"I know it is. I wouldn't have said it otherwise."
"I hate that," I say.
"I know."
He brushes my hair off my temple with the side of his thumb. The gold eyes hold mine. The bond is wide open. Behind the mesh, Fen makes a sound. It is not the whine. It is not the growl. It is —
"Jen."
The cargo box stops. Crull's rumble halts. The whole vehicle is holding its breath. The word came through the mesh. Rough. Wrecked.
He has said my name.
I cannot breathe. The bond at my sternum is the only thing keeping me upright on the floor of this truck. Thaw cannot breathe either — through the bond I feel him register that his brother has just used a coherent word for the first time since before the cell. I press my palm flat to the hollow.
"Fen," I say. Through the mesh. Quiet enough that I am not sure he can hear it. Saying it anyway, because he said mine and somebody has to say his.
Behind the mesh, "Jen." Steadier.
Then a third — and the third one is the one that breaks me, because the third one is not just my name.
"Jen. Go."
I lower my head. Through the mesh, Crull's hand tightens once against his brother's back. He has used the first word he has had in months to deliver it.
I sit in a moving truck in a forest I cannot name and a man I have been almost-bonded to uses his recovered voice for the first time to send me away from him. It is the first thing he has ever said to me. And it isgo.I let one tear fall. Just the one. I am not doing this.
Thaw feels it through the bond. He does not say anything. He just brushes my hair back again, and his hand stays.
"Okay," I say. My voice is thick. "Fen, I hear you."
Behind the mesh, a sound. A relief sound. The sound a man who has not been heard in months makes when he has finally been heard.
"Daron," Thaw says, low. "Second cache."
"On it."
"How far."
"Eight miles past the highway turn. Twelve minutes if I do not push it. Eight if I push."
"Don’t push it."
The truck rolls. Thaw's hand on my chest. Harek's hand on mine. Crull's rumble through the mesh. Fen on the other side, quiet now, his words spent.
We drive in the dark and nobody speaks.
The second cache is at the bottom of a logging road. Daron pulls off the track behind a stand of cedar and the low-beam headlight picks up — for one second, before he kills it — a tarp. A vehicle under it. An old Forest Service work truck, crew cab, ugly green paint, the kind of vehicle that has been sitting on every back road in this state since 1994 and nobody looks at twice.
We move fast.
I get out of the truck on legs that are mostly working. Thaw out behind me, his hand on my back as I drop to the gravel. Harek out the other side, silent, already pulling our duffel from the cargo bed. Dean rolls the cargo door up from outside, and Crull is exactly where I knew he would be — crouched against the mesh with one hand flat on his brother's back, the rumble low and continuous, his amber eyes coming up to find mine the second the door opens.
He nods at me. Once. He does not have to say what he is saying.I have him. Go.
Daron looks at me. He is not going to play. Not tonight. The dry banter of an hour ago is gone. The look in his ice-blue eyesis the look of a wolf who has just been assigned to ride six hours with two packmates, one of whom is feral.
"Take care of them, Daron."
