Chapter 252: She Could Still Feel Him

DOVE’S POV

Dove watched Ash disappear beyond the clinic roof, then turned before she could ask him to come back.

Edrik had both bags. She took the smaller one from him, adjusted its strap and followed the nurse through the back hall. The nurse had marked their route on the back of an old appointment card. Left past the pharmacy, through its rear parking lot, then the road behind the tire shop.

It was not a clever secret passage. It was a way out that somebody had actually checked, which made Dove love it more than any clever idea she had heard that day.

They passed the pharmacy with two clinic workers and a man carrying a sleeping boy. At the corner, Edrik stopped them with a raised hand. An engine growled beyond the building. They waited until it passed, then crossed together.

Dove kept expecting a familiar hand to settle between her shoulders.

Thorne was not behind her. She knew that. Knowing did not stop her looking.

Edrik saw the second glance. He took her hand without making her explain it.

They reached the tire shop after dark. Its main shutters were down, but a side door opened into empty repair bays. Beyond the cars left on lifts stood a little office with a couch, a desk and a second door leading to a fenced yard.

Edrik checked both doors before he let himself look tired.

"We’ll stop here long enough to listen," he said. "Then decide."

Dove nodded. She did not want to promise herself a whole night and have to surrender it ten minutes later.

She set the ready bag on the desk and pulled out the clean washcloths from the bag they had collected at the clinic. There was still one unopened treatment bottle. The empty one went beside it so she would not reach for the wrong thing later.

Her hands were red around the nails.

Edrik knelt in front of her with ordinary water and a cloth. She let him clean one hand, then took the cloth and did the other herself. He stayed close enough that their knees touched.

"I can’t tell which of it was his," she said.

"You don’t have to now."

She stared at him. That was a strange mercy, not having to know one more awful thing.

The feeling beneath her ribs was still there, faint and stubborn. Thorne was alive. She could not make it show her a room or tell her whether he was hurting. She held on to it anyway.

*Sprout, I need to know what happens if I can’t open tomorrow.*

*Your merchant operation can remain suspended while you are unsafe.*

Dove lifted her head. *Can, or will? Because I’m not being charged for failing to sell socks during an attempted kidnapping.*

*No new consignment will be issued during suspension. Sales targets and charges associated with new stock will remain inactive. Your existing belongings are still yours.*

*Excellent. A surprisingly normal answer.*

*Your current priorities qualify for survival tasks.*

*Please tell me the reward isn’t a packet of crackers.*

Sprout showed her the offer. Reach a suitable shelter, check another way out, and rest there for four uninterrupted hours. Two hundred and fifty Normal Coins, two battery fans with batteries, a large mosquito net and twelve substantial meal packs.

A second line offered a personal bullet shield after those same four hours. Dove opened its details before accepting anything. Thirty seconds, once a day, covering only her body. It stopped bullets, not explosions, grabbing hands or a stun device pressed against her skin. She would still need cover.

*So I can survive getting shot at, but I should still avoid it.*

*Strongly recommended.*

Dove read the list twice.

*Where was this generosity when I was freezing my ass off?*

*Your present progression supports larger rewards.*

*That was almost an answer. Do I have to pay to keep the food?*

*A quest reward belongs to you. It is not consigned merchandise.*

That mattered. She could finish something and keep the whole good thing at the end without an argument about the last portion.

She accepted, then looked around the office. Four hours might be possible. The second exit was real. Edrik had checked it himself. The front windows, however, faced a road they knew almost nothing about.

"I want somewhere less visible before we sleep properly," she said.

Edrik nodded. "So do I. Eat first."

She almost told him she was not hungry. Her stomach answered before her mouth could make the lie convincing.

They ate from the food in the ready bag. It was enough for both of them if she stopped trying to make herself smaller than her appetite. Edrik gave her the better piece without ceremony. She broke some off and put it back in his hand.

"You’re not running on manners. Eat."

His mouth curved. "Yes, wife."

The word helped. She had expected it to hurt with Thorne absent, but it reminded her that Edrik had not become less hers because she was frightened for somebody else.

She retrieved their owned radio from storage while he watched her body. For a moment the private warehouse appeared around her thoughts, shelves and familiar bundles exactly where she had left them. Their books were there. The movie player. Clothing she had argued with Sprout about buying.

They had not lost everything.

She came back to the office with the radio and touched its worn casing until her breathing settled. Edrik put fresh batteries in it and searched for the relief broadcasts.

A woman was asking about a missing delivery. Another voice reported that the northern station was still taking people. Dove leaned forward at the clinic mention, then sat back when it was not their clinic.

Edrik found her fingers beneath the desk. He did not squeeze hard enough to demand a response.

"I want him complaining about the food," she said. "I want him making that face when I steal his coffee."

"He’ll have plenty to complain about when you see him."

"You sound very sure."

"I’m choosing to be."

She leaned against his shoulder and let him carry that certainty for a few minutes.

The radio crackled again. A relief driver spoke slowly, repeating the location so nobody could misunderstand it. Armed men had taken the direct canal crossing. Vehicles were being searched, passengers held, and the clinic road was no longer open.

Dove looked down at the little appointment card in her hand.

The shortest line she had drawn toward Thorne went straight through them.