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A week! Hunter held his breath.
“Do you know where we’d go?”
Michael’s voice was muffled, as if he was moving away. Hunter only picked out random phrases. “. . . go to the bank. We need . . . quiet so he doesn’t hear us.”
So he doesn’t hear us.
Exclamation points flared in Hunter’s head. He eased forward to hear the rest.
The floor creaked.
The conversation in the kitchen came to an abrupt stop.
But he wasn’t stupid. That vise grip had closed on his chest again. He’d never been welcome here, not really. Expecting anything else was downright lunacy.
Hunter walked into the kitchen easily, as if that creak in the floor was completely innocuous and he hadn’t heard a word. Gabriel and Michael were at the table, and he expected them to look guilty, but they just looked tired. Three mugs of coffee sat on the table. One was untouched, but a carton of half-and-half sat there, along with a bowl of sugar. And Hunter’s cell phone. The light was flashing.
At least it gave him an excuse not to look at them. He wasn’t sure he could keep the feeling of betrayal off his face. Hunter dropped into a chair and glanced at the screen.
Kate.
We need to talk about last night.
That kicked his heart into action. He hit the button to clear the screen and set the phone down in favor of the coffee.
Gabriel’s words on the porch were duking it out with the conversation he’d just overheard.
No offense dude, but you weigh a f**king ton.
“Hey.” He looked across the table at Gabriel. “Thanks.”
Gabriel half shrugged and spun his mug between his hands. “I didn’t know what you wanted in it.”
“No—I mean—”
Gabriel met his eyes. “I know what you meant.”
“Did you fix my shoulder, too?”
Another half shrug, like it was nothing. “There was a lot of power in the fire. You were bleeding. It was easy.” But then he looked away. “We had to run. I couldn’t do it all the way. Hannah saw all the blood and was ready to put you on a helicopter.”
Gabriel’s voice was casual, but Hunter could hear the undercurrent of tension. Shadows underscored his eyes, punctuating his worry.
“What happened to the Guide?”
“Don’t know. Chris and Nicky pulled the rain to stop the fires, and we thought for sure he’d find us, but . . . he didn’t.”
“Yet,” Michael said. “He didn’t find us yet.”
Gabriel took a sip of coffee but didn’t say anything.
Michael glanced over at Hunter. “You look a lot better than you did last night. You all right?”
No. He felt like his world was collapsing around him. His brain was having trouble reconciling the fact that they’d saved his life with their talk about secretly leaving town, abandoning him to this mess that they were a part of.
He looked into his coffee and nodded.
“I thought about calling your mom,” Michael said. “But I was worried she’d want to come over here, and I didn’t want to put her in the line of fire.”
