Chapter 240: Bag Lady? Not With This Storage

DOVE’S POV

Dove emptied the second travel bag onto the bed. Three spare shirts landed on top of her coffee, followed by a book she had already read.

"Absolutely not. I’m not carrying a closet on my back."

Edrik looked up. "Was that aimed at me?"

"If you put anything else in this bag, yes. Most of it can go in my space. I want the things you two might need without asking me."

Thorne lifted her coffee pouch out from under the shirts. "I was hoping to keep this one."

"We’re keeping all of it."

They were preparing, not fleeing. The neighbor’s shop was open, the clinic kitchen was serving breakfast, and they still had time to think. Dove intended to use that time instead of waiting until somebody hammered on her door and made every choice worse.

She closed the front curtain and cleared a place to sit while Thorne watched the street. Edrik gathered their owned supplies where she could reach them. Books, movie player, blankets, spare clothes, unopened food, coffee, soap, clean containers. She touched and stored them in manageable groups, pausing to check where they lay inside the familiar room.

Shelves ran along the left wall and back. The blue pool sat on the right behind its low rim. She kept the walkway between them clear, with food grouped away from wash supplies and their books where nothing wet could drip on them.

Her body stayed on the bed. When Edrik spoke, she opened her eyes and answered him before continuing.

"Tell me you didn’t put my boots somewhere clever."

"Under the bed. I’m not wearing them."

"You could try. I’d enjoy watching."

She threw him the empty cloth bag. He caught it, grinning, and brought the next load.

Their things vanished from the ordinary shelves one group at a time. Not abandoned. Not left for someone else to pick through. Hers, kept, and ready to come out again when she had somewhere to put them.

That felt good enough to make her laugh.

"Sprout, what did I put in here twice?"

"Spare shirts. Both bags."

Dove looked at Edrik, who was watching her with far too much interest. "One of you is dressing for a much longer vacation than I am."

"You objected to dirty clothes," he reminded her.

"Not enough to carry your entire wardrobe."

Sprout offered to list the sizes. She told it to stop enjoying itself.

The fan still turned beside the bed. Dove left it running while they worked. Their generator and cooler would be the last things stored, once the cooler was empty and the generator shut down and cooled. Neither needed to become a desperate trip back through a burning doorway.

She kept one ready bag outside: food, drinking water, clean cloths, and their two diluted treatment bottles. Thorne and Edrik could open that bag without waking her, asking for anything, or waiting while her attention went elsewhere. Their weapons stayed within reach too.

"If I tell you where something is," she said, tightening the strap, "I want you able to get it."

Edrik’s smile faded into something quieter. He checked the bottles himself, then set the bag beside her.

"Then this stays with us."

She liked that he understood without making her explain all the frightening reasons.

Sprout offered a forty-normal-coin stationary storage task for organizing one owned supply bundle. Dove read it, checked that her already-stored things would not count twice, and packed the untouched first-aid cloths and spare soap together before storing them.

The reward arrived immediately.

"Finally," she thought. "Payment for doing something I was already doing."

"The next shop tier would make traveling considerably more comfortable."

The locked truck preview appeared, bright and tempting. Dove looked at the shelves inside it, then at Ash’s portrait beside the lock.

For a moment she pictured waking up beside her husbands and driving her whole shop away, curtains, coffee, and all. No landlord. No leaving a bed she liked behind.

Then Ash’s portrait brightened.

"Lovely truck," she told Sprout. "Terrible timing."

"The offer remains available."

"So does my ability to close this."

She closed the preview and went to check the route herself.

From their front shop, she passed the curtain into the bedroom, went out the rear door, and crossed the narrow yard to the pickup. The side gate led toward the clinic road. Beside it, the neighboring building’s outside stairs climbed to a landing and a short passage into the clinic courtyard.

The owner let her inspect it. He was a quiet man who answered with a nod until she asked which door stayed staffed. Then he pointed and gave her the opening hours, exact and useful, without trying to make himself part of her plan.

She climbed, checked the loose step, and looked back. The wall hid their bedroom door. She would have to call when she reached the landing so her husbands knew she was clear. The passage beyond would take one person at a time.

She went back and showed them. Thorne straightened the existing door fastening with his power while Edrik held a brace firm for the bolts. Dove checked that both doors still opened freely afterward. She wanted a way out, not an impressive box to die in.

Cal arrived near lunch with news about the cut loading ramp. A worker had stolen its metal supports and covered the damage. The yard had found the pieces and a witness.

"Good," Dove said. "One problem that doesn’t need to become six."

He also described a repair road running north past storage sheds. He had driven it that morning. Dove wanted to see the turn herself before they needed it.

They took the pickup, with lunch and water in reach. Base B’s kitchens still unloaded vegetables. A clinic crew repaired shade cloth. Above the hood, the heat made the yellow storage shed shimmer as they approached the turn Cal had named.

Edrik slowed before reaching it.

Two trucks blocked the road. Armed men were dragging barriers between them, stopping every vehicle. Dove checked the badges and saw none matching the guards they had passed at the staffed gate.

"Turn here," she said, pointing to the clear space behind the shed.

Edrik turned the pickup sharply before anybody waved them forward. Thorne watched the barrier while Dove kept their old road in sight.

Then one of the armed men pointed at the pickup and started running toward them.