Chapter 4

Neve

They’re gone.

I tell myself that for three hours.

I tell myself while the last of the engines fades down the highway, while I stand at the window long after there’s nothing left to see but sleet and the red glow of the gas station sign. I tell myself while I walk back to the counter on legs that don’t feel like mine, and pick up the rag I dropped, and wipe down a booth that’s already clean.

Marjorie watches me from the register.

“You want to tell me who they were?”

“Nobody.”

“You want to go home early? I can cover the supper crowd.”

“No.” It comes out too fast. I make myself smile. “No, I’m fine. I’d rather work.”

She looks at me a moment longer, then nods and goes back to her receipts.

The truth is, I’m not staying because I want the hours. I’m staying because of the window, and the truckers at the counter, and the woman from the post office who comes back every Tuesday for a second slice of pie. Witnesses. A diner full of humans who would see.

Wolves don’t drag a woman out of a public place. Not even Iron Fang. There are rules about humans, and every pack in the valley keeps them, because breaking them brings the kind of attention nobody wants.

I learned a long time ago that the worst things happen where no one can see.

So I stay where everyone can.

I find the money when I clear their table.

Dominic’s bills are scattered across the tabletop as if he couldn’t wait to be rid of them. Under Asher’s coffee cup, there’s a twenty, folded into a small, neat square.

I stand there with the cup in one hand and the money in the other, and for a second I can’t breathe.

When we were kids, Asher used to do the same thing with his last dollar. He’d slide it under my lunch tray when I didn’t have enough for the vending machine, and when I tried to give it back, he’d pretend he had no idea what I was talking about. He did it for years. I don’t think he ever knew that I noticed every single time.

He was looking at me today like he didn’t know whether to hate me or help me.

I don’t know which would be worse.

I put the twenty in my apron pocket. I need it more than I need my pride. Then I go into the walk-in freezer, close the door behind me, and stand in the cold dark until my hands stop shaking.

The supper crowd is small because of the weather. A few families. A couple of ranch hands. Earl’s chicken-fried steak and the last of the apple pie. I take orders and refill water glasses and laugh when someone makes a joke, and every time an engine passes on the highway, my whole body goes still.

None of them stop.

By nine, the place is empty. Marjorie flips the sign on the door and counts out my pay in cash, the way she does every Tuesday, and then she adds another ten I didn’t earn.

“For the weather,” she says.

“Marjorie—”

“Don’t argue with me, Jo.” She pulls on her coat. “You want a ride? It’s nasty out there.”

I almost say yes. I almost let myself sit in her warm car for three blocks and pretend I’m somebody whose biggest problem is the sleet.

“I’m okay,” I say. “It’s not far.”

She sighs like she expected that. At the door, she stops and looks back at me.

“Lock your door tonight, honey.”

Then she’s gone, and I’m alone with the hum of the coolers and the smell of bleach and the cold, steady knowledge that she saw more today than she let on.

The walk home is three blocks. I’ve done it a hundred times. Tonight it feels like ten miles.

The snow has started again, soft and wet, catching in the streetlights. I keep my hands in my pockets and my head down, and somewhere between the hardware store and the laundromat, a memory slips past every wall I’ve built to keep it out.

The woods behind the packhouse. Late summer. I was nine, and we were playing hide-and-seek, and I’d found the best spot in the whole forest: a hollow under the roots of a fallen pine, so deep and dark that nobody would ever think to look.

Nobody did. Not for an hour. Then two.

By the time the sun started going down, I was too scared to come out. The shadows had changed shape. Every sound was something with teeth. I curled up as small as I could and cried into my knees, sure I’d be there forever.

Dominic found me.

He was twelve and furious, scratched all over from tearing through the brush, his voice hoarse from calling my name. He dropped down on his knees at the edge of the hollow and stared at me like I’d scared ten years off his life.

“Don’t ever do that again,” he said.

I didn’t move. “I thought nobody was coming.”

He reached in and pulled me out by both hands, and then he looked at me, very serious, the way only a twelve-year-old boy can.

“I’ll always find you,” he said. “Wherever you hide. Always.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

I believed him. I believed him for years.

Today, he finally kept it. I just never imagined what his face would look like when he did.

I see the bike when I turn onto my street.

It’s parked under the broken streetlight across from my building, half in shadow, snow gathering on the seat. A man leans against it with his arms crossed. Tall. Broad. Heavy jacket.

I’d know that patch anywhere.

He isn’t hiding. That’s the worst part. He’s just standing there in the open, watching my front door, and when I stop on the sidewalk, he lifts one hand in a lazy little wave.

The one who charmed Marjorie into fresh coffee.

I keep walking. I don’t run. I don’t look at him again. I climb the steps to my building, unlock the door with fingers that won’t stop shaking, and lock it behind me, and only then do I let myself lean against it and close my eyes.

Of course they didn’t leave.

I should have known. When we were kids, Dominic always found me.

My room looks the same as it did this morning. The narrow bed. The dresser. The jar of paste and the coffee can behind the sweaters. The little plant on the windowsill, its two new leaves pale and green against the glass.

I pack in four minutes. I’ve done it so many times it’s almost a mercy, my hands moving on their own while my mind goes somewhere far away and quiet.

Sweaters. Socks. The jar. The coffee can. Four hundred and twelve dollars, plus today’s pay, plus Marjorie’s ten and Asher’s twenty.

The last time I packed a bag this fast, it was a night in late spring. A hallway that smelled of lemon polish and his cologne. A door I’d spent weeks learning how to open without a sound. A whisper in the dark: go, go, don’t look back.

I didn’t look back then, either.

I zip the duffel and set it by the window. Then I sit on the edge of the bed in the dark, and wait.

At one o’clock, the man under the streetlight is still there. At one-thirty, a second bike pulls up beside his, and two shapes talk in low voices before one of them rides off.

At two, they’re both looking at their phones.

I pick up the duffel.

The bathroom window opens onto the roof of the laundromat next door. I found that out my first week here, the way I always find out. From the laundromat roof, it’s a short drop into the alley, and from the alley, it’s a straight line to the back road that runs behind the grain elevator and out toward the highway.

I look at the plant one more time.

It was a stupid thing to buy. I knew it when I bought it. I leave it on the windowsill, where at least it’ll get some light.

Then I climb out the window, into the snow, and I don’t look back.

The alley is empty. The back road is empty. The only sound is my own breathing and the soft crunch of snow under my shoes.

Nobody follows me.

For the first time since that bell rang over the diner door, I let myself believe I got away.