Chapter 267: The Ride Was Free, Which Was Suspicious

DOVE’S POV

The bridge camp looked like somebody had moved a small town into a school parking lot and then run out of patience halfway through.

Trucks stood along the fence. Tents filled the grass beside the basketball court, and cooking fires burned in metal barrels well away from the fuel cans. The school doors were open, with a handwritten sign directing travelers to the gym for water and road information. A boy slept beneath the sign with his head on a folded jacket. Someone had placed a cup of water beside him, safely out of reach of passing feet.

She parked near the exit and walked to the folding table beneath the front awning. Edrik stayed beside her, his gaze moving over the camp while hers followed the smell of fried potatoes.

The man at the table had a loud voice, a bent ear, and three people asking him questions at once.

"One at a time," he said. "I only grew the one mouth."

"Lucky you," Dove said. "I have a husband who makes up for the shortage."

Edrik looked offended for roughly half a second. "I say very little."

"You make it count."

The organizer laughed. "You say that like you’re fond of the trouble."

*Resting Sweet Face,* Sprout reminded her.

*I was already funny.*

*Your husband agrees. Strangers sometimes need assistance.*

She hid a smile behind the route paper while the organizer explained the bridge crossing. Local drivers went together because a damaged stretch on the far side forced everyone to slow down. The escorts watched the stopped vehicles while the drivers took turns through. They weren’t the recovery crew advertised on the grocery store notice, and they didn’t claim to control everybody passing through camp.

Dove asked that twice in different ways. He answered both times without trying to rush her.

The crossing would cost supplies. She offered owned washcloths and two of the unopened bottles she’d earned, inspected the route drawing, and kept the van keys in her own pocket. She wasn’t opening a public shop for the crowd already beginning to notice her.

*Merchant operation remains paused,* Sprout confirmed. *This is an ordinary exchange of owned goods.*

*Thank you for not suggesting a grand opening.*

*The parking lot lacks several desirable safety features.*

*Including people minding their own business.*

A man carrying firewood stopped in front of her. "You should stay a night. There are good men here."

"Excellent. They can help keep the crossing safe."

"I meant good men for you."

Edrik turned his head. He didn’t bare his teeth or raise his voice. He just looked at the man until the invitation began to feel less clever.

Dove took the route paper. "I understood. I was being polite."

The organizer pointed the wood carrier toward the cooking barrels and told him to find something useful to do. Dove liked that he didn’t make her husbands handle every man who forgot himself.

They walked along the school wall toward the gym entrance. Inside, people slept on mats beneath the basketball hoops, with bags tucked under their heads and supplies stacked around family groups. A volunteer kept the main aisle clear. The basketball score still showed twelve to nine. Dove wondered who had been winning when the lights went out, then followed Edrik around a man mending a boot in the aisle.

Outside the far gym door, a few travelers gathered around two square wooden boards laid on the ground. One board stood beside a parked pickup. The other lay beyond the far fence, visible through an open gate.

A man with tired eyes stood on the nearer board while another adult gripped his arm. Somebody called for the crowd to step back.

The two men vanished.

Dove stopped walking so abruptly that Edrik’s hand settled at her waist. Across the yard, the men appeared on the second board. The passenger stumbled off, laughing with relief. The man who had moved them sat down immediately and pressed both hands against his knees.

"That’s all for a while," he called. "Stop lining up."

The volunteer beside Dove shrugged. "He’s been showing people how it works. Two marked boards, both placed first. Takes one grown man with him if they’re touching. Short trip, then he’s done in."

"How short?" Dove asked.

"Says a few miles on a good day. I watched him do the fence. Can’t promise you the rest."

A useful distinction. Dove kept it.

*Not the courier’s skill,* she thought to Sprout.

*Different observed conditions. Do not assume shared limits.*

The mail carrier’s base route had rules of its own. This man needed prepared boards and contact with a passenger. Neither ability meant anybody could simply appear wherever they pleased, which was reassuring right up until she pictured someone arranging the boards somewhere she didn’t want to go.

Edrik had clearly pictured the same thing. "We keep away from that."

"I wasn’t about to volunteer for the mystery floor ride."

He brushed a finger down her wrist, a small private touch hidden from the crowd. "Good girl."

Dove looked up at him. "You are abusing that phrase."

"I haven’t begun."

She hated that he could make her warm in this heat. She also very much wanted him to continue later, when nobody was staring at them from beside a gym door.

Dove bought a paper tray of potatoes from the camp kitchen before they returned to the van. She had been smelling them since they arrived, and she was tired of treating every small want like something she should apologize for. Edrik tried one when she offered, then stole another while she was talking. She threatened his fingers and moved the tray closer to him anyway.

The organizer came to find them with a departure time. Morning, after the bridge crew checked the damaged road. They could sleep in their van inside the guarded lot or use the gym with everyone else. Dove chose the van and asked which guard would be on the gate overnight.

Then a laugh came from the cooking barrels, and the little pleasant thoughts went out of her head.

She knew that laugh. Not because it was special, but because she’d heard it when she had been dirty and cold and trying to sell things to people who expected the worst of her.

The man turned, showing a chipped front tooth. A blue cord circled his wrist beneath a dirty sleeve.

Rusk saw her a moment after she saw him.

His smile widened, and Dove’s fingers closed hard around Edrik’s hand.

"We are not sleeping in that gym," she said.