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Chapter Fifteen
Thalassa.
Iheavedasigh of relief when the gates to the agriculture department opened. The sound of the helicopters blocked out everything else. My hair whipped around, stinging my face. I had been too jittery for the first scan, so it took another try to get through.
“We need a building with two exits and a roof,” Lori barked.
I jogged forward, and everyone followed. The greenhouses had roofs, but you could see through the foggy plastic. We made our way to the center of the unit when Lori stopped us and grabbed my arm.
“Not chemistry,” she said.
I turned to her and cocked my head. “Why not, Lori?”
“Not now. Not chemistry.”
I surveyed the area. There weren’t a lot of choices that didn’t leave us out in the open. “There’s a storage shed next to chemistry. It’s empty with a roof, but it doesn’t have two exits.”
She gave it a moment’s thought, then nodded. “Okay, that will have to work.”
Another scan to enter and we piled inside. The roar of the helicopters stopped as we closed the door.
The four boys crawled underneath a wooden workbench. I unfolded a cloth tarp that lay on top, and Beau pulled it down over the sides.
“It’s like a blanket fort, right, boys?” I said. I heard the shaking in my voice. Lewis gave me a thumbs up, and Lori’s boys bobbed their heads. “Not a sound, okay.” I adjusted the cloth around the table and faced Lori. “We should talk.”
She looked at the floor and rubbed her temples. “I know you aren’t military,” she confessed. “I’ve known since the first day you came into the mess hall. Dean told me, and well, it’s obvious. You don’t have the gait. At first, I found it very odd that he would tell me something that put him in a compromising position. Then we became friends. He knew we would. You know how he is. He can read people and it’s like he can predict the future.”
I let out a sputtered laugh. Lori had no idea how ironic her statement was to present company.
“Anyway, it’s become the veiled threat that we both have with each other. We both care about you and we kind of… let each other get away with things because of it. He has something on me and I have something on him. He knows I give food to the two-hundred.”
“And?” I encouraged. “And you know what about him, or is it me, or is it Sam? Is it just that I’m not military?”
“Sam?” she questioned. “Is there something else with Sam?”
I paused for too long. She pushed her neck forward and widened her eyes.
“Sam’s not my husband,” I whispered. “We are together. I have strong feelings for him, but we aren’t married.”
“Oh, well, getting your boyfriend onboard makes sense. You wouldn’t want to be alone, and you would need to be married to bring him if you were military. I get it.”
I bit my lip and inhaled slowly.
“Rowan,” Lori drawled. “What are you leaving out? How long have you been together?”
I twisted my fingers together. “Well, I’ve known him since, er, well, the day we boarded.”
“Boarded what?” Lori asked.
I shrank back away from her. “The ship.”
“The ship? This ship!”
“This very one.”
Her eyes looked like they could bulge out of her sockets. She seemed desperate to pace, but the storage unit was too small.
“He got injured on the road,” I continued. “We picked him up, and it just snowballed. I couldn’t leave him hurt, and the boys somehow got attached to an unconscious stranger. I know it sounds insane.”
