Hawk comes and sits on the ottoman across from me like we're strangers again. Like he's a ranger debriefing a rescue. His hands are between his knees. His eyes are on the floor.
"I'll send your pack down behind the deputy."
"Okay."
"Your Pelican case is sealed. AG office has the chain of custody paperwork."
"Okay."
"You need anything."
"No."
Silence.
"Delilah."
"Don't."
"I want you to be okay."
"I will be."
I say it like it's true. I say it like I am a woman who drove off rigs in the Sonoran at twenty-four with a broken air conditionerand no spare tire and made it to Tucson by sundown, because I am. I have been okay in much worse than a heartbreak.
It still feels like glass in my chest.
The deputy's truck pulls up outside at 11:47.
Hawk carries my bag. Puts it in the bed of the truck. Helps me into the passenger seat, a hand at my elbow, a hand at the small of my back, and every place his fingers touch me wants to stay.
He shuts the door.
Steps back.
He looks at me through the window and his face is the ranger's face, the one the world gets, and I memorize it because I don't know what I'm going to do with any of this later and memorizing is what a scientist does when she can't do anything else.
The truck pulls away.
I don't look back.
I'm a liar. I look back once. He's standing at the end of the drive with his hands on his hips and Ghost pressed against his leg, and I watch until the pine curves and I can't see him anymore.
Reno is three hours. The deputy is kind. He offers me water. He tells me the safe house has a yard.
I give him the right answers.
Inside I am doing inventory.
Broken ankle healing. Ribs healing. Concussion resolved.
A hole under my sternum where a man used to put his forehead.
My notebook is in my lap. I flip to the back page where I started a list on day three because it made him ask what I was writing and I wouldn't tell him.
The list's title is Things Hawk Does That Ruin Me.
Seventeen entries.
