Read Taken With The Enemy for Free Online Page A

serious, and you have no close friends. You live in a modest apartment, drive a modest car, wear modest clothes, and spend a majority of your time working at the public hospital for a modest salary. Any free time you have is spent volunteering."
    "What do you want me to say? That you're right? That you've perfectly summed up my empty life and lonely existence?
    "Is there anyone in this world who knows who you really are besides your financial advisor and your personal accountant?"
    I shrugged. “I guess you do."
    "No, I know nothing about you. And neither does your financial advisor or accountant—or your lawyer for that matter. They might know your ‘true’ identity, your background, but they don't know yo u. And neither do I. In fact, I doubt there's a living soul in on this earth who knows the real Brenna. You've locked yourself in tight and hidden the key. I could sit here and claim to know who you are based off what I've seen—your responses, your actions, the way you dress, the things you say—but I won't. It would be a false claim. Because I know there is more to you than what I can locate in some file."
    He got up and walked toward the front door. “I'll tell you what, Brenna. When you are ready to answer my ‘simplest’ of questions, I'll be more than happy to answer some of yours."
    After it slammed shut, I stared at the closed door, noting that he didn't lock it. He didn't seem the type, even in anger, to forget such a detail. No, he was a man who did things when they served a purpose.
    An act of trust or another lesson?
    I'd already told him I would escape, given the chance, so I'm sure he didn't just trust me not to run. And the cameras in the flat were in place for a reason, so if I even approached the door, they would know.
    Another lesson.
    But this new lesson was harder to bear, even more so than the emotional rollercoaster he'd made me endure during the others. Even if I left now, I wouldn't get far. Not because of the cameras, or guards, or walls, but because my body was weak from malnourishment. The conversation had drained what little energy I had left. I barely had enough to get myself to the bedroom, much less to attempt a daring escape that would probably entail a brutal trek through the desert.
    He was a dick for reminding me how I had thwarted myself.
    Well, lesson learned.
    I picked up the spoon and went about choking down the soup, thinking I would ‘escape’ after I was done, just for the sake of principle. Between eating and fighting off the bouts of nausea, I thought about the other lessons he'd imparted.
    The first was the easiest, and the most cliché: You couldn't judge a book by its cover. Looks were definitely deceiving. He touched on all three of my secret lives, and even knew I went through great lengths to keep my roles as ‘doctor', ‘soldier', and ‘bleeding heart’ separate. I guess his acknowledgment of my daily challenges was his way of telling me that I couldn't judge him by what I saw, and that he might just be telling me the truth when he said he wasn't an insurgent.
    Obviously, he wasn't.
    He was so much more.
    That was the second lesson. The details he knew about my life could not have been gathered by a simple background check. The story about the unscrupulous homeless shelter director proved that. That wouldn't have been found on paper. The tale would've been told from one of the resident employees who were there that day. So either my captor had boarded a plane for the US and went to the shelter—which was unlikely, or he had connections of some sort back in the States.
    Maybe he'd hired a really good private investigator. But how did he see a copy of my enlistment papers? Those types of government documents were protected under the privacy act. They wouldn't—shouldn't be so easy to get. And let's not forget how he'd abducted me from a US encampment and managed to retrieve my personal belongings while he was at it.
    He definitely had connections, something