“Safe?” I said, frowning, not understanding.

“Are you asking if you’re safe?

You’re safe, Jessi, I promise —” She shook her head, frustrated, and traced the letters again, harder, and tapped the sheet, and I understood at last that she was not asking a question.

She was giving me a location.

“The safe,” I said.

“Your safe.

There’s something in your safe.” She closed her eyes and nodded, desperately, and the relief that moved through her told me that whatever was in that safe was the thing she had been trying, through the fog of sedation and terror, to make me understand since the moment she woke.

Even now — barely able to breathe, hours from a stopped heart, having just confirmed that her husband had tried to kill her — Jessi Vance was not thinking about her own suffering.