12
CAP
I should’ve waited for backup. The thought sat like grit behind my teeth.
By the time the trees silvered with dawn, the ridge stopped feeling endless. Dawn found the cave grudgingly, a gray seep more than a light. The fire had fallen to a red eye and a memory. Ariel slept with her cheek under my collarbone, breath warm. Slow, one leg thrown over mine like she’d had to convince her body I wasn’t going anywhere. I lay still. Counted the new day by the noises it made, drip from the lip of the rock, a jay getting brave, water running its errands downhill.
Outside, the woods wore what the night had done to them. Branch tips jeweled with rain. Leaves tamped flat where deer had chosen not to be heroic. No boot sign close. No dog.
I eased an arm out from under her without waking the part of me that wanted to stay put. The shirt I’d wrapped around her had gone from damp to warm to useful. I set it back over her shoulders. Crawled to the mouth of the cave, let the air tell me what I hadn’t earned by watching: engines had drifted south sometime after the dogs got confused; men had argued with a map; then quiet settled because quiet always wins the argument if you give it enough time.
“Don’t leave,” she said, voice sanded and low. Not a plea; a reading of the room.
“I’m not,” I said, and meant it.
She pushed up onto her elbows. Hair a wild curtain. Mouth kissed raw. The sight walked into me and sat down, polite as a church lady with a knife in her purse. Her eyes went to the opening, the world beyond. “We should move.”
“We will.” I nodded at the fire. “We find water, we boil. Ten minutes buys hours.”
She slid her feet into her socks. Boots, grimacing at the cold, then kissed my shoulder like it was the price I’d set on getting up. We quenched the last ember and buried the stain. The cave gave us back to the day.
The creek ran to our right, thinner now, honest about its size. I set a tin to catch and burn and showed her how to purl flame into wet twigs without asking them to be something they aren’t. She learned fast. She always does. When the water rolled, we dropped tabs and waited while the chemical did its quiet work.
“Lesson one,” I said. “Water and fire before courage.”
“I thought courage came first.”
“Courage is a luxury. Warmth is a plan.” I tipped my chin at the trees. “And hunger is a bully. Don’t negotiate with it.”
She smiled at me over steam and made a face when she drank because tabs taste like honesty, necessary and sour. We ate what we had: the last quarter of the granola bar, a slim strip of jerky I’d forgotten was jammed behind a stitched seam. She tore it in half and gave me the bigger piece. I pretended not to notice. We’re both bad at pretending and we both keep trying.
“Plan?” she asked.
“Stash the survivors where no badge or patch will trip over them by accident,” I said. “There’s a couple down off the ridge, retired, mean to politicians, soft on strays. She plays cards withAmanda’s aunt. He keeps a shotgun he never needs because his stare does the work.”
“You trust them?”
“I trust how much they hate men who hurt women. I trust that one call from the club will make their porch a church.” I flicked eyes toward the north. “We’ll move our two there in two jumps. Then you and I pull south and get small again.”
“And then?”
“And then we go back,” I said, because the vow had found my throat and decided to live there. “Sunshine didn’t tell us to run so we could stay gone.”
She nodded, eyes going wet around the edges without spilling. “Good.”
We cleaned what we’d used, because the woods remember sloppiness the way people do. We took the creek a little way just to erase the idea of us being where we had been, then cut off on a deer path that knew how not to be obvious. The sky brightened to the color of a bruise that claims it's not a bruise.
I left the first breadcrumb for Wrecker where the path split around a storm-fallen pine, a thing only our people would read. No one else would care about. The Battalion has tells the world thinks are litter. I twisted a pull tab through two pine needles. Wedged them under bark at shoulder height, not shiny enough to catch a dummy’s eye, too deliberate to be an accident if you know the code. Two needles crossed meant friends ahead. The aluminum bent to a little V meant quiet at the split; take the left.
Ariel watched my hands, then the tree. “He’ll see it.”
“He was born seeing it.” I tucked the bark back into place and brushed fir dust from my knuckles. “Wrecker hates being late. I left him a reason not to be.”
We worked back to the layup. The needles covered what we’d been. The shed looked like it had never met us. Good. Juno opened her eyes at the scrape of my boot and closed them againbecause shoulders recognized me before her face did. Juno had a new steadiness to her silence. The hoarse man’s voice had gone to a whisper only to keep from being rude.
“Ready?” I asked them. “We move slow. We don’t get curious.”
Juno nodded. The man mouthed thanks, and I shook my head and let the word die on purpose. Thanks, are for later and not for this.
