Page 63 of Flames and Blood

Kent is standing at the front of the truck with a fuel can in his hand and his mouth open.

Meyer straightens his collar. He takes his time about it.

“I was just going to move her across,” he says. “She’s fine.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“It was the adrenaline,” I say. “It’s been a long night.”

“Sure.” He picks up the bag he dropped and slings it over his shoulder. “I’ve watched you work this entire mission, Crowe. I watched you take a round through the side on that mountain and then check your watch. Your hands are shaking right now.” He walks past me toward the other vehicle. “You just lost it. Think about that.”

And he leaves it there, which is the only reason I’m still able to work with him.

I stand in the dark with my hands at my sides.

I put a man against a truck for touching her. Meyer. Who cleared a hallway for me an hour ago. I’d have put him through the side panel if he’d been slower to stop moving.

I know exactly what I did. I can’t explain why I did it.

Stop thinking about it.

I can’t. I get in the vehicle.

We’re under cover forty minutes before the sun.

It’s a rented house at the end of a dirt road, paid for a month in advance under a name that isn’t mine, with the shutters already screwed closed on the inside from the last time I used it. Two rooms and a kitchen. One bed.

I put her in it.

“Gideon…” She’s got a fistful of my sleeve, and she doesn’t let go when I straighten up. I work her fingers open one at a time. Her hand is still hot, and it closes on the cuff again as soon as it’s free. I let it, and stand there like that for a while.

“How long are we staying?” Kent asks from the doorway.

“Until she can walk.”

“And then?”

“Then we’re a long way from that valley before anyone works out where we went.”

He nods and goes to check the back door.

I get my sleeve out of her hand.

“Gideon Crowe,” she says.

Her eyes are shut. Her voice is thick and slow and mostly gone.

“You said you’d come back,” she says. “And you did.”

Then she’s asleep, and I’m standing beside the bed in a shuttered room with my hand still half out toward her.

What the fuck are you doing, Crowe?

Chapter 15

Kalli