"How long until they have us?" I ask Dean.
"Hopefully hours, if we're smart. Less if we're not."
"What do we do?"
Thaw answers. "We move now. We meet Daron's truck on the spur. And then we find somewhere to put you that the wind cannot reach until your body finishes whatever it is doing."
"Is there such a place?"
"I don't know yet. We will find one."
Harek is already stuffing my things back into the duffel and zipping it up. Dean is at the back window, rifle steady, the radio crackling once more with Daron's voice —ten minutes out, holding off the spur, advise— and Dean keys his mic and answers, low:coming to you. Bring the truck up. We're going to need the swap.
I look down at my hands.
I look at Thaw.
"They won't have us before Daron gets here."
"No."
"Good."
Fen is awake on the other end of it and Fen is responding and the truck is coming up the spur.
The house is the place we were supposed to be safe.
The house is now worthless because the Syndicate found it, the way the cabin was lost to us, in less than four hours from when we walked into it, because my body has decided to start telling the world what it is, and the Syndicate is listening.
I let Harek pack me. I let Dean ready the perimeter. I let Thaw move me toward the back door.
Chapter twenty
Jen
"There is a relay point," Dean says.
I am in the back of the work truck, sitting low against the seat with Harek beside me. Thaw is in the bed of the truck, prone, watching the road we came in on. The windshield is something none of the men want me near.
"What kind?"
"Forest-service campground. Mothballed since the early nineties. Three miles from where we just were. Daron and I have used it."
The forming thread to him pulls one degree warmer. The twins have a place. Of course they do.
The blood has slowed. The towels at the safehouse caught the worst of it, and what is left in my body has settled into a residual warm hum that is more discomfort than wound. Thepatch under my skin is quiet. The bonds are doing something I have not felt before — bright, every line of it lit at once, like every nerve in my chest has been turned up one click. The hollow where Fen will go is close. Closer than it should be at ten minutes out. Something in my chest turns north.
"He is closer than ten," I say.
Dean glances at me in the mirror. "How do you know?"
"The bond thread."
"How close?"
"I don't know in miles. But he is awake and he is paying attention to me through the bond."
Dean keys the radio at his belt. He says something low to it. He listens. He sets it back.
