"They're out there. They're working for the Syndicate."
I sit with it. The forest outside has started to go gray with morning light. I have to ask the question. I have been carrying it since the cabin.
"Has it already happened?" I ask.
Nobody in the truck moves.
Thaw's hand on the back of my seat does not move. Harek's hand on mine does not move. Dean's hands on the wheel do not move. The truck rolls forward in the dark and nobody answers for a long beat.
"You've been thinking about it," I say to Dean.
"Yes."
"All of you?"
"All of us."
"Since when?"
"Since the cell,” Thaw says.
"And you didn't say."
"No. None of us did. We have been waiting for your body to tell us. Or for you to ask."
"And you held me through the nights and you slept with one arm around me and you didn't say it."
"I didn't say it because I don't have an answer. I would smell it if it were further along. I can't smell it now. I don't know whether that means it isn't happening or whether it means it's too early."
"Harek."
Harek's green eyes meet mine.
"Maybe."
We keep driving. The sun is coming up over the ridge.
I put my hand on my belly.
Chapter eighteen
Jen
The new safehouse is at the bottom of a road that does not exist on a map.
Dean drives off the highway around five-twenty in the morning onto a track that I would not have called a road — gravel, then dirt, then two faint ruts through fir trees and we follow it for twenty minutes down into a valley with a huge rock overhang, almost like a clearing-sized cave. Under that is a log home, two-story, with a porch. There is a porch swing.
The twins built this. The twins have been living here, in some sense, for two years.
We pull up. Dean kills the engine. Nobody moves. The cab is warm.
"We're here," Dean says.
"How long until the other truck?" I ask.
"Three to four hours. They had to take the long route. They'll come in through the south."
"Okay."
