Chapter 12: Together, Then

"Coffee," Luka said again. "With Mara."

"I know what I said."

"No more lies. That was my term. You agreed."

"You took my gun while I slept."

"I gave it back."

"You brought it back after you'd shown your father where we were."

The driver, still pinned against the fence, made a very small sound.

Luka's jaw worked.

I let go of the man's arm and he dropped to his knees on the gravel.

I kicked his phone across to Luka, and he caught it with his good hand.

"We're even," I said.

"We are not even."

"Then we're two people who've each broken a term and are standing in a coal yard."

I put the pistol in my waistband.

"I went because I'm faster alone. I lied because you'd have followed."

"You could have said that."

"You would have said no."

"I'd have said no," Luka admitted. "And then I'd have come anyway."

"Exactly."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he laughed, one short, startled breath, and rubbed his eyes with his wrist.

"God help me," he said.

"I'm in love with a woman who lies to me for my own good, and I've done the same to her."

I froze.

It was not a thing either of us had said before. It lay between us on the gravel, plain as a dropped coin.

"I didn't mean to say that yet," Luka said.

"You said it."

"I did."

"Say it again later," I said, and my voice was not steady, "when nobody has a gun under his ear."

The driver, on his knees, cleared his throat.

"I'm not going to say anything," he said. "I'm just the car."

We tied him with his own belt, inside a boxcar with the door wedged shut, and Luka put the sedan keys in his pocket.

Then we sat on the loading dock of the dead coal yard, two feet apart, and made a plan.

Not the way I had made plans for twelve years, which was alone, with a map and a bad feeling.

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