Page 38 of Pocket Wife

I pull away and turn toward the damaged console. “Can you transmit?”

Rethan rises at once. Whatever almost happened vanishes behind focus. “I will try.”

He works for several minutes, then turns toward the ridge path. “The transmitter has been disabled.”

“Disabled in the crash?”

“No.”

I shut my eyes briefly.

When I open them, a faint reflection moves across the crawler’s cracked window. High above, near the road, something small and black lifts from behind the rocks.

A drone.

It hovers just long enough to see us looking back.

Then it turns toward Westline, leading Helix exactly where we were going.

CHAPTER 16

RETHAN

The drone vanishes toward Westline like a predator returning to its nest, and I understand two facts with absolute clarity.

First, Helix now knows their destination.

Second, Lucy Hartwell is still bleeding.

The injuries are not life-threatening—a cut inside her mouth where she bit down during the crash, deep bruising along her ribs from the harness, and a shallow graze at her temple where flying glass sliced her. Yet each mark ignites something fierce and protective in me, far beyond professional duty. I force my gaze away from her before the emotion can show.

“We cannot continue to Westline,” I say quietly.

Lucy is already retrieving the sealed evidence case, one arm held protectively against her injured side. Mud streaks her face and clothes. “The drone is heading there. That means the depot and those records matter. We can’t just abandon them.”

“It means Helix wants us to follow— injured, on foot, straight into ground they are likely already securing. We would be walking into a trap.”

“So we hide and give up?” Her voice carries exhaustion but also that unyielding fire I’ve come to admire.

“We survive first. Then we choose our path with clear minds and full strength.”

She levels a narrow, stubborn look at me. “You make strategic retreat sound philosophical.”

“It is strategic.”

“It is annoying.”

“Yes.”

That earns a brief, unwilling smile from her. It fades as the first heavy raindrops strike the dust around the wrecked crawler. The sky has darkened to bruised violet, thunder rolling in the distance. We have to move.

I consult the regional topography I memorized before the journey. “There is an old survey shelter eight hundred meters north. Stone roof, manual door, no active power grid. It will shield us from scans and the storm.”

Lucy squints up the slope through the increasing rain. “You know that from studying a map once?”

“I studied the entire region thoroughly before travel.”

“Of course you did.” She hands me the evidence case. “Fine. Lead the way, Scholar.”