A black-and-white image of a teenage girl standing on stone steps beneath bare winter trees. She could not have been older than fourteen. Her hair was braided severely. Her dress was too formal for her age. Her expression was stranger than fear, because fear at least belonged to the present. This looked older. This looked like a girl who had already learned that adults could organize cruelty until it resembled duty.
Written in ink on the back were six words.
She ran with her own blood.
Elena closed her eyes.
Then she called the one person in America she trusted to believe a story before it became respectable.
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