Page 34 of Fated, Allegedly

I've never been so happy to be publicly humiliated.

"I'm sampling…"

"You're trespassing on a permitted operation and I'm not doing this argument with the owner." He turns to the man with the radio and touches his hat brim, the picture of a rural bureaucrat apologizing for a colleague. "Sorry about this. State's had her out here three weeks and she can't read a map. You want to file, file with the department, they're used to it."

The man looks at Nash, then at the uniform, and the truck, and the badge that isn't expired.

"Get her off my site," he says.

Two miles down the fire road I start shaking and I can't stop.

"You came early."

"I came at twenty-nine." Nash's hands are white on the wheel. "Erin. Who was that?"

"I know he doesn't get dust on his boots and he reads badges before faces, but a name, I've no idea." I press my palms against my eyes. "Six trackers are on. Both lowboys, the reel truck, the crane carrier, the bowser, and the reefer. Nash, there's a running reefer truck in that yard and it isn't full of rock."

"And the last one?"

I open my hand. The seventh tracker is still in it, unstuck, because I ran out of yard.

"I got greedy," I say. "I read a nameplate I didn't need to read."

He pulls the truck over onto the shoulder and turns to me, and I brace for it.

"What did it say?"

"Stage three of three," I tell him. "Source horizon draw. It's not a research plant, Nash. The thing on that flatbed is the last component, and it's going down that tunnel tonight."

He puts the truck in gear and drives, and after a mile he reaches over and takes my hand without looking, and I hold on.

22

NASH

Caleb takes the maps off me at four p.m. and tells me to go away.

"Everything's staged. The Kettering boys have the boats, Loon River's got the tunnel approach walked twice, and your mother has more field dressings than a county hospital." He puts a hand flat on my chest when I go to argue. "Nash. You've been on your feet since Tuesday. You go down that raise like this and you'll get somebody killed. Take some time for you, that's your Beta talking and it's not a suggestion."

So I take Erin up the Cutter drainage to my grandfather's shack, and neither of us pretends it's about the walk. The stove's already warm because Wyatt's been using the place as a relay post, and there's a jar of my mother's arnica on the table with no note, which is her all over. Erin sits down on the bunk and starts laughing and can't stop.

"Sorry. Sorry." She wipes her eyes. "Your mother left us medicated massage oil and I've had four hours of sleep since Thursday and it's the funniest thing that's ever happened."

"She'd say it's for your shoulder."

"My shoulder's fine. My shoulder is the only part that's fine." She flops backward and stares at the boards. "Nash. Do you know what I did this morning? I lied to a security contractor about a fictional child who likes cranes."

"You got seven trackers fitted."

"Six. One's in my jacket pocket like a shameful souvenir."

I sit on the bunk and pull her boots off, one and then the other, and set them by the stove. She goes quiet while I do it. When I look up her eyes have changed.

"That's a domestic thing," she says.

"It's a dry-boots thing."

She sits up and takes my face in both hands and kisses me, unhurried this time, nothing in it about dying. I kiss her back the same way, unhurried, and let my hands slide under her shirt. I peel it up and off; she lifts her arms, and the fabric falls away. I map along her ribs with my palms, then lower, unhooking her trousers and working them down her hips. She kicks them free. Bare on the bunk, she reaches for my shirt and pulls it over my head. My belt, the buttons, she shoves the trousers down until I can kick them off. My cock is already hard, heavy against my stomach. She wraps her fingers around it and strokes from base to tip, slow. I groan into her mouth and ease her onto her back only long enough to kiss down her throat, her collarbone, taking one nipple into my mouth and sucking while my hand touches between her legs.