“Good,” she says.
“Grace—”
She steps out of the entrance and down onto the slope, into my space, and puts one finger against my chest. Her eyes have gone the clear sky-blue that tells me she means business.
“My mother trained me to be nobody. Don’t be seen, don’t be remembered. I was so good at it that when somebody hung a murder on me, there wasn’t one person in the world who could stand up and say,that isn’t her. That’s what disappearing bought me.” Her voice stays level, and her finger doesn’t. It’s pressing hard enough to whiten at the nail. “I have been vanishing my whole life, Decker, and someone is down there right now, sending people to die. If I can help stop them, that’s what I’m going to do.” She pulls a breath in slowly. “You told me once I’d answer for what I did. I want to. Now.”
“You’d be safer—”
“Don’t.” One word, and my mouth snaps shut on what I was going to say. “You don’t get to bury me for my own good. That’s whattheydo.”
The wind moves between us. The bear is a dead weight in me, hauling back toward the dark behind her, toward the fur and the scent and what we’ve had these last few days. I stand there holding his leash and mine and hers. The last one is not mine to hold.
She’s right. That’s the whole problem.
“Pack,” I say. “We’re gone before midday.”
I go past her into the den and start shutting down.
The stove first. She washes the two cups in the pool passage while I break the gear off the pegs. When she comes back, she dries them on my shirt tail and sets them on the shelf, close together, the way they’ve sat for years and never meant anything. She looks at them a second longer than the job takes. Neither of us says anything.
The blanket gets rolled. The fur stays. The cot goes back to being a frame with nothing soft about it. Every warm thing we made in here comes apart in minutes, and the cold replaces it.
She shoulders the small pack. I take the big one, and the lantern goes dark on the shelf. The den is stone again. That’s all.
Outside, the morning is bright and the day is fine. The bear fights me every step downhill.
Grace moves ahead of me down the slope, sure-footed, chin forward, already halfway to the fight she’s chosen. Twice I catch myself standing on the trail with no memory of stopping, facing the cave.
The truck sits in the trees where I left it. She climbs in without looking back at the mountain.
I look back enough for both of us.
Then I start the engine and take her down toward the place that holds her answer and her enemy in the same set of rooms. And I sit with my secrets stuck in my chest, the bear leaning up the road the whole way.
I know what he’s fighting for. What he wants.
I just don’t know if it’s a battle we’re going to win.
Chapter 30
Grace
The gate comes up out of the trees before I’m ready for it. On the mountain, choosing this was simple. I stood on a slope with the wind in my face and told the man I’ve been sleeping with to bring me here so I could help, and I meant every word.
The words are still true. It’s my body that’s gone soft on them. Somewhere in the last stretch of road, I started twisting my hands in my lap, and my mouth has dried out. The closer the wire fence gets, the more I shrink in on myself.
Decker doesn’t say anything. He watched me go quiet a few miles back and left it alone.
The guard at the gate leans down to the window, opens his mouth for the standard line, and sees me. Recognition crosses his face, and then his expression goes flat. He steps back and speaks into his radio with his eyes on me the whole time.
My magic rises on its own. That’s what it’s for. Slip the attention off, be a shadow in his memory, be nobody. It would be so easy, and for a second I want it so badly my skin prickles.
I push it away.
I came here to be seen. That was the whole point.
Nobody tells you how vulnerable being seen makes you feel.
