“Be careful,” I said. “Don’t take risks. If someone’s already affected, you can’t help them.”
“I know that.” His gruff voice softened slightly. “Not my first rodeo, girl.”
Trent handed Dutch a protein bar from his own supplies. “Your blood sugar will drop from the injury. Eat this before you start the truck.”
Dutch took it without argument, tucking it into his pocket.
We walked him to the door. The night air bit with cold when Dutch pulled it open, stars starting to sparkle in the darkening sky. He stepped onto the porch, then turned back to face us.
“Lock up after me. Don’t open for anyone but me or Trent’s guys.” He tapped his jacket where the tracker was hidden. “I’ll be back before dawn. If not...” He didn’t finish the sentence.
“We’ll find you,” Trent promised.
Dutch nodded once, then disappeared into the darkness beyond the cabin’s small circle of light. I watched until I couldn’t see him anymore, just the faint outline of his figure moving through the trees, heading down toward the road where he’d hidden his truck.
Trent closed the door, sliding the heavy wooden bar into place and checking the locks. “He’s tough. He’ll be okay.”
I wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince me or himself.
“Do you think there are others?” I asked, then thought back to Jett’s confusion at his friends’ behavior in the store today. I answered my own question: “Never mind. I know there are.”
Trent moved to the window, peering out at the darkness. “But that’s not the real reason he went back.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s buying us time.” Trent’s face was grim in the lamplight. “Distracting them, maybe drawing them away from the cabin. He knows they’re looking for us, not him.”
I stared at the closed door, the weight of Dutch’s sacrifice settling over me. I’d known the man for six months, yet he was risking his life for us. For Sophia.
“He’s a good man.” I moved to check on Sophia on the couch. Thankfully, she was still soundly asleep. She looked sovulnerable there, so impossibly small against everything trying to hurt her.
“We should move her to the bedroom,” Trent said, his eyes lingering on Sophia’s small form.
I nodded, though the thought of putting her in another room made my chest tighten. “I don’t want her to wake up alone.”
“She won’t,” he assured me. “We’re right here. We can leave the door open.”
Together we moved her, Trent lifting her gently while I carried the blankets. She stirred but didn’t wake as he laid her on the narrow bed in the smaller of Dutch’s two rooms. I tucked the blankets around her, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. Her breathing remained deep and even, exhaustion keeping her under despite everything.
I sank onto the edge of the bed beside her, suddenly overwhelmed by the day’s events. My body ached with fatigue, but my mind wouldn’t stop racing. Langston had found us. Once again, he’d found us, just when I thought we were finally free. I’d spent so many hours looking over my shoulder, jumping at shadows, trying to convince myself I was being paranoid. But I hadn’t been paranoid enough.
“You should get some rest,” Trent said from the doorway.
I shook my head. “I can’t.”
He crossed the small room, sinking down beside me on the bed, careful not to disturb Sophia. In the dim light filtering through the doorway, I could see the lines of exhaustion etched into his face, the four parallel scratches Beth had left across his cheek, the way he favored his left shoulder. I remembered the crack of sound when he dislocated it to fit out the window and winced, lightly touching his arm.
“Does your shoulder hurt?”
He rotated the shoulder and tried to hide his grimace. “Not the first time I’ve dislocated it. Won’t be the last. It’ll heal.”
I studied his profile, so familiar and yet somehow new. Six months had changed us both. “You need to rest, too.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. None of us are fine.” I kept my voice low to avoid waking Sophia, but I couldn’t keep the edge from it. “Langston is using mind control technology on an entire town to get to us. That’s not fine by any definition.”
Trent’s mouth tightened. “We’ll stop him.”
