Chapter 269: She Was Not on Anybody’s Pickup List

DOVE’S POV

Dove woke to the sound of the organizer arguing outside his office and decided that breakfast was going to require extra coffee.

She had slept in the van with Edrik close enough that every time she shifted, his hand found her. It had helped. It hadn’t made the note disappear from her thoughts.

Female. One bear. Panther absent.

She hated being reduced to a head count by men deciding whether she was easy enough to take.

The office door stood open when they went over. Inside, the organizer sat behind an old teacher’s desk with two guards and the man Edrik had caught. His wrist was wrapped, his expression sour, and his confidence had stayed somewhere in yesterday afternoon.

"The boar left before we could stop him," the organizer said. "He wasn’t alone. One of the men with him used to work a loading gate at the Warren."

Dove asked which one. The description brought back a door, a man looking away, and the terrible heat of being pushed out while people who knew better stood still.

"He helped send me out," she said. "He opened the door."

Edrik’s hand settled against her back. She didn’t need him to say anything. The fact that he was there made it easier to keep talking without turning the memory into a performance for strangers.

She explained what she had seen and what she hadn’t. The guard had carried out Garran’s order. She didn’t know what he’d done after leaving the Warren, and she wasn’t going to invent it simply because she was furious.

The organizer wrote down enough to identify him. Then he showed her the camp’s crossing list. Her van had been entered for that morning before the scout was caught. Somebody had copied the page.

"We’ve changed it," he said. "You won’t be in that group."

Dove looked at the crossed-out time. "Changing it is good. Finding out who copied it would be better."

"We’re doing both."

She believed he meant it. He had angry travelers, a damaged road, and a woman being hunted in his parking lot. He still hadn’t tried to solve his morning by telling her to go be somebody else’s problem.

That earned him more patience than she had brought into the room.

The radio operator called from the doorway. A message from Base B had come through, using the names and details they’d agreed on with the clinic. Dove went to hear it herself. The local authorities were challenging the armed recovery group’s claim to act for the base. No general order existed to collect her or her husbands.

It didn’t mean the dangerous men had vanished. It meant their uniforms and signs didn’t give them the right to do what they were doing.

Dove asked for the message to be repeated to the camp guards and the northern station. If someone was going to wave a borrowed title around, she wanted people to know it was borrowed.

*Charisma isn’t just smiling, is it?* she asked Sprout while the operator wrote.

*Correct. Clear requests and credible information can change cooperation.*

*Please don’t reward me with a pamphlet.*

*No new quest was accepted for this exchange.*

*Good. I did it because I wanted it done.*

There was a small pleasure in that, too. She wasn’t a woman waiting for a task box to tell her she had permission to think.

They returned to the van for breakfast. Edrik heated canned meat from their own supplies with eggs bought from the camp kitchen, and Dove opened crackers and fruit. The portions were large enough that neither of them would be hungry again before they finished swallowing.

"I miss eating because I’m bored," she said. "Instead of because I need to stay alive long enough to get to the next place where people are weird at me."

Edrik handed her a plate. "When this is over, I’ll bore you terribly."

"You?"

"I’ll sit in a chair. Say very little. Let you complain about the weather."

She looked at his shoulders, his tattoos disappearing beneath his sleeves, the mouth that rarely behaved when they were alone. "You’re going to have to try harder."

His smile came slowly. "I was hoping you’d say that."

She leaned against him while they ate, letting the ordinary warmth of the moment settle before she picked up the map. Her life was allowed to contain breakfast and flirting even when somebody had put her description on a piece of paper. She refused to hand them those parts too.

The organizer returned with a new route. A small delivery road ran west of the bridge and joined a maintained crossing farther up the reservoir. It was longer, but a local driver had used it yesterday. He could mark the turns and radio the next stop.

Dove asked about fuel, road damage, and where they could sleep. Three useful questions, three answers she could picture. Then she chose it.

Dove went back to the organizer before packing and thanked him for listening. Not a performance for the room, just a quiet word beside the desk. He looked surprised, then tired. "I have daughters in my family," he said. "I’d want somebody to ask before deciding for them."

She kept that with her when she left the office. The road had given her plenty of reasons to expect the worst. She wanted to remember the people who had made a better choice while it still cost them something.

They packed without reopening the stall. The camp received the agreed supplies for the route help instead of the canceled escorted crossing, with both sides accepting the change. Dove kept a copy of the road sketch and the name of the man expecting their call.

Before they left, the scout admitted the copied list had gone to the recovery truck. The organizer sent a warning to the original crossing and kept their new route off the public sheet. Dove watched him fold her copy and give it directly to her.

An hour later, the camp operator reached them by radio. Two men had appeared at the old meeting point, asking why the woman’s van was missing.

Dove looked at the empty road ahead and finally smiled. "Let them wait."

Then she unfolded the detour map. The warehouse marked beside the next stop had three words written beneath it: camping supplies available.