Page 96 of Entangled

No! No, you fucking bitch. Not the?—”

Mateo’s raw terrified shout cuts off. Oriscut off.

It lingers in the brisk night air for a moment, then the people around me start moving again, like they never heard it in the first place. There’s a deep brook by our latest campground and many of us are taking the opportunity to clean up as best we can while we can.

“How many rooms are there at Bristlebrook again?” Kasey asks. She scoops water in her palms, then rubs her whole face, messy and inefficient. We’re still two days from Bristlebrook at the rate we’re traveling, but I’m being asked about every detail.

“Twelve bedrooms,” I answer absently, straining to hear any more yells.

Are they getting worse? It sounds like they’re getting worse.

“Huh. I wonder which one I’ll get,” Kasey remarks. “Which one’s the best one? Can I call dibs?”

Ava, the blonde woman I strangled in the firefight, splashes her. “No way are you getting a room, twerp.”

“Yeah—you’ll have to fight me for one.” Sloane grins, adjusting her crossbow across her muscular thighs as she keeps watch on the trees.

I apologized to Ava days ago for the whole almost accidentally choking her to death thing, and she was quite good-humored about it. Sloane also apologized to Jayk for strangling him with the wire.

He was not quite so good-humored about it.

“You should all make a list,” a self-important voice pipes up behind me, and Ava rolls her eyes at me where he can’t see. “I’ll talk to Dominic about who stays where and let you know what you should do when we get to Bristlebrook.”

“Yeah, sure, we’ll do that,” Sloane says unenthusiastically, and I bite back a smile.

Aaron is a red-haired young man in his mid-twenties, and he apparently designated himself interim leader while Heather and Tommy were captured.

Apparently, no one else agreed with his appointment.

“What do you think, Akira dear? What are you most excited about?” Ida asks as she wrings out an enormous pair of panties into the creek. “I, for one, cannotwaitfor a shower.”

Akira moves slowly, cleaning her arms and wrists with a damp cloth. She glances at me, her face hardening for a moment, then turns back to Ida, murmuring something I can’t hear. She started speaking again two days ago, but not to me.

She’s kept as far from me as possible, which keeps my guilt at a steady prickle. Not over Logan—the memory of his gun to my head banishes remorse over him quickly enough—but I do feel for her grief. The memory of my own is fresh enough that my empathy is more difficult to quash.

“Do you and Jaykob normally stay together?” Ethel asks me slyly. “Or is this a new development?”

I blink, refocusing, and realize a few of them are looking at me. “Oh, I—” I clear my throat. “It’s new.”

Why is it just now occurring to me that anything I do is now going to have an audience? I grimace as I pack up my toothbrush.

“Well, no wonder you look so tired!” Ida exclaims. “But you tell that boy to let you get some rest. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and I’m sure your poor?—”

“Kasey, Ida. Remember Kasey’s here,” Ethel chides with twinkling eyes.

“What? No, I can hear,” Kasey insists, looking between them. “What is it? I want to hear.”

Ida coughs, then says delicately, “Even a good kitty needs rest, that’s all I’m saying.”

I strangle on air as the women snicker. Good lord. I’m too private for this. Not that there’s much privacy where Jaykob’s concerned. I don’t think I’ve ever met a man so utterly uncaring of what he’s doing or who he is doing it around.

“I like him,” Ava says, laughing. “He’s a terrible fucking sport about everything.”

My lips twitch reluctantly.

After he saved Kasey, it’s clear the women have taken to him. It’s equally clear that he has no clue what to do with that. They tease the poor man incessantly.

“Hey, Jayk, did you see that bird earlier?”

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