strands of grass, her chin digging into the ground, and watched the man walk up to the farmhouse. He pressed his fingers against what Reese guessed was a doorbell. When there was no response, he knocked. The sound was small under the vast night sky, like a pin tapping against glass. He stood there for several minutes, pressing the doorbell and knocking, before the door finally opened. A man in boxer shorts and a white T-shirt came out onto the concrete front step.
They couldn’t hear the conversation clearly, but they saw the police officer show his identification. The man scratched his head and eventually let the cop into the house. The lights went on room by room.
“Are they searching the place?” David whispered.
“Looks like it,” Reese said.
“Do you think they’re looking for us?” Amber asked.
Reese watched the house with growing anxiety. Eventually the lights began to go off, and the front door opened. The officer handed the man a business card before returning to his car. As he drove away, the man closed the front door.
“I think we should keep moving,” David said. “If they’re looking for us, we can’t stay here.”
“But if that cop was looking for us, then he’s already checked this place,” Reese said. “So isn’t it safe for us to stay?”
“What are we going to do?” David asked. “Wait in the field? It’s dark now, but when the sun rises we’ll be totally obvious.”
“Do you guys know what day it is? Or what night?” Amber asked.
“I think it’s Wednesday night,” Reese said. “When Torres took me to the bathroom she told me it was Tuesday. I don’t think it’s been more than a day since then.”
“So the guy in the house is going to have to go to work in the morning,” Amber said. “We should wait till he leaves and then go into his house and call for help on his phone.”
“What if he has a wife or kids or something?” David asked.
“I don’t think he does,” Amber said. “There are no toys in the yard, so probably no kids. And there’s only one car. When the lights went on in the house we didn’t see anybody else getting up. I think it’s just him.”
Reese stared across the field, trying to figure out what the bulky shapes were in the dark. One of them looked like a pile of hay bales. “Let’s go over there,” she said, pointing at the rectangular shapes. “Maybe we can hide behind those and keep an eye on the house.”
“All right. I guess we can try it,” David said.
They got to their feet and crossed the rest of the field as quietly as they could. It was indeed a pile of hay bales, and Reese realized they must have been running through hay fields earlier. The bales were stacked five feet thick and ten feet high, although the back row was lower. They moved a few of the bales from the rear to create a second low wall to hide behind, hoping that the homeowner wouldn’t notice a difference from the front. If they peeked over the low wall of hay they could glimpse the light from the carport. Reese tucked Carter’s gun between two hay bales and saw David do the same with the agent’s weapon.
As they huddled on the ground in the corner behind the hay, cold seeped through the thin fabric of Reese’s pants and she shivered, struck by a wave of exhaustion. Amber was shivering too, her bare arms wrapped around her knees. “Are your feet okay?” Reese whispered.
“They hurt, but I’ll be fine.”
David pulled off his jacket and held it out to Amber. “Here. You’re cold.”
She didn’t take it at first, and Reese didn’t need to be touching Amber to know that she was surprised by the offer. “Thanks,” she said after a moment, and took the jacket.
They sat in silence for a while with Reese between David and Amber. Reese heard David lean back against the hay bales. A chilly breeze whistled through the air, ruffling her hair. She realized they were all keeping a careful amount of distance between one another, and it made her heart sink. She drew her knees up, trying to quell the shaking in her body as the aftereffects of what they had done flooded through her. She had shot a man. She didn’t know if he was alive or dead. They had fled across a field in the middle of the night and now they were hiding out in order to break into someone’s house in the morning. She shuddered again.
David reached out and touched her arm.
He pulled her over to him, putting his arm around her, and after her initial surprise, she let herself lean into him. He was warmer than her, and she felt the steady thump of his heartbeat beneath her cheek while his hand stroked her shoulder. His body buzzed with relief and exhaustion, and she sensed the ache of a bruise on his back from where he had been thrown against the van door.
She winced and he lowered his hand to her shoulder again, drawing her closer. She wanted to stay there, but it wasn’t fair to Amber, and she began to pull away.
She was taken aback.
She sensed him withdrawing from her mentally, closing off his consciousness until she was unable to sense anything more than his physical self. It felt almost alien to be like this with him: her body curled into his, her face against his chest, with no connection to his thoughts. She knew why he had withdrawn from her, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to follow through on what he suggested. She stayed there, motionless, feeling the rapid flutter of her own heartbeat as she told herself she could do it.
She took a deep breath and closed herself off too. She focused on the pain in her head from where she had hit the back of the van. She focused on the chill on her skin from the cool wind. She focused, and then she reached for Amber.
Amber was shivering beneath David’s jacket, and Reese shifted so that she could put an arm around her. Amber pulled her legs up and tucked herself against Reese, her hair tickling Reese’s chin. She drew in a long, quivering breath, as if she were about to cry, and then she exhaled. Slowly, Reese relaxed. She was a lot warmer now. Although she had fully disconnected mentally from both David and Amber, she somehow felt closer to them than she ever had before. As they waited for the sun to rise, she closed her eyes. Tears streaked down her cheeks, and she felt the night air blow gently over her damp face.
CHAPTER 39
When Reese’s eyes opened, Amber was gone and the sky was lightening. Reese was still curled in the crook of David’s arm, and she felt his lungs rising and falling beneath her cheek. She sat up carefully, trying not to wake him, and looked for Amber.
She was crouched behind one of the hay bales nearby, peering at the house. In the early morning light, Reese saw the blood and dirt caked over Amber’s feet, which were still poorly wrapped in the sleeves from her jacket.
“Oh my God, does that hurt?” Reese whispered, crawling over to her.
Amber glanced at her feet and shrugged. “A little.”
“We have to get that cleaned up.”
Amber smiled slightly. “Later.” She nodded toward the house. “I think he’s up. I saw a light go on a while ago.”
As Reese watched, another window lit up on the ground floor. Through the mini-blinds, she saw the edge of a refrigerator. “Have you seen anyone else?”
“No. It’s still just the one guy.”
Reese backed away and leaned against the hay. David stirred, blinking his eyes. The dried blood on his face and neck was cracking. She grimaced. “Are you all right? That doesn’t look so good.”
David sat up, raising his right hand to his face. His hand was covered with dried blood too, and he froze as he saw it.
“Did you hurt your hand?” Reese asked. She reached for it, studying his palm for wounds, and felt him
