“Yes,” Ariel said, and didn’t look at me to be brave. “We’re making them chase us. That’s all.”
It was a lie the way a bridge is a lie. You can still cross if you believe in it long enough.
I put Ariel’s hand on Juno’s wrist, then set Juno’s hand on the man’s sleeve. We were a chain where the links knew they were links.
“Count,” I said to Juno.
“One two three four,” she whispered, and the rain stitched itself to her voice. Good. The world is kinder when it has a job.
Ariel and I backed out, inching until the needles didn’t try to tattle. We slid into the trees and let the dark close the door. The dog’s feet made soft punctuation along the creek bed. I gave the handler a breadcrumb I hated: a heel scuff on a rock and a palm smear where a man might have slipped. He’d take it andspend his next five minutes there, which was five minutes our two under the lean-to got to keep being people.
We moved into the open on purpose. Not stupid-open. Just enough that a flashlight could feel successful. Ariel kept pace at my shoulder, breath even, eyes doing their quick work. A branch cracked somewhere not us. She didn’t flinch. I loved her in a way that made the rain feel like it had chosen the right night after all.
At the cut line the county bulldozed five winters ago and never apologized for, I took us across and then doubled back under our own footprints, then brushed the prints to fuzz. Ariel didn’t need me to explain the why of anything. She only reached up once and tugged the strip of rag I’d left, like ringing a bell for luck, and then put it back exactly the way it had been.
We ran a seam of fern that would snap back after us and erase. The world narrowed to breath, wet fabric, the weight of my blade against my ankle, the tug in my forearm where the fence had opinions. Ariel checked it with a fingertip and made a face. I shrugged like pain was a roommate I could ignore. She didn’t buy it and shifted one step left to take more brush on her, not me. I let her. Love is taking the hit and also letting the person you love take the hit when it keeps you both upright.
Noise rose ahead, human, steady, stupid. Not the search line. A generator thumped somewhere near the service road, easy confidence in every stroke. A second noise threaded over it, thin and insect mean. I didn’t have to see the drone to know it was up. You can hear batteries when you’ve watched enough nights go wrong.
Ariel heard it in the same breath. She grimaced. “Eyes,” she said, not quite a word.
“Yeah.”
We cut into the creek again, not because water hides you from cameras, it doesn’t, but because it puts trees between you and math you can’t win. The drone passed and the woods lit upin brief slices as some idiot swept IR like a flashlight instead of letting sensors work. Good. The dumber a man is, the more patterns he leaves for me to write over.
We crouched behind a root ball while the sweep made its lazy circle. Ariel rested her forehead against my shoulder for exactly one breath. Not romance. Calibration. Two compasses setting north.
“Two more drops,” I said. “Then we pull them east of the ridge and take the heat with us.”
She nodded. “Then we come back.”
“Then we come back,” I said, and meant it even though the drone’s whine felt like a hand on the back of my neck.
The generator coughed and settled. The dog called from the creek bed, and someone answered with that low praise again, the kind that keeps animals loyal and men in trouble. I stood, every joint telling on me, and pointed us into the thicker dark where trees held the sky down. We let the noise roll past. We let our people be small and uninteresting under a fallen roof. We made ourselves bigger and shinier than we should have.
And then we moved, because stillness is a kind of signal too.
We moved, and they bled for every step.
