“Then get up.”
He doesn’t offer a hand. He doesn’t ask if I need a minute. He just stands there, vibrating with tension, waiting for me to stop being a liability.
Anger flares, hot and sudden. It burns through the exhaustion.
“We left the truck,” I say, pushing myself up. My knee throbs, a sharp, hot needle of pain. “We left a working vehicle because you saw a crow.”
“We left a coffin.”
“You don’t know that. You guessed.”
“I calculated.”
“You guessed based on a bird. That’s not tactics, Halo. That’s superstition.”
He steps into my space. The air between us compresses. He smells of pine sap and cold sweat.
“Listen to me,” he says, his voice low and hard. “You live in a world of laws. Cause and effect. Evidence and verdicts. That world is gone. Out here, you survive on instinct. When the hair on your arms stands up, you move. When the birds stop singing, you hide. If you wait for proof, you’re dead.”
“I just want to know if we’re walking for a reason.”
“We’re walking to stay alive.” He turns back to the slope. “Ridge line is another hundred yards. We rest there.”
He starts climbing again.
I stare at his back. The width of his shoulders under the tactical jacket. The way he carries the heavy pack as if it weighs nothing.
I hate him a little bit.
I hate that he’s right about my world being gone. I hate that I’m dependent on him. I hate that I want to curl up in the leaves and sleep until this nightmare ends.
Dead lawyers don’t win cases.
The memory of his voice pushes me forward.
I grit my teeth against the pain in my knee. I dig my fingers into the freezing mud.
And I climb, but the ridge line offers no comfort. Just wind.
It cuts through my sweater, biting into my skin. The sweat on my back turns to ice. I’m shivering so hard my teeth chatter, a relentless click-click-click inside my skull.
Diego drops his pack near a cluster of boulders. “Down,” he says. “Keep a low profile.”
I collapse against the rock. The stone is freezing, but it blocks the wind.
“Drink.” He tosses me a water bottle.
My hands shake as I unscrew the cap. I drink too fast, the water hitting my empty stomach like a stone.
Diego isn’t drinking. He’s lying on his stomach at the edge of the ridge, binoculars pressed to his eyes. He’s watching the valley below. Watching the road we left behind.
I pull my knees to my chest, trying to conserve heat.
“See anything?” I ask.
“Wait.”
Minutes tick by. Five. Ten.
