Chapter 20
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.
The patch 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.
"Daron confirms. Five minutes out. Crull is driving fast. Fen is awake in the back. They've been arguing about whether to risk the pace."
"Fen is part of the argument."
"Fen is saying yes."
I close my eyes for one second. Fen has language enough to argue. Fen has wanted enough to push his brothers to risk a speed that could roll the truck. Fen is coming back to me.
"Tell Daron we're at the relay in three minutes," Dean says — staring out the windshield.
"Dean."
"Yeah."
"There's a smell on the wind. I don't know what it is yet."
I sit up straighter.
Something on the wind.
"Dean."
A thump on the cab roof. Sharp. Twice.
Thaw, from the bed of the truck. He has smelled the same thing I have.
Dean's hand goes to the window. He cracks it an inch. He sniffs. His mouth tightens.
"Diesel."
"Diesel?"
"Transport. Multiple."
That should not be in this canyon. The campground is defunct. There is no legitimate reason for a diesel cluster a half-mile ahead.
The radio on Dean's belt crackles. Thaw's voice, calling both trucks.
"Both vehicles. Pull off at the next turnout. Half a mile short."
Daron's voice comes back through the radio from the second truck. "Copy. Following."
Dean's hand goes to the wheel.
"We're not walking into a campground with engines running."
Dean kills the engine on a turnout I would not have called a turnout — just a wide place in the gravel where logging equipment used to be parked. We are surrounded by Douglas fir tall enough to put us in full shade even with the sun coming up. He kills the lights. The truck ticks.
The bond at my sternum has gone taut. Thaw is doing his alpha math.
"Daron," he says.
Dean keys the radio. He listens. He looks at Thaw.
"Daron is breaking pace. He's going to stop at the third switchback above the relay and come in on foot from the ridge. Crull stays with the truck. Fen —"
A pause.
"Fen says he is coming in with Daron."
Thaw's eyes close for one beat. "He cannot keep his hands off her. He's known that since the cargo box."
"Daron knows. Fen is overruling them."
"How?"
"With his voice. He told Daron he is coming. Daron is reporting that Fen sounds —" Dean stops. "Different."
"Different how?"
"Different like he has decided something."
I press my palm to the hollow. It is hot now, aimed. Whatever Fen has decided, my body knows before the rest of me does — he is coming, and he is not going to be stopped.
"Thaw."
"What."
"Let him come."
He looks at me.
"Jen, if he loses it —"
"Let him come. He has been the broken, but now he is communicating. Let him."
Thaw is silent staring at me.
Then he says, to Dean, "Tell Daron Fen comes. Tell Daron to keep eyes on him. Tell Daron to be ready to act if necessary."
"Yes."
"Crull stays with the truck."
"And tell Daron —" Thaw's voice goes quiet. "Tell Daron the alpha says Fen has the perimeter. The perimeter is his. Hold it."
Dean speaks into the radio. He listens. He looks at Thaw.
"Daron says understood. Daron says Fen says —" Dean's mouth twitches. "— yes, alpha."
The whole cab stops.
It is the first time Fen has called Thaw alpha since before the cell. But the bond at my sternum is flooded with what it does to Thaw and his gold eyes are wet.
"Out," he says. "All of us. We do not drive into an ambush. Dean takes Jen on the south flank. Harek takes me on the north. Daron and Fen come from the ridge above. Crull holds the truck below. Whatever is in those trees is going to find out it picked the wrong morning."
I get out.
The half mile to the campground is the longest half mile of my life.
We walk it in a staggered line through years of fallen pine needles that gives under every step.
Dean is in front of me. Harek and Thaw are off to my right, twenty yards out, moving in the lateral pattern wolves use when they are flanking — half-step behind, half-step ahead, alternating, eyes scanning in opposite cones.
I am the protected one in the middle. The hollow under my sternum is pulling north, toward the ridge above the campground, where Daron and Fen are coming in.
When the hollow flares, I know they have arrived.
A sharp warm flare at my sternum. Daron's forming thread going hot for half a beat. And underneath it, the hollow — here, close enough now that I could turn my head and feel where on the compass he is. North-northeast. Above me. On the ridge.
Then the first shot.
It comes from the south.
I am on the ground before I know I am moving. Dean has me. The shot did not hit anything I can see and Dean is over me with the rifle in his other hand, and for one second neither of us knows where the round landed.
His free hand goes to my ribs. Then my hip. Then my thigh. Fast. Professional. He is checking me for entry wounds the way a man checks the body of a person who has just been near a round he did not see land. He finds nothing.
"Jen."
"I'm not hit."
He keeps his hand on me anyway for one more pass — ribs, hip, thigh — and only when he has confirmed it does he settle his palm and look up.
