Page 63 of Sanctuary

Maybe I’ll run and catch up.

I wage a mental debate for about sixty seconds before I decide. Then I jump out of bed, scramble through an abbreviated morning routine, and then gather my stuff and run outside.

Aidan has taken his cart.

That’s the first thing I recognize as strange.

A quick message run of a couple of hours could surely be done with only a pack.

I shrug it off. It doesn’t matter. Aidan is probably used to taking his cart everywhere.

The wheels make obvious grooves in the soft, damp ground, so it’s easy to follow his trail. Even when he moves onto a paved road, it’s no problem following him. The roadway is full of potholes and large gouges. He often has to veer off the road to get around the damage, so I regularly find his track marks.

I frown when I discover he’s turned off the main road. If he’s making a quick run, then surely it’s to one of the nearby settlements. I know where all of them are, and there are none in this direction.

Confused, I pick up my pace. I can’t be more than ten minutes behind him, and he’s pushing the cart. It shouldn’t take me long to catch up with him, and then he can tell me exactly where we’re going.

I hike for about thirty minutes. The road is going uphill and curves steeply into a switchback. As I’m approaching the bend, I hear voices before I see who they belong to.

I slow down. Move into the trees. Someone must be coming from the opposite direction, and because I don’t know who it is, it’s better to stay out of sight.

After a minute, the voices haven’t moved. They’re stationary. And I swear I hear Aidan’s pleasant, accented tone among them.

He must have encountered strangers. They could be dangerous, but he’s always been good at diffusing tense situations. I move as quietly as I can through the trees so I can get a view of the road on the other side of the switchback and see what’s happening.

The first person I see is one I recognize.

Not Aidan, but a member of that gang that grabbed me up off the road last year. He wasn’t the one who took me to fuck, but he was one of his buddies. I’m not likely to forget his greasy auburnhair or the tattoo of a spiderweb spanning the whole side of his neck.

Weasel. They called him Weasel.

The brief sight of him sickens me. I suck in a breath and dart out of sight, pressing my back against a large tree. It feels like the blood has drained out of my head. Like I might pass out.

I don’t like this kind of weak reaction, so I breathe through it. I can hear the voices better now, but my mind is too clouded to focus on words.

If I stay right here, if I don’t move, they won’t know I’m close.

They won’t be able to capture me again.

I’m not going to have to go back.

In the midst of my slow breathing, I hear Aidan’s voice. It’s his for sure. I’d know it anywhere. It provokes a wash of warm familiarity. Out of all other voices, that one—his—belongs to me.

Then I hear what he’s saying. “We agreed on double that.”

“That was a month ago. Things change.” It’s Weasel talking, and he’s clearly negotiating some sort of transaction with Aidan.

WithAidan.

“Perhaps. But if they’ve changed for you that much, then you must not need the drugs.”

My throat is tightening. My hands growing cold and damp.

“You’re not backing out on us now, are you? After all this time?”

It takes all the strength I have not to gasp. Not to peer out from behind the tree to see for myself what’s happening.

But it’s obvious. No one could possibly mistake it.

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