Page 52 of The Flame

“He volunteered.”

“I insisted,” Daniel said to me.

I shook my head. “No.”

“It should be me,” Roman said, his voice a low rumble. “But I can’t be with you twenty-four hours of every day, unless I give up my warden duties.”

“You can’t do that!” How was that even a thought in his head? “The wardens are all that’s keeping you safe. They’re your last line of defense if this all goes south.”

“So long as I’m one of them, I have their protection, a protection I can extend to you if it comes to that.” His gaze swept to me. “That’s why it has to be Daniel.”

“Look,” Daniel said to me. “I wasn’t about to run off to The Smoke while you stayed behind to fight the good fight, okay?”

We’d risked everything to get Daniel to safety. “It’s too dangerous for you to be here.”

“I thought we’re going into hiding,” he said.

“It’s safer here than in The Smoke,” Roman said at the same time. “Remember?”

They were ganging up on me. Any further protest could and would be used against me. Frustration gnawed at me, but there was nothing I could do right now.

“How is it safer here than in The Smoke?” Daniel wanted to know.

“Roman didn’t tell you?”

“There’s a letter,” Roman said as he kicked leaves and dirt over the hatch. “Let’s go.”

“What about the others?” I grumbled as we tramped the short distance to where the truck was parked. “They couldn’t have been happy that Daniel stayed and they had to go.”

“Their happiness isn’t my priority right now,” Roman said. “We rescued them from rehab and I’m willing to help get them settled in The Smoke. The rest is up to them.”

“What letter?” Daniel said again.

I filled him in. “I just need to make sure Geneva finds it, so we’re making a quick stop in Parklands. I want to leave the letter at our cabin.”

We were at the truck. I grabbed my overnight bag from the back of the truck before Daniel and I climbed into the rear of the cab, slinking low in our seats so as not to draw attention. We rode in silence, Daniel staring out his window, me rifling through the bag. I found the letter and shoved the bag into the foot well, resting my feet on top of it.

The roads were quiet, not unusual for this time of night. We’d planned for this, a narrow margin of breathing space before the chaos spread out from the rehab center, but we’d used up so much of it already. My nerves were shredding, expecting a blockade of guards to pop out from the side of the road at every corner.

“The cabins in the nature reserve won’t be stocked,” Roman said after a while, revealing what had been churning through his mind as we drove. “You’ll need something to eat, for tonight at least.”

Daniel pulled his thoughts in from the window. “There’s no bedding either.”

“Just as well we’re doing a pit stop then,” I murmured. “What about heating?”

“Some of them have air conditioning units,” Daniel said. “Mainly those closer to the lake, though.”

“Makes sense.” Only the die-hard fishermen tended to use the nature reserve amenities during the winter months.

“We won’t be using the lakeside cabins,” Roman said flatly. “We’re going as deep as possible.”

The way he said it, he’d take me straight across to the end of the nature reserve, over the wall and into The Smoke if he had any say. I bit my tongue. If our roles were reversed, I wouldn’t be happy about the change of plans either. Hell, even in our given roles, I wasn’thappy, but something was sticking my feet to Capra, refusing to let me go until I’d tried to do better.

“There’s a service road from Parklands into the nature reserve,” Roman said when we passed through the barrier. “We don’t have to go through town again. Almost there.”

The tension inside the cab lifted.

Daniel suddenly sat up straighter, his gaze glued to his window and the swathe of evergreens pressing up against the road.

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