16

R oman was generous with his time, too generous, helping us transfer what we needed from the truck, insisting I comb through my moving chest for anything I might require.

“I’d rather you didn’t delay any more than necessary,” I told him.

He gave a slow nod. “I would prefer to get through the gate without a stop and search. But a couple of minutes isn’t going to make much difference.”

So I unlatched the chest and quickly pulled out extra clothes and underwear, carrying that inside to the room I’d chosen. The cabin was small and basic, with a central living space that doubled as a kitchen, a tiny bathroom with a shower stall, two small bedrooms on either end and minimal furnishings. My bedroom had a pair of single beds and Daniel’s had a pair of bunk beds.

Roman dropped my overnight bag onto one of the narrow beds, then reached for me, pulling me into his arms. “You can still change your mind.”

My response was a smile, and a determined look in my eye. “It’ll only be for a couple of weeks, at the most, then I’ll join you in The Smoke. If this is going to work, it will be now, not in the months or years to come.”

The change had to be now, while my voice was loud, while Capra was still shaken from the revolution trembles, before the Sisters of Capra put down solid roots.

He brushed his knuckles across my cheek, his gaze sinking into me. “I’m not leaving you here to fend for yourselves. Tomorrow, I’ll bring proper food, more blankets…anything else you need?”

“We’ll be fine.” I reached up onto my toes, fully intent on offering my mouth to his for a kiss when—

“Here’s your bedding,” Daniel said, oblivious to what he’d walked in on as he tossed a quilt and blanket on the bare mattress.

Just as well.

I extracted myself from the fold of Roman’s warmth and strength…before I begged him to stay. “You should go.”

Roman hesitated, reluctant to leave me, but he had to go and I was determined to stay and a few more minutes wouldn’t change anything. “You still have your iComm?”

“Yes!” I’d completely forgotten about the iComm. That wasn’t all. I patted the bulge in the purse slung over my shoulder. “I also have the gun and three darts.”

“Keep them close,” Roman said.

“You have an iComm?” Daniel stepped forward. “Do you think I could contact my father?”

I thought of the pile of iComms at Berkley House and shook my head. “I’m sorry, but I think his iComm would have been confiscated.”

“What about Brenda?”

I threw my hands up. “I don’t know. We can try.”

“No social calls,” Roman said firmly. “That’s what I wanted to warn you about. If they don’t disable your iComm, it will be so they can monitor it.”

“They can’t trace or intercept calls,” Daniel said.

“They can’t,” Roman agreed. “But they can see where the connection originates, and they’ll know Georga is here, and not in The Smoke.”

Daniel slapped his palm to his forehead. “I didn’t think of that.”

Which got me worrying about all the things we hadn’t thought of. Roman had the training for this kind of subterfuge. It was practically in his nature. Daniel and I were accustomed to a cotton-coated, candy-fluff life. Roman’s words, but in this moment they rang true.

Roman looked me in the eye. “Call me if you need to, but only in an emergency. Understood?”

“Understood.”

He brushed a kiss over my mouth. “I love you.”

“I love you.” Tears threatened behind my eyes. This wasn’t goodbye, but everything felt so uncertain. “Be careful. And don’t return to Capra if you can’t do so safely.”

“If I can’t come through the gates, I’ll come through the tunnel.” The way he looked at me, I knew nothing would keep him away from Capra so long as I was here.

“Go.” I gave him a gentle push, and he went, leaving me and Daniel to sort ourselves out.

Not that there was much to do.

I spread the blanket over the mattress, then shook the quilt out over it. Without heating, it wouldn’t be warm enough. I’d have to sleep in sweatpants and a sweater. I insisted Daniel borrow an oversized hoodie from me, but my spare pair of sweatpants didn’t fit.

He wasn’t overly concerned. He was too busy rooting through the shopping bag dumped on the table. “Hungry? We have crackers and dried apple...and…”

He gave me a look. “Crackers and dried apple.”

I wasn’t surprised that was all Roman had managed to scrounge from our kitchen. If I were my mother, I’d have pantry shelves lined with jars of preserved fruit and tins of wholesome soup. I made a terrible housewife.

I caught a whiff of apple and my stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, I realized. “I could eat.”

As I sat down by the table, the chair rocked on the uneven wood-slatted floor. I wasn’t a princess. I wasn’t complaining. But I did take note of all the small things, the little reminders that we’d chosen the most remote, and possibly least desirable cabin in the entire nature reserve.

Daniel took the chair across from me and propped open the bags containing our feast. He took a cracker to nibble on, his gaze sweeping the space, then coming to a rest on the crack in the drapes covering the window that the table was pushed up against.

