“The valley whiskey?” Pete asks.
“Please,” I say.
He pours it and puts the glass in front of me. He goes back to whatever he was doing, which is thecorrect response and the reason I like this pub. He doesn’t hover.
I drink the whiskey and look at the room in my assessing way. I let the noise of it wash over me. Three tables occupied. Two men at the far end of the bar who’ve been here long enough to have the comfortable stillness of regulars. A couple near the window. The low murmur of a television mounted above the bar, which is showing something I’m not paying attention to.
The whiskey is smooth.
I think about Archer’s hands, which is a memory that keeps popping into my head which I’ve decided I’m allowed to do because processing recent events is a legitimate cognitive activity. I think about Jack’s face after the maze.You’d be surprised.The infuriating cocky confidence of it. Pun intended.
The whiskey is gone before I realize it. Pete moves to pour another and I’m about to say yes when the television changes from ambient background noise to something that requires attention, the swell of a news program transitioning into a segment.
I don’t look up immediately.
Ishouldhave looked up immediately.
“—police are still urgently searching for Lola Wilson, twenty-four, last seen in the tri-state area following the alleged robbery of First Commerce Bank in—”
I look up.
My face is on the screen.
Not the auburn-haired version, not the SweetwaterValley version. The before version, the security camera version, the version that has been on three news cycles and which I have been successfully not-thinking about for the better part of a week. Grainy. Familiar.Mine.
My stomach drops.
My heart hammers up a storm.
I breathe very carefully and keep my face neutral. I do not look at Pete and I do not look at the two men at the far end of the bar. I conduct an extremely rapid assessment of who in this pub has been looking at the television in the last thirty seconds.
Pete: facing away, restocking something under the bar.
The couple by the window: facing each other, not the screen.
The two regulars at the far end: one is looking at his phone. The other… The other is looking at the screen. He’s not looking at me. He’s looking at the screen and then he looks at his phone and then he looks at the screen again. I watch his face do the calculation that I have been dreading for a week—the comparison, the assessment, the—
He looks up.
He looks at the bar.
I am already off the stool.
Not running. I do not run. I stand, I put money on the bar, and I turn toward the door with the even pace of someone normal who has finished their drink and is leaving because they’ve finished their drink.
My pulse is a speeding train.
The door.
The cool night air of Main Street.
I am outside and I am walking. Still not running, running is noticed, running is remembered. I am heading toward the pack house because the exit calculation has come back online with full force and I need to be somewhere I am shielded. Somewhere I am protected.
* * *
I am positioned on the couch in the pack’s home with my legs tucked under me and Tristan’s extremely good tea in my hands. I have not said a word about why I am here. I’m sure they can smell the panic in my scent but nobody has mentioned it. Jack’s elbow is two inches from my knee, and I have been here for four hours.
I notice this at ten o’clock.
