10. CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER TEN
Hannah
I woke to the sound of zippers. Fast ones, the kind that didn’t hesitate between teeth, and the heavy thump of something being set down on packed dirt.
The cabin was still dark – early, the kind of early where the windows showed nothing but the palest hint of gray through the cracks – but Mustang was already moving through the main room like a man who’d been up for hours.
He had two duffels packed and lined by the door.
The hard-sided case – the one I’d seen him open exactly once, thirteen days ago, to check the weapons inside – sat beside them, latched and ready.
His go-bag was slung over one shoulder, the strap cutting across his leather cut as he reached for the Glock on the table and checked the magazine with a practiced flick of his wrist. The slide racked once, loud in the quiet cabin, and then the gun went into his waistband at the small of his back.
I stood in the kitchen. Bare feet on cold dirt, my red hair loose around my shoulders, the borrowed flannel hanging open at the collar where I’d slept in it.
I didn’t ask what was happening. The answer was in the way he moved—each motion efficient, unhurried but not slow, the controlled speed of a man who had done this before and knew exactly how much time he had.
“Someone ran the plates,” he said. Not looking at me. Checking the second duffel’s contents with one hand while the other reached for his phone on the counter. “The truck. Means this location’s burned. We’ve got an hour, maybe less, before they’re on the property.”
The words hit like a physical blow. I turned, went back into the bedroom, and found the boots he’d bought me in Pine Creek beside the cot, laces tucked inside.
I pulled them on without sitting down, fingers working the leather into knots that would hold.
They were still stiff, but they fit. Of course they fit. He’d known my size without asking.
When I came back out, Mustang had paused with one hand on the propane valve. His gaze swept over me once,boots, jacket, bag, face,and his jaw tightened. Just slightly. Nine days ago, I would have missed it.
He reached into the duffel by the door and pulled out a jacket. Black, heavy canvas, the kind bikers wore when the weather turned. Held it out without a word, his arm extended, waiting.
I took it. Slipped my arms into sleeves that hung past my wrists, the shoulders too broad, the collar smelling like motor oil and pine and him. Zipped it to my chin without comment because comments weren’t what either of us needed right now.
Mustang killed the propane with a sharp twist of the valve.
The blue flame under the empty skillet died with a hiss that faded into silence.
He crossed to the back window – the one I’d complained about once, in passing, two days into our stay – and checked the latch with his thumb, testing its give.
Satisfied, he moved to the kitchen drawer, pulled it open, and pocketed a burner phone I hadn’t known was there. The drawer closed with a soft thud.
I packed what I had, which wasn’t much. The flannel went into the small canvas bag Ace had brought—the one with the club patch sewn into the lining that I pretended not to notice.
The wool socks. The dish towel I’d cut into an apron and folded back again because resources were what they were.
The dried herbs from the windowsill,rosemary, thyme, the purple oregano that had lasted longer than anything else in this cabin,I tucked into the jacket’s inside pocket against my ribs.
Mustang made a final sweep. Hands flat on the scarred table, pressing once as if testing something he’d fixed and wanted to trust. His gaze paused on the chair with the bracket he’d installed while I slept, then moved on.
Tin mug. Pocketknife. Folded map with coordinates I’d seen him study at night when he thought I was asleep.
Each item disappeared into a pocket or bag.
I stood by the door with my bag zipped, his jacket hanging off my frame, and my boots feeling both foreign and right. Then I took one last look at the cabin.
The herbs were gone from the windowsill.
The dish towel was in my bag. Bread still lived in the log walls beneath the sharper scents of gun oil and pine sap.
The repaired chair sat steady by the table.
Weatherstripping lined the window frame.
The cast iron skillet hung above the cold stove, handle solid now.
Nine days. It felt like nine months. It felt like nine hours.
Mustang picked up the duffels. One in each hand, the hard case tucked under his arm. He didn’t look back. Didn’t pause for one last glance. He just moved toward the door, direct and efficient, because leaving was the only thing left to do.
