She stammers a response, and she overdoes it, but Brady doesn’t seem to notice and comes to her rescue with, “We were just talking about my meals. I need more protein. And I’d like hand weights. Twenty-pounders.”
“If you don’t get the weights, you won’t need the protein,” Dalton drawls, but when Brady’s lips tighten, he says, “We’ll arrange trips to the gym later. We’re not giving you dumbbells, though. We call those weapons.”
“Oh, I think that’s overstating the matter,” Val says.
“Then you think wrong,” Dalton says. “Now, if you’ll excuse us . . .”
Val bristles. Dalton turns his back on her. Brady follows the exchange and allows himself the smallest of smiles.
9
It’s now day five, and we need to get Brady out of that cell. Time for his first walk.
Anders, Dalton, and I lead Brady into the forest through the station back door. I’ve removed his gag, and he’s trudging along, gaze down, docile and quiet. We make it three steps before he spots a woman by the forest’s edge and raises his bound hands.
“Help me,” he says. “Please. This is a mistake. They’re going to—”
“Yeah,” Nicole says. “You definitely want to keep that gag on.”
She walks to Brady. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I look like a gullible passerby? There aren’t any of those here. You know what is here? People who’ll take one look at scum like you and—”
He snaps forward to crack heads with her, but Nicole pulls back and their foreheads barely graze. Then she plows her fist into Brady’s stomach, and he staggers, gasping in pain.
“Like I said,” she says. “Don’t bother.”
She continues past him. Moving out of his field of vision so he doesn’t see her flushed face and quickened breathing. I resisted bringing her on this walk. She’s militia, which means she’s trained for it, but she became militia after her ordeal. I understand her need to get past that, toughen up and move forward. I also know the dangers of doing it too fast, and that quickened breathing tells me that as badass as the encounter looked, she’s quaking inside.
While Dalton replaces Brady’s gag, I look over and Nicole mouths, Please. I know she means please let her come. I nod.
We’ve barely taken three steps when Dalton hears something, and we see a trio of residents, who just happen to have decided to stroll along the town border. Brady turns their way, his head bowed, bound hands lowered. He makes no move to get their attention, but he does, of course. He looks as pathetic as he had for Nicole.
Please help me.
They’ve made a mistake. You see that, don’t you?
He says something against the gag, and I don’t even think it’s words. It’s not meant to be. He’s just drawing their attention to his situation.
This is the dilemma we face. Remove the gag, and Brady can plead his case. Leave it on, and the very gag pleads it for him.
Look at me.
Look what they’re doing to me.
“You done gawking?” Dalton says to the trio. “Come over and take a closer look. See if Nicki has a bruise yet, from where he head-butted her.”
Of course, there isn’t a mark, but that’s enough to make them decide to head back into town.
We set out. As we walk, Anders glances at me, as if feeling the urge to make small talk. I’m not sure that’s wise, though. It feels too easy to let something slip, something that might suggest Brady isn’t in Alaska.
Except that’s not all he knows. He has seen faces. Heard names, even if they’re fake. We are making an enemy here, one who does not seem like a stupid man. One who is not going to forget us.
I’m only beginning to realize the full extent of the danger the council has put us in.
We’re a couple of kilometers into the forest when I turn to Brady and say, “Enough exercise?,” and he looks around, as if he’s considering, but it’s more than that. He’s processing his surroundings, and when he shakes his head, I know it’s not that he wants more exercise—he wants to see more.
“We can go back and come out again,” Nicole says.
“Nah,” Dalton says. “We’ll walk as far as he wants. He’s enjoying the scenery. Plenty of it out here.”
Endless scenery, that’s what he means. Endless trails that go nowhere Brady will want to go. They lead to mountains and caves for us to explore. Lakes and streams for fish and fowl. Hunting blinds. Overnight campsites. Berry patches. Yes, one of those paths might hook up with a trail used by miners or trappers, which could ultimately get you to the nearest village. But Brady would still need to survive the trek with no weapons or skills.
As we continue, Nicole asks if anyone has seen our resident man-eating cougar recently. It’s a heavy-handed attempt to tell Brady what he’d face out here, but Dalton goes along with it, mostly for conversation. The silence is starting to smell of fear, as if we’re too shaken by Brady to talk around him.
They’re discussing the big cat when I see a figure around the next bend. My left arm flies up, stopping Brady. My right goes for my gun.
“It’s just me,” Jacob calls as he breaks into a jog. “I was about ready to give up on you guys. I thought we said noon . . .”
Jacob slows as he rounds the bend and sees us. His gaze travels over Brady, and I’m waiting for a What the fuck? Except he won’t say those exact words. Dalton’s younger brother does not share his propensity for profanity.
Instead, he just says to Dalton, “You forgot about me, huh?”
Now we get the “Fuck,” from Dalton, and, “Yeah, sorry.”
We’re close to the spot where Dalton and his brother trade, and I’m guessing that’s what they had scheduled for today.
I wave at Brady. “We had a situation.”
“I see that. I heard Eric and Nicki talking, and I thought maybe she’d come along to help him carry supplies.”
“Or to visit,” Nicole says. “I hope I’d be more than a pack mule in that scenario.”
“Course,” Jacob says, his cheeks flushing over his beard, which I do not fail to notice has been trimmed short. His hair is tied back neatly, and he’s dressed in the new jeans and new tee he’d requested at their last trade. Which isn’t to say that Jacob normally looks like he’s just crawled from a cave after a winter’s hibernation. But he does live out here, without access to showers and department stores.
This extra effort was in hopes Nicole would accompany Dalton, as she often does, part of the slow dance between Jacob and her. They’ve been circling each other, not unlike a couple of fifteen-year-olds, trying to figure out if the other is interested before making any embarrassing moves.
“Eric did forget,” Nicole says. “Otherwise, I’d have expected an invitation. But, yes, as you can see . . .” She nods at the man beside me. “We have a situation.”
Jacob nods.
“You’re not even going ask why we’re walking a bound and gagged man through the forest, are you?”
Jacob shrugs. “Figure he pissed Eric off.”
Nicole laughs at that.
Jacob looks at his brother. “You want me to store the game?”
“Nah, we’ll take it off your hands.”
We walk around the bend to the spot where Jacob left his trade goods—a brace of rabbits, one of ducks, and one of pheasants.
“Good hunting,” Dalton says.
“ ’Tis the season, as Dad used to say.”
Dalton nods, expressionless, as he always is when his brother mentions their parents. When Dalton was nine, the former sheriff of Rockton “rescued” him from the forest. And by “rescued,” I mean kidnapped. So Dalton went from one loving set of parents to another. And the first set never came after him, while the second never realized that what they’d done was wrong. It’s an impossible situation to reconcile, and Dalton refuses to even discuss it.