What was he thinking about? All his shattered hopes and dreams? Was he as distraught about losing his home, his affluent lifestyle, his prominent future, as Brenda was?

He must be.

He was the golden boy with blue, blue eyes, and now his world had imploded.

A wave of guilt hit me, not at what he’d lost, but at the part I’d played. He was my friend, and I was the one who’d struck at the heart of his family. There was no way to gloss over it. I’d known it at the time, and I knew it now.

“How are you doing?” I asked softly.

“As well as can be expected,” he returned just as softly, then he adjusted the drapes to close the crack, to stop the light from bleeding out, or maybe just for his hands to do something.

“I’m sorry.”

“This isn’t your fault.” His gaze swung onto me. “I know you’re part of this Sisterhood, Georga, but it’s kind of obvious by now that you don’t agree with everything they’ve done.”

“That’s not what I’m apologizing for.” I popped a piece of apple into my mouth and chewed.

I was a coward.

I didn’t want to do this.

But every other minute, Daniel was discovering something new about just how screwed up his life was. It would be kinder to get it all out there. He deserved that much.

“Do you remember that day you came home to find me in the den? Your father had a nasty cold, or the flu.”

“You weren’t feeling great yourself,” he said, proving he did indeed remember. “You collapsed.”

“I faked it,” I admitted. “I was on a mission for the Sisterhood. I gave your father herbal tea laced with brandy and a sedative to knock him out, so I could take a copy of his handprint. That’s how they got into the armory.”

Daniel didn’t say a word. His gaze snapped away from me as he picked up another cracker, crumbling it between his fingers instead of eating.

“It wasn’t an easy decision, abusing your trust like that, but I did it,” I said. “I won’t ask you to not be mad at me, to not hate me. I don’t expect you to forgive me. But you should know, that’s who I am, that’s what I did, and I am sorry.”

Still, he said nothing. He broke off a piece of cracker and put it in his mouth. The rest crumbled to dust beneath his forefinger and thumb.

“That’s it?” I said. “You’re not going to say anything?”

“What do you want me to say, Georga?” He sounded weary, defeated, exhausted, and his eyes finally lifted to me.

I wanted him to tell me what a terrible person I was. Maybe I wanted something that I could defend against, a chance to explain, to justify my actions...as selfish as that was.

He didn’t give me the opportunity, and I wouldn’t take it.

I’d taken enough from him.

He crunched on another cracker.

I chewed on bits of apple. This was it, I consoled myself, my final confession. Despite his silence, my chest felt lighter.

Once I’d finished the dried apple, I dusted my hands off.

“You should eat something else,” Daniel said. “Crackers?”

“Maybe later,” I said, grateful that we were apparently still on speaking terms.

I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. It had been a long day. The constant onslaught of excitement, stress and adrenaline had taken its toll. I stretched my legs out beneath the table and slid my hands inside my coat, arms wrapped around my waist for extra warmth and comfort.

“I don’t recommend sleeping in that position.”

My eyes blinked open. “I’m not sleeping,” I said around a yawn. “But that sounds like a good idea. It’s been a long day.”

“A weird day.”

I swallowed a laugh. “We are so far beyond weird, we crossed weird about a mile ago.”

“I get it, you know,” Daniel said, studying me, his expression somber. “I used to listen to the way you spoke. I saw the stars in your eyes, the passion in your arguments, the trouble in your smile, and I liked to think I understood. I didn’t, not really, but I do now.”

I rolled my head his way. “What are you saying?”

“I know what it’s like to feel trapped and powerless, utterly helpless, subject to the whims of people with the authority to do whatever they wish, to you, to those you care about,” he said. “It’s only been a few days for me, but this has been your life. What you did, stealing my father’s handprint…I guess, I get how a person could be driven to do just about anything to change the helplessness.”

“Thank you,” I said in a small voice. It wasn’t forgiveness, but what he’d given me was worth more. He understood why it had never felt like a choice for me. “I’m still sorry.”

“I know.” There was another stretch of silence. “They didn’t have to do… that …to my father, though. He would have stepped down quietly. He always considered his position on the council to be a duty he was too noble to shy away from, not a power he hungered after.”

I didn’t know Julian Edgar well enough to judge Daniel’s word against whatever inner struggles the man might have fought against. But I also knew that Daniel didn’t know the full story about his father, like how he’d committed his own wife, Daniel’s mother, to rehab.

I didn’t say anything, and I never would. It wasn’t my secret to tell and if Daniel could live the rest of his life without that dark fact, well, that’s what I wished for him.