I followed him out. The screen door banged shut behind us, echoing off the log walls one last time. Mustang pulled the main door closed with his boot. The latch caught. The wood settled against the frame.
He didn’t lock it.
I noticed because I was watching his hands. He didn’t reach for the key or the deadbolt. He left the door closed and unsecured, as if locking it would pretend we were coming back.
There was no point.
The morning air hit us, cold and damp with the promise of more fog.
Mustang was already at the truck, loading the duffels into the bed with the same methodical efficiency he brought to everything.
I climbed into the passenger seat, the vinyl cold through the canvas of my jeans, and watched through the windshield as he secured the hard case and slammed the tailgate.
The engine turned over. Gravel popped under the tires as we pulled away, and I didn’t look back.
I didn’t need to. The smell of bread was in my clothes, in the herbs against my ribs, in the memory of a man who fixed windows at five in the morning, bought boots without being asked, and said I love you like it was a fact.
The cabin receded. Trees closed in. The mountain road began its winding descent, and Mustang drove with both hands on the wheel, eyes cutting to the mirrors every thirty seconds.
I sat beside him in a jacket that wasn’t mine and boots that were, carrying the cabin with me because leaving it behind was impossible.
The mountain road unspooled in our headlights like thread pulled too fast from a spool.
Gravel gave way to patchy asphalt, then to proper blacktop as we descended toward whatever passed for civilization in this part of the state.
Pine crowded the shoulders, thick and dark, branches scraping the truck’s flanks on the tighter curves.
No guardrails. No streetlights. Just the twin beams cutting through fog that hung low between the trees, turning everything beyond twenty feet into a wall of pale gray.
Mustang drove with his left hand on the wheel, his right near the Glock I knew was on the console.
His eyes cut to the rearview every thirty seconds.
Held for three beats. Checked the side mirror.
Back to the road. The pattern never varied, and the steadiness of it made the truck feel both safe and charged, like the air before lightning.
I watched the road. The white line dividing our lane from nothing.
The reflectors catching the headlights and flaring orange before disappearing under the hood.
The occasional deer frozen at the tree line, eyes reflecting green, gone before I could point it out.
My hands were in the pockets of his jacket, fingers curled around the dried herbs I’d taken from the windowsill, and the smell of them – rosemary sharp underneath the canvas and gun oil – kept the cabin smell present even as we put miles between us and the mountain.
He didn’t offer reassurance. Didn’t say we’d be safe. Mustang wasn’t a man who managed fear. He moved through it, and if you were smart, you stayed close.
I didn’t ask for reassurance. The only useful questions had answers we already knew: yes, they would find us eventually; no, we couldn’t outrun them forever. So, I sat with my boots on the floormat and my shoulder against the cold window while the road disappeared under our tires.
Somewhere past the two-hour mark, my eyes got heavy.
I didn’t mean for it to happen. One minute I was watching the reflectors flare and die, flare and die, and the next the rhythm of it had worked its way into my blood, and the exhaustion I’d been carrying since Mustang woke me with the sound of zippers caught up all at once.
My head tipped toward the window. The glass was cold against my temple.
The vibration of the engine traveled through the frame and into my skull, and I was gone.
I woke to gravel under the tires and warmth on my left side where there had been cold. The heat vent had been angled toward the passenger seat, dry air working through the canvas jacket and wool socks, coaxing my body back toward waking.
Mustang’s hand was back on the wheel. Ten and two.
His eyes were on the rearview, then the side mirror, then the road ahead where two floodlights cut through the fog and illuminated a heavy steel gate flanked by concrete barriers.
A man stood beside it – young, lean, wearing a prospect cut over a plain black t-shirt – and he straightened up so fast when he saw the truck that I could hear his boots scrape on gravel from twenty yards out.
The gate swung open. Manual, no hydraulics, the prospect putting his shoulder into it and heaving until the gap was wide enough for the truck to pass.
Mustang rolled through at walking pace, his window down, and the prospect nodded once – sharp, respectful – without speaking.
Mustang didn’t speak either. Just lifted two fingers off the wheel in acknowledgment and kept driving.