Page 106 of Fixed Asset

“I’m not a fan of cemeteries in general,” I told her.

“So you’d never go on one of those ghost tours of an old graveyard.”

That was a hell to the no!

“Hard pass.”

I stayed well away from the tombs as we walked the dirt path toward the village.

“How much farther?”

I was impressed Calista hadn’t asked sooner. Although she hadn’t complained once since her initial squabble about coming with us.

“About twenty minutes. But in three hundred meters we’ll hit a street with houses.”

“Pete said the airport was hot,” she unnecessarily reminded me.

I hadn’t forgotten what Pete had relayed from Shep, nor had I forgotten the part about Shep telling Pete we’d have backup. Which was both good and bad. The good was obvious, the bad was I didn’t know who the backup was or where they were, and with no phone and no comms I couldn’t shoot first, ask questions later.

“We’ll get as close as we can and wait.”

“Were you in the military?”

Her question came from left field, but I got it. This wasn’t my first long walk in enemy territory. Some of those conversations had been off-the-wall strange. Others had been informative. There was something about trekking through the desert with thirty pounds of kit on with your mortality top of mind—not knowing if you’d be returning back to post with your team, or worse, the person next to you wouldn’t—that loosened your lips. It had also been a way to cut through some of the tension.

“Yeah, Army.”

“Good thing you didn’t go with the Navy,” she teased.

“Right, I would’ve gone AWOL the first time I got assigned to a carrier group. You’re a journalist,” I prompted.

There was a moment of hesitation before she answered. A moment I didn’t quite understand.

“Yeah.”

One word, no elaboration.

“Do you like it?”

“It’s a means to an end.”

Her sister.

I changed the subject. “Do you know where you’ll go after here?”

“You mean since I can’t go back to the US?” she asked, but didn’t wait for confirmation. “Probably Canada.”

If I was wanted for murder, Canada wouldn’t be my first choice, but to each their own.

The first house of the neighborhood—if you could call it that—we had to walk through came into view. I stopped to get my bearings; Calista did the same beside me. The village was lit up to my far right. A pier jutted out into the bay with a bright light at the end of it. In front of us, there were fifteen structures on the road we needed to travel. Behind ten of those homes was a steep hill. The other side of the street had five homes spaced a good distance apart. There was no good way to do this. We couldn’t skirt the town. The terrain to my left became too extreme.

I had yet to decide the best way to get around the houses unseen when four dark figures appeared on the path in front of us.

Fuck.

“Down,” I clipped.

Calista immediately dropped.