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"Don't know. I guess you just aren't that scary." I tap my fingers on my knees while I consider how to get him to tell me what I want to know—which is everything about him. "Do you trust me?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Then please answer my questions." I look straight into his eyes. "Do you have a family? Friends? Anybody who might've missed you over the past eight months?"
He freezes. His eyes flick left, right, up, down as if he's contemplating an escape route. But I know he won't try to run. My intuition tells me so.
Gabriel seems more tense now, maybe because my question brought up bad memories. But he said before that he was sucked into the Echo before the really bad stuff started happening onEarth. He can't suffer from memories of the horrible things Echo creatures did to his loved ones.
"How long has this camp existed?" Gabriel asks.
"Answer my question first."
The stubborn man flattens his lips and glares at me, but I ignore his behavior. Frightened men get angry much more easily than women do. Finally, he blows out a breath. "I didn't have any family or friends before the apocalypse. That means nobody is looking for me."
"I'm sorry. Being alone is scary." I bite my lip for a moment before I can talk myself into sharing the information he wants to hear. "Sanctuary has existed for eight months. People tend to stumble onto it without knowing how they found us. Getting dumped here isn't the usual way of entering Sanctuary."
"So, I got special treatment. How nice."
The man seems incapable of speaking without being sarcastic.
He abruptly turns more serious, his gaze boring into me. "What was it like on this side of the apocalypse? I mean, when the Echo first hit? I know how things looked from the other side, but not here."
"I don't know what it was like. Amnesia, remember?"
"Oh. Right." He fidgets in his chair, his face pinching up a little. "It's been so long since I was in this world that I just…wanted to know what I missed, I guess."
"The cities are destroyed, mostly. That's what I heard."
Grant marches into the tent and tosses a pile of clothes to Gabriel. "Get changed. Then meet us outside."
He leaves the tent.
And Gabriel smirks at me. "Sticking around to watch me get naked?"
"Oh, no, I—" Jumping up, I glance around because I suddenly can't remember what I was going to do. Then I remember and clear my throat. "I'll wait outside."
I rush out of the tent and stop just past the doorway. Why did I get flustered just because he smirked at me? It's ridiculous.
After a minute or two, Gabriel saunters out wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes. "Where to now, Lady Godiva?"
"Will you please stop calling me that?"
"No." He shoves his hands into his jeans pockets. "Where are we meeting the Three Stooges?"
"The what?"
He raises his brows. "Well, I guess you wouldn't remember those movies since you have amnesia. The Three Stooges were a bunch of morons."
"My friends are not morons."
Grant, Erin, and Dax approach us. But Grant takes the lead in the conversation. "Okay, it's time to have an upfront discussion. We're trusting you, Gabriel, so don't abuse that faith."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
He says that in a sarcastic tone, but something in his eyes makes me think that's baloney. He told me he had no one before the apocalypse. That must've been a lonely existence, and his life after the Echo had to be much worse.
"Gabriel means 'thank you'," I say, "and he'll do his best to become a contributing member of Sanctuary."
