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You didn’t let him.

In my peripheral, Mal rubs his flank, a grimace creasing his face. More guilt swamps me and I feel as though I might be sick. But I know it’s the low numbers flashing red on my watch. Numbers I can’t stabilise while I am this stressed.

Still, I try.

I leave Mal to the smoky sky and go inside Poet’s house. Move around his kitchen in a daze, raiding the supplies he’s stashed there for me. Nuts. Juice. The same sweets he gave me the night we found each other at the side of the road.

That’s not what happened. He found you.

The reminder dizzies me. I lean heavily against the counter and that’s where Mal comes up on me.

“You need someone nicer than me with you?”

I almost laugh. “You are nice, Mal.”

“Aye. Let me know when it starts.”

We stare at each other in the dark—I have not turned on the lights. Unlike Poet, Mal seems to suit the shadows of the night, but not a night like this. Never a night like this. “Thank you for being here.”

Emotion flickers in Mal’s green eyes, threatening the stoicism he thinks I need. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else right now.”

Because he is as worried as I am and I find perverse comfort in that. Solidarity, perhaps.

I steady my numbers and get Mal to eat something too. In silence. In the eternal dark. I am so grateful he’s here. That he is quiet in the face of his own concern for his friend. That he is a solid wall of Gallagher for me to lean on, even with the mark of my fist bruising his body. That he is more aware than I am that a world beyond this kitchen exists.

All through the night, I spend every passing second straining for any sign or sound of Poet returning. Every creaking pipe in the old house, every rumble of distant engines has my pulse climbing into my ears before crashing back down again. I can’t unclench my muscles. I become so fixated on the kitchen window I do not believe ghosts can slip past me. If someone—anyone—comes to this farm tonight, I will hear them coming before they have even set off.

Or, that is what I think.

I am wrong.

Mal straightens suddenly, gaze snapping to the open front door. My head snaps round a beat too late and a figure breaches the doorway.

Dav.

Ash clings to his clothes and he’s lost the cap he usually wears. He’s stooped like a man his age should be and his bronze-brown eyes glimmer with concern as he scans the dark kitchen. “Where’s the lad?”

He speaks directly to me. But I have no answers.

“Cutting firebreaks,” Mal says. “Where’s your hat?”

“Lost it when the barn fell in.”

“It fell in on your head?”

Dav nods.

“How fucking terrible,” Mal deadpans, and something like amusement crosses his face. Dark humour without a trace of sympathy when I happen to know Dav and his wife live in a house Mal bought at auction to keep them off the streets. Then he exhales roughly. “Give it an hour, then we’ll go out and find them our-fucking-selves⁠—”

The sentence dies as bright light sweeps the kitchen ceiling. Blue lights. They flash through the windows and every nerve in my body hits high alert.

Despite the instant tension in my limbs, I am in motion before I know it.

I charge outside.

Vehicles pack the lane.

So many vehicles.