His eyes flick once to the bark of a fir six feet to his left where a small white dart is lodged.
"Trank," he says. Quiet, against my temple. "They're not shooting to kill, Jen. They're shooting to take."
My stomach drops. Of course they are. The folder. The chart. The eight-year project. They do not want me dead.
"They didn't shoot you."
"They shot near me. Warning. The next one will be at me. They want me down, not dead. They want all of us down so they can retrieve us all."
Across the gap, Thaw's voice cracks the air.
Then Daron's voice through the trees from above, also low, also carrying: Two on the south. Three on the east. I have eyes.
Then a sound from the ridge that is not Daron.
It is a growl.
Low. Long.
Fen.
The bond goes live. The hollow becomes full. Fen-is-now-on-this-mountain-and-paying-attention-to-the-people-who-want-to-take-his-mate full, and what is in the bond is his intent. He is going. He has eyes on his targets from the ridge. He is moving.
Fast.
He does not roar. He does not announce. He flows down off the ridge like Harek flowed off the porch the first morning of the run — smooth, silent, predatory — and he is in the trees with the south shooter before the south shooter has registered him as a person.
The sound the south shooter makes is short.
"Oh," Dean says, against my temple. Quiet.
There is a wet crack. A body falling. Then the spit of a second trank round, but this one is going up, not toward us — somebody is shooting at Fen and missing because Fen is no longer where he was when the trigger pulled — and then a second wet crack, and then a third.
The east side of the campground goes silent.
The forming thread to Daron is full. He is watching it happen too. He is on the ridge watching Fen demolish a Syndicate retrieval team.
A scream.
Human. Short. Cut off.
Then Daron's voice through Dean's radio — close enough now that I can hear it through Dean's shoulder — sharp in a way I have not heard him:
Fen. That one is down. Leave it. Leave it. Fen.
A pause. The forming thread carries Daron's adrenaline spike. Then good. Good, Fen. Back off. Back off.
"Dean."
"I have you, Jen. I have you. Stay down. Fen is doing what we need him too, protecting you."
"He could. He could come back this way. He could —"
"He is not going to. Feel the bond. Tell me what it's doing."
I feel it.
The hollow is full — the fullest it has ever been, a presence in my chest with weight and direction — and the direction is not toward me. The direction is between me and the threats. Fen has put himself on the south flank of the campground.
He is not coming to me.
He is keeping them from me.
Across the campground the last Syndicate gun fires once. A trank, going wild. There is a wet sound under it. Then nothing.
The trees are quiet.
Clear, Daron's voice through the radio. South clear. East clear. Two surrendered. Five down. Two are — a pause. Fen got two.
How is he? Thaw's voice on the channel.
Sitting. Quiet. He’s repeating “Jen”. Is she ok?
Dean does not move off me yet. He is doing something with his free hand — patting down the gravel beside us, then his own jacket.
His hand stops at the inside of his jacket.
He swears, low.
"What?"
"Hold." He pulls something small and black from the inside pocket — a tactical earpiece, the kind a comms operator wears, the green light on its side still active.
He thumbs it off and shows me. "I patted one of the cabin shooters down before we left.
Took it. Forgot about it. The light has been on the whole drive. "
"Meaning?"
"Meaning whoever is on the other end of that piece has been live to whatever it could pick up from inside my jacket. Muffled but there. My voice clear. The cabin engagement. The drive. The pull-off. The Fen call."
The bond at my sternum spikes. Thaw, reading the change in me from wherever he is on the perimeter — alarm without a source, the alpha registering that something in me has gone cold.
The radio on Dean's belt crackles.
Thaw's voice. Short. "Dean. Status."
Dean keys the radio. "Compromised comms. Found a live earpiece in my jacket from the cabin shooter. It has been broadcasting for hours."
A pause on the line. One second. Two.
Then Thaw, voice flat as new ice. "Crush it. Now."
Dean drops the earpiece on the gravel and crushes it under his bootheel. The green light goes out.
"They had a window," Dean says. Quiet. "From the cabin to now. Audio. Voices. They have heard us call the moves."
I let that sit.
The pack is alive. Fen is sitting on the south edge of the campground asking through Daron whether his mate is okay. The Syndicate shooters are down or surrendered. The engagement is over.
The Syndicate has been at the table the whole time.
I make myself sit up against Dean's shoulder. The hollow is still full. The bond is still bright. The forest is still quiet.
"Tell him yes," I say to Dean. My voice is thick. "Tell him I'm okay. Tell him I'm coming."
Dean speaks into the radio.
I get up off the ground.
The walk toward the south edge of the campground is the second-longest walk of my life.