Chapter 12 #5
"I don't care about the cabin being defensible. I care about you coming back."
He doesn't answer right away. The miles tick past. The dashboard clock reads 3:47 a.m. The world outside the windows is empty and black and full of places a man could be hiding.
"We'll come back," he says finally. "That's the whole point of going. So we can come back to a house where no one is watching from the trees. So Charlie can sleep without asking us to check on her. So you can walk to the mailbox without looking over your shoulder."
I press my forehead against the cool glass of the window and close my eyes.
"Promise me," I whisper.
"I can't promise that."
"I know. Promise me anyway."
His thumb traces a circle on the back of my hand.
"I promise we do this right. I promise we don't rush it.
I promise Matthew and I don't split up. I promise we use the club's resources, every eye, every contact, every favor we've got banked.
I promise we bring enough firepower that if it goes loud, it goes loud in our favor. "
It's not the promise I asked for, but it's the only promise he'll make, and I love him more for it.
"When do you leave?"
"We get you settled at the cabin, check the perimeter, and make sure the communication setup is solid. Then we go."
"How long?"
"As long as it takes."
I look back at Charlie. Her face is peaceful in sleep, her small body curled around her unicorn, her hair falling across her cheek.
I think about the deer head on our porch.
The note. The men kneeling in our driveway.
The way Harris watched us from somewhere in the dark while we thought we were the ones watching.
"Okay," I say.
Trenton glances at me. "Okay?"
"You do what you have to do. I'll keep her safe at the cabin. But, Trenton?"
"Yeah."
"If he hurts either of you, I'm coming after him myself. And I won't be as clean about it."
A small smile has his lips twitching. It's gone before it fully forms, but I saw it.
"That's my girl."
We drive in silence for a while. The radio is off.
The only sounds are the engine, the tires over asphalt, and Charlie's soft breathing from the back seat.
I watch the landscape change as we climb into the mountains, the trees thickening, the road narrowing, the sky opening up above us in a way it can't in town.
My phone buzzes. Matthew, in the group chat Trenton set up for the convoy.
Cabin in 40. Dad confirmed the key is under the rail. Heat's on. Supplies stocked.
I type back, Copy. Charlie's asleep.
Trenton's phone lights up with the same messages. He reads them, nods once, and slides it back into the cupholder.
"Matthew's already thinking three steps ahead," I say.
"He always is."
The road curves sharply, and the headlights sweep across a stand of pine trees. For a second I think I see something move between the trunks, a shadow, a shift, nothing I can name, and yet my hand flies to the door handle before I can stop it.
Trenton's eyes catch the movement. "What?"
"Nothing. Just thought I saw…" I trail off because I have no idea what it was.
He doesn't tell me it was nothing, he adjusts the rearview mirror to get a better angle on the road behind us, checks the side mirror, then resumes his scan of the road ahead.
"We're not alone on this road," he says quietly. "We have eyes front and back. If there's something between those trees, someone will see it."
I know he's right. The convoy stretches out behind us. Matthew, then Carter, then Kane and Sydney. My father up ahead, my mother beside him. Full of people who would lay down anything for us.
But the image of the deer head comes back. The clean cut. The dead eyes. The note.
Your time is running out.
"Trenton."
"Yeah."
"When you find him, don't make it quick."
He doesn't answer. He doesn't have to. His hand finds mine again on the console, and he holds it all the way to the cabin.
The road narrows to gravel, then dirt, and the trees close in on both sides until the headlights can barely cut a path through the dark. My father's brake lights flare red ahead of us, and Trenton slows, letting the convoy compress as we approach a gap in the tree line.
"There," I say, spotting the cabin through the pines.
It's smaller than I remember from Matthew's descriptions, a single-story log structure with a wraparound porch and a stone chimney that rises against the sky like a sentinel.
The windows are dark except for one, where the soft glow of a lamp burns behind drawn curtains.
Matthew's dad must have left it on before we arrived.
Trenton pulls the SUV to a stop in the small clearing beside the cabin.
The other vehicles slot in around us, headlights sweeping across the tree trunks before they cut out one by one.
The sudden darkness is the kind that presses against your skin and for a moment, I can't see anything except the shape of the cabin and the single lit window.
