Page 124 of Wolf

She touches her belly as she leans into my face. “That doesn’t make me a goddamn invalid.”

“I can’t believe I’m arguing with you about this. You wanna go? Go!”

I point to the door, and she says, “Maybe you should put on some pants.”

Right. Pants. Gah.

I painstakingly slip on the shorts Toni brought in the other day but I still can’t bear the thought of wrangling on a bra so Wolf’s shirt will have to do.

My tennis shoes are in the corner, and I slip them on before following Miriam down the hall. We’re halfway to the stairs when she pauses. “I have to pee.”

Rolling my eyes, I refrain from commenting as she ducks into her room. Meanwhile, I consider what we’re going to have to say to leave.

Miriam appears a few minutes later. “Let’s go.”

“So, what’s the plan?” I ask when we’re at the bottom of the stairs. Every step down reminds me of why I shouldn’t be doing this, but Hand doesn’t seem like the type to wait.

“What do you mean?” Miriam asks.

I open my mouth before snapping it shut when we approach a guy I don’t recognize. He’s standing with his back to us, wearing the vest or cut as Wolf called it but this one says “prospect” on the back.

He turns as we approach and Miriam smiles with a small wave. Miraculously we walk right past them and two more outside, tinkering with their motorcycles.

She leads me to Duke’s pretty muscle car and once we’re inside, I say, “That was too easy.”

She glances at me with a weird expression before saying, “We’re not prisoners, Lil.”

“Oh.”

Once we’re cruising down the highway I say, “I think you should wait in the car.”

“I think you should stop thinking,” she grumbles.

“Mir, what do you think is going to happen in there? Besides, someone has to take Mercy when he lets her go.” I splay my hands, and she eyes them with a frown.

“Why Hand?”

We both know she’s changing the subject, and I shake my head before saying, “I don’t know. He’s working for the sheriff. They came looking for me at Wolf’s. He’s the man who chased me through the woods.”

She mulls over the condensed version of my story while I stare at the trees as they pass by in a blur. What took me hours the other day is disturbingly fast in this car.

“I always hated the sheriff,” she mutters. “Creepy fucker.”

Eyeing her sideways, I don’t comment but I do wonder if he ever said gross things to her, like he did to me.

I can’t be sure what Hand wants but it can’t be good if he went out of his way to find me after all this time. I desperately want my sisters to live through this and I can’t afford for Miriam to get in the way. Maybe she hasn’t grasped the seriousness of the situation.

Maybe she doesn’t care but I do. That baby deserves to live, and I won’t stand by while we lose another precious life to the evils of this world.

All too soon, we’re in our neighborhood. It looks the same but so different after just a few days of being gone.

The hedges around the sides of the house need a trim. Daddy’s car is in the drive.

Mrs. Myrtle, our neighbor, is sitting on the front porch across the street. It’s so normal that for a minute, I wonder if Hand is even inside that house with Mercy.

“Stop here,” I say out of instinct, two doors down.

Miriam slows, glancing at me with a frown. Exhaling slowly, I say, “Give me twenty minutes. Please.”

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