Francesca was surprised that Oskar was willing to use the word hostage so openly. She wondered whether that was the way he had always seen her, or if it was a spur-of-the-moment decision that he had made when he realized she was just as intimidating as she was reputed to be.
She had not been willing to act as if she owed him her life, and she had made him feel like he had no power over her; deciding she was now his hostage could easily have been a rash decision that he had not thought through at all.
“You’re telling me I am a hostage like this, two weeks after you took me in?”
“Now is as good a time as any. You wanted to talk to me, and I am talking.”
Francesca was not able to read the man’s thoughts, but she was capable of reading his body language well enough, and she thought it was
