"The wound's high. Missed anything vital, I think. He's losing blood but it's not pumping, it's seeping. That's good. That's something." He swallows. "He needs a vet, though. A real one. Soon."
"Where?" I keep pressing on the injury as Wolf groans and shifts. "Where do we go? You said town isn't safe."
The truck eats up the road, snow flying up on both sides. I watch his face in profile, the beard, the broken nose, the star at his throat, all of it set hard. "There's a man," he says slowly. "One man with the kind of reach that can shut all of this down in a single night. Reznik, the whole Lastochka, handled. A man who could have a vet and a doctor and twenty guns waiting wherever I tell him to put them."
I gulp. "Lukas Lazarev."
His head turns my direction just a fraction. "How do you know that name?"
"The phone rang, while you were gone, back at the camp. I answered it," I explain in a halting rush. "It was him. Lukas. He knew my parents' names. He said that he's already moving men, that they'll be in Pike Hollow by nightfall?—"
"You talked to him?"
I feel the guilt come up hot in my throat like vomit. "I didn't know who he was, Afon, I just answered—I'm sorry?—"
He shakes his head. "Don't apologize. You did right." His knuckles are white on the wheel. "I've spent two weeks doing everything in my power not to make that call. I should've known it would happen sooner rather than later."
"Why?"
The road climbs, then drops. Wolf shudders under my hands and I press harder.
"Because the price of help from Lukas Lazarev is the rest of your life," Afon explains in a grim rasp. "I paid fifteen years of mine to that man already. I swore I'd die in those mountains before I'd owe him another minute." He exhales, long and slow. His thumb finds the bronze ring and strokes the metal.
The dog whimpers. Afon glances down at the blood on my hands, the blood on the seat, the gray creeping into the dog's gums, and I watch the decision finish itself in his eyes.
"But Wolf took a bullet for me," he continues. "And I can't keep you safe out here anymore. Not from this. So." He sets his jaw and nods. "We go to Lukas. I'll owe him whatever he wants, and that's fine, so long as you keep breathing—and this idiot dog does, too."
I don't know what to say. So I reach across Wolf with one bloody hand and I find Afon's where it rests on the gearshift, and I cover it, ring and all.
"Then call him," I say. "He's waiting."
Afon takes the phone from my pocket with his free hand, never letting go of mine, never taking his eyes off the road. He stares at the screen for a long moment, that single saved number, the thing he's been running from this whole time. His thumb hovers.
Then he presses it.
It rings once. Twice. Wolf's breathing flutters in my lap and I press down and whisper to him to hold on, hold on, we're going somewhere safe.
Beep.The line connects.
"It's me," Afon growls. "I need to ask a favor."
28
CAROLINE
"Well?" I ask once Afon has hung up.
"There's a place." He keeps both eyes on the road. "Emergency animal hospital. About two hours south, off the highway. Halfway to the city. Lukas knows the man who owns it. He's calling ahead."
"Two hours." I look down at Wolf. His gums are pale. My hands are sticky with his blood, both of them, pressed to the hole in his shoulder. "Afon, two hours…"
"It's the closest one that won't ask questions." His jaw is set. "He'll make it. He's stubborn. Not unlike somebody else I know."
I don't laugh. I can't possibly bear it. I just press down harder and lean over the dog and put my mouth near his ear.
"Hold on," I whisper. "You hear me, buddy? You hold on. We're going somewhere they're gonna fix you up, good as new."
Wolf's tail moves once against the seat. Weak. But it moves.
