Page 51 of Convergence

“A surreal twenty-four hours, that’s for sure,” Everett agreed, and tightened his grip on my hand.

“Someone is paying people to come out and say very specific things, I think,” Nate continued the conversation. “Whether they’re taking part in the investigation or just giving statements to the media to piss us off- they’re not real.”

I nodded again as Everett got back on the highway for our last stretch of driving. We got off the highway at Pigeon Forge and looked around for the specific grocery store Easton had directed us to. It was in a strip mall with stores of varying hours of operation and a large parking lot. Neither of us spoke other than directions for the last part of the ride, with Nate and I peeking out the windows.

Everett spotted his brother and quickly maneuvered the car to park next to him in a parking spot closest to the street. Easton rolled down his window, and Everett did the same. “Hey there, little brother!” Easton called. I peered up to see him. He looked a lot like Easton. Dark blonde hair, red beard, and bright blue eyes. His smile crinkled his eyes in a way that Everett’s didn’t yet and spoke of heartache. He got out of the car and Everett met him behind the cars in a back slapping hug.

“Evangeline and Nathaniel, can you two hop in the truck? Go quickly,” Easton directed us.

“It’s Eva and Nate,” Everett corrected his brother as he climbed into the truck’s passenger seat.

Nate and I both left our stolen car and got into the small backseat of Easton’s truck. It was almost identical to Everett’s, though appeared to be a model or two older and much dirtier. Easton quickly used a screwdriver he had in his pocket to take the license plate off of the stolen car. He placed a “For Sale” sign in the window and shut the door. The number to call on the sign was almost illegible. He got into the truck and pulled away from the curb. I settled back into the seat and Nate took my hand, rubbing it in circles.

“Nobody is going to notice how long that car’s been there until well after Christmas. And when they call about it, they get the front desk of one of the area’s tourist attractions. It certainly buys us extra time,” Easton said to the three of us. “Man, little brother. How long has it been? Four years since I saw you?”

“Something like that,” Everett said quietly.

“You sure have grown,” Easton said affectionately.

“Yes, he’s not so little anymore,” Nate said dismissively. “Can you tell us where we’re going?”

“To my home,” Easton said, looking back at Nate and me in the rearview mirror. He was studying us and trying to get a read. “In the mountains.”

“Why do you think it’s safe there?” Nate asked further. “What’s your security?”

“I live where there are no roads, there are no stores, there are no other people. I am what you would call Off the Grid,” Easton explained easily. “I’m as good’n’gone as you can get good’n’gone in America. There are a few other vets living in the woods, and we watch out for each other and trade. We are self-contained in our area.”

“How’d you follow our case, then?” Everett asked.

“I have a battery powered radio and a few police scanners,” Easton explained. “I can show it all to you when we get there.”

I leaned against Nate in the seat and let his arms close around me. This felt closer to safety than I had felt in a long time. I closed my eyes as Everett told his brother the story of how we got to this point. Hearing our story reacted to by Easton was validating and helped put a few things to light.

“And you thought blowing the place up was a good idea?” Easton asked Everett like he was an idiot.

Nate snorted next to me, where he was leaning back against the door and window with his eyes closed. We smiled, listening to Easton rip into Everett for being ‘a dramatic dumbass.’ Everett looked back at us hesitantly, seemingly worried that we’d also be disappointed in him. He found us laughing at him being scolded and crossed his arms over his chest with his jaw clenched.

“Hey, don’t be so smug back there,” Easton called to me and Nate. “You two are dumbasses, too, for believing the horse shit Hoffmann threw at you. I mean,come on! Nothing is free! You all thought you wereso specialto get all this free shit if you did one little experiment? Dumb.”

I felt thoroughly scolded and looked down at my hands.

“We each had our reasons to believe it,” Nate countered irritably. “It’s not like we had anyone to run the contracts by before we signed them.”

“True,” Easton agreed. “But when anyone offers you that much free shit, youhaveto question it.”

“If the product is free, then it’s the bait and you are the actual product,” I said, after taking a few steadying breaths.

“Correct,” Easton murmured.

Everett and Easton chatted quietly, and I fell asleep leaning against Nate, listening to his steady whoosh of breath and the thump of his heart. It wasn’t a deep sleep, and I was still partially aware of the sound of the truck rumbling along the road and the guys’ voices up front. When the truck bounced off the road, I awoke with a start. We were driving into a small cutout of the forest, and Everett was outside the car, moving brush and branches back over the path behind us. He came and hopped back into the truck after Easton stopped for him.

“Unbuckle your seatbelts and roll down your windows,” Easton instructed. “We’re about to go over a river in a minute.”

Easton drove us through some trees I assumed to be marked in a way that Easton could decipher where to go. It was dark and the clock on the dash said it was near nine thirty, so we’d driven for at least an hour and a half from our meeting space. I wasn’t sure if we’d driven in circles or gone straight there, so I had even less of an idea ‌where in the mountains we were. It was a few minutes before we reached the wide, shallow river. Ice had clogged up a few of the shallow areas of the river and rocks jutted out of other areas.

“Hold on,” Easton mumbled before driving the truck over the river, navigating left and right to avoid ice and large rocks. I held my breath as he drove, thinking for sure we were going to tip over. At one point, freezing water splashed over the hood of the truck, but Easton maneuvered us over the river with skill.

I let out a breath once we were solidly on the other side of the river and driving through a path that Easton knew, but I could not see. No visible tracks were before us in the dark. Our windows were still down, and the only sounds were the truck’s engine, tires cracking over branches, and water dripping from the truck. The night was almost silent other than the sounds of the truck. We drove for a few more minutes through a path I still could not see before the trees opened to about an acre of space. Everett pulled up closer and shut off the engine. A small, rustic cabin sat in the center of it all, an RV off to the side, a sizeable chicken coop near the cabin, and a few patches of dirt, large enough to be gardens. A few rows seemed to have things overwintering in freshly tilled soil. The air was crisp and cold and smelled of pine trees and soil. I inhaled deeply before we rolled up the windows. We were finally well and truly hidden away and my stomach relaxed the hard clench it had taken up since Cleveland.

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