Matthew's truck door opens and closes. Boots meet gravel. Then his voice, low and close. "I've got the key. Let me clear it first."
I hear him move up the porch steps, the creak of wood under his weight, the scrape of something being lifted—the rail, where his father said the key would be. A pause. Then the click of a lock turning.
I look in the back seat. Charlie hasn't stirred. Her face is slack with deep sleep, her unicorn still pressed to her cheek, one small hand curled loosely around the seat belt strap. She looks so small back there. So far from everything that happened tonight.
"Morgan." Trenton's voice is quiet. "Let me carry her. You grab the bag."
I don't argue. My arms feel like they've been replaced with something that doesn't quite belong to me, trembling and weak and useless. So I nod.
Trenton moves around the car with an unhurried grace that never leaves him, even now, even here.
He opens Charlie's door carefully, leaning in, and gathers her up against his chest with one smooth motion.
She makes a small sound, not quite awake, not quite asleep, and her head drops against his shoulder. Her unicorn stays tucked between them.
My mother appears at my window. "Everything okay?"
"Charlie's asleep. We're getting her inside."
She nods and moves back, giving us space. I grab the small backpack from the floorboard, it's just essentials, the few things we packed in those frantic minutes after the safe room, and step out into the cold mountain air.
The cabin smells like woodsmoke and pine resin even before we reach the door. Matthew is already inside, moving through the rooms with a flashlight beam that sweeps corners and checking windows. I hear him opening and closing doors: bedroom, bathroom, the small back room that must serve as storage.
"Clear," he calls, and his voice echoes off the log walls.
Trenton carries Charlie through the doorway and into the main room.
The lamp by the window casts everything in warm amber: a worn leather sofa, a stone fireplace with kindling already stacked, a braided rug on the hardwood floor.
It's small. It's safe. It feels like the kind of place that has been keeping secrets for a long time.
"Bedroom's back here," Matthew says, appearing in the doorway at the rear of the cabin. "I'll get the bed ready."
I follow Trenton down the short hallway.
The bedroom is spartan, a double bed with a patchwork quilt, a nightstand with a small lamp, and a window overlooking the trees.
Matthew has already pulled back the covers.
Trenton lays Charlie down, easing her head onto the pillow and adjusting her unicorn beside her.
She stirs. Her eyes open just barely, just enough to see who's putting her down.
"Mr. Trent," she murmurs.
"Yeah, kiddo. Go back to sleep. You're safe."
"Ms. Morgan?"
"I'm right here." I step to the bedside and brush the hair from her forehead. Her skin is warm and slightly damp. "We're at the cabin. Mr. Matthew's family cabin, remember? We're going to stay here for a little while."
She blinks slowly, processing, her eyes moving from me to Trenton to Matthew standing in the doorway. Her hand reaches up to find mine.
"Will you stay until I'm asleep?"
"Of course."
Her eyes close again. Her breathing slows. Her grip on my hand loosens by degrees until her fingers go slack and her whole body goes heavy against the mattress.
I stay where I am. Trenton stays where he is. Matthew stays in the doorway. None of us moves until Charlie's breathing has gone deep and even and the last of the tension has drained from her small body.
Then Trenton straightens, and I feel the shift in the room, the transition from the thing we're doing now to the thing we're going to do next.
"I need to check the perimeter," he says, his voice pitched low. "Matthew, show me where the generator is."
Matthew nods and turns back toward the main room. I follow them out, pulling the bedroom door almost closed behind me and leaving it open just enough that the hallway light will reach Charlie if she wakes up.
In the main room, my mother is unpacking supplies from a bag she brought, including a thermos of coffee, some sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, and a container of cookies.
My father is standing at the front window with the curtains pulled back just enough to watch the tree line.
Kane and Sydney have taken positions at opposite ends of the porch.
I can see the glow of a cigarette tip moving in the dark outside the east window. Carter, making his rounds.
"We'll be fine here," my mother says, catching my eye.
She's using her calm voice, the one she used when I was a kid and something had gone wrong at school and she wanted me to know that the world was still turning.
"Your father and I have the couch. Carter's outside. Kane and Sydney are watching the road."
I nod because I can't find the words. The cabin feels like it's breathing around me with the old wood settling, the wind in the eaves, and the faint tick of the lamp's filament.