if Ash befuddles you at times.

Vote, comment, follow but only if the wind is blowing northeast.