AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Let’s get back to base,” she whispered as the scream died out.
“Great idea.” He took her hand and led her back to the light.
Chapter 21
Despite the army thatTucker had assembled, they all slogged out of the woods in the morning having seen zero toads. Most people had also heard the coyote, but that was all anyone had to report.
She climbed into the van feeling defeated and she didn’t have the patience for Craig complaining all the way back to Hill City about how she had left him to sneak off into the woods with the local. “Please, stop talking,” she said trying not to sound as angry as she felt.
“What? I’m not allowed to talk anymore? Is this a dictatorship now?”
She rolled her eyes and tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “You’re allowed to talk, if you stop slandering me.”
“Slandering you?” he cried in exaggerated horror. “How am I slandering you?”
She knew he wasn’t worth the effort, but she was too tired to control her tongue. “If I were a man, would you be using this language, saying that I snuck off with Tucker?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “No, you wouldn’t. So that means you have a problem with my gender, and that means that I have a problem with how much you are talking.” She snapped her mouth shut before she could say something worse.
It worked. Craig paused his diatribe, and she heard a muffled chuckle from Martin in the back. The three of them stayed quiet for a while, and when Craig did start talking again, she managed to ignore him.
By the time she got behind the safety of her hotel door, she was beyond exhausted. She took a hot shower, which felt great, but she didn’t have the energy to stay in there for long. She thought about Wolfgang briefly as she ate her protein bar but then decided she didn’t even have the energy for him. Her eyes were burning as she crawled between the sheets.
She was just about to drift off to dream about scarlet-striped toads and banshee-coyotes when her phone beeped. She opened one eye and looked at it, wondering if she should ignore it. She had reported back to Sarah like she usually did in the morning, so fearing that it was her, she picked up her phone.
It was Wolfgang. This perked her up a little. “I just got back from work,” he wrote. “Did you work last night?”
She wrote that she did and then added a string ofZs to show that she was tired.
“I can let you get to bed then.”
“No, no,” she sent before thinking it through. “How was your night?”
“Actually, pretty good. I’m working with this person who kind of annoyed me at first, but last night was actually pleasant. Almost fun, even.”
Something that felt too much like jealousy pinged her in the heart. “Is this someone a woman?” She added a silly emoji face to show him that she was just messing around, though that wasn’t entirely true.
“She is, but it’s not like that.”
