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Her silence stretched on.
“At least you’re finally being honest with yourself,” Hayden muttered after a few more minutes of quiet had passed between them.
With no verbal comeback popping into her mind, she punched his arm instead. He didn’t flinch, just rocked a tiny bit back, probably just to appease her, and then continued right on driving in silence.
? ♥ ?
Half a day’s drive went by mostly in silence. Not that Hayden minded. He enjoyed the silence.
Maybe it wasn’t quite the silence he enjoyed, but the ability to relax. To not think of what to say next, to not analyze somebody’s words, to not focus on keeping his expression neutral and his reactions hidden. Instead, he simply sat back, drove their vehicle, and listened to the hum of nature.
Cold air filled the jeep, burning his face and hands and undoubtedly Anna’s as well, but turning on the heat would waste far too much gas. As it was, they were at a quarter tank and dropping fast. He only hoped to find an abandoned spot for them to rest before the vehicle crapped out and they had to walk the rest of the way.
They pulled into an open area, an old, industrialized city that had long since been abandoned, leaving behind the trees that surrounded much of the freeway. Once proud buildings were now crumbling, littering the ground around them. Windows were shattered, broken glass spotting the streets. Nature had begun reclaiming the city for itself, with Ivy twisting and turning up decaying concrete structures and small trees poking up through cracks in the sidewalk.
Hayden tried to imagine what this place had looked like before the Fall. He knew based on history lessons that it had been clean, well-kept, with tens of thousands of people bustling through the streets, and yet in his mind’s eye, he simply couldn’t picture it. When he tried, he came up blank.
The closest thing he could imagine were the main Eastern Stronghold buildings, but even that paled in comparison.
“Pull over, I want to go into that store.” Anna’s voice pulled him from his thoughts.
“What store?” He gently hit the breaks and looked around the area, trying to follow the direction her finger pointed in.
Just off the freeway they traveled on was an old, abandoned warehouse. He and his brothers had broken into plenty of them in their time to get supplies, so it wasn’t a new sight. Many had been ransacked throughout the years since the Fall, but most still had a fair bit of useable, albeit dust-covered supplies. “What do you need from there?”
“I just need something. Girl stuff.”
He gave a grunt, tired of her evasion, but turned off the freeway anyway and headed toward the broken-down building.
When they pulled into the lot, Anna immediately moved to jump out of the jeep. He put his arm across her upper chest, stopping her. “Listen,” he began. She gave him a challenging glare, but he continued on anyway. “It’s very possible we won’t be alone when we go in there. Don’t get cocky, don’t try to play your usual tricks, and stay with me until we’re out here again safely.”
She raised her brow. “So when we’re out here, I can run away again?”
He let the air out of his lungs, slowly. “Better out here than in there.” In there, they needed to be able to rely on one another. He didn’t say that, because he knew how Anna felt about putting her trust in someone else’s hands, but he hoped she understood. Something told him she did.
He reached into his bag he’d thrown into the backseat and pulled out a handgun, offering it to her. She eyed it for a moment, then took it from his hands, stuffing it into the hem of her pants and then pulling her jacket over to conceal it.
“Shall we?” she asked.
He nodded. Then the two of them were heading into the store, hands trained on their weapons in the event they needed them, but hoping they wouldn’t. Hayden didn’t like to walk into a place with his gun out if he could help it—he’d done that before, only to point a gun at a mother and child that were hiding out just trying to survive.
He’d made it up to them of course, taken them back to the Resistance, gave them food, shelter, and protection. But he’d never get the terror in the eyes of that little girl out of his mind, and so he never walked into a structure like this one with his gun up.
Hostile territory, yes. Abandoned warehouses a hundred miles from the nearest UNR stronghold, no.
The store was too big for them to do a full clearance, but it seemed to be empty. Dust coated everything, thick and heavy, and judging by the fact that their boots left prints in the heavy coating on the floor, the lack of other prints was enough reassurance. He’d be on guard, as he always was, but it seemed relatively clear.
“Lead the way,” he said to Anna.
She turned around and winked. “I love a man who lets me take charge.”
All he could do was shake his head at her sarcastic tone. It didn’t matter, because she was already moving, walking around the store hesitantly, looking down the aisles as she searched for whatever it was she needed.
She claimed it was girl stuff, but he was pretty sure she knew she wouldn’t find that in a warehouse like this one. This place was filled with tools, building supplies, and the works. She wouldn’t be finding feminine hygiene products here. But he was also pretty sure that was just a lie, so he didn’t point it out to her. If she did genuinely need that, he would happily get her some from the old convenience store he spotted across the parking lot. At the same time, he logically knew she wouldn’t need those products, likely ever, considering how the UNR initiated new female soldiers into their ranks.
When she turned down an aisle marked for fertilizer, he knew for sure she’d been lying.
He also knew what she’d come in here for.
