Chapter 280: Well, Look Who Needed Help

DOVE’S POV

"Then we bring the stretcher in," the man outside called. "Nobody’s asking you to leave him."

Dove hated that he sounded like someone she ought to trust.

She crouched beside Edrik behind the concrete doorway, with their ready bag against her knee and the radio in her hand. The recovery truck stood beyond the wrecked van. One man held the shield toward the road, another waited beside the square board, and two carried a folded stretcher toward the workshop.

She recognized the tired-eyed man by the board from the bridge camp. He was the one who had crossed the yard with a passenger. The man beside the stretcher had used the little black stun device at the diner.

Both men stood far too close to her injured husband.

"Put it down at the door," she said. "Then step back."

They did. That almost made it worse.

Edrik had the gun in his hand, low but visible. "Who sent you?"

"Heard the aid call. Road’s a mess. We can take you a short distance to our compound, get you off the floor."

"Both of us stay together," Dove said. "And nobody touches me."

The man near the stretcher smiled. "Of course."

She didn’t believe him. She also couldn’t ignore the stretcher merely because the person carrying it was awful. She needed a way to move Edrik, and they knew it.

Dove set the radio down long enough to tip the last of the jug over Edrik’s legs. Then she put the jug aside, lifted the radio and gave the workshop one more time. "Recovery crew here. We have not agreed to leave with them."

The smiling man stopped smiling when he heard her radio warning. He shoved the folded stretcher across the threshold, forcing Dove back from its metal edge, and both carriers rushed through after it.

"Back!" she shouted, dropping the radio beside Edrik’s shoulder so she could push the frame away.

Edrik’s gun came up as the second carrier lunged for Dove’s wrist. Edrik caught the man’s arm with his free hand and drove him against the doorframe, hard enough that the grab never reached her.

The gun cracked toward the yard when the stun user struck Edrik’s wrist from the side. It fell beneath the workbench, beyond his immediate reach. Dove ducked, ears ringing, and kicked at the man trying to get around her. He swore and stumbled into the folded stretcher.

For a breath, they had stopped it.

Then the man from the diner produced the black device in his hand and pressed it against Edrik’s side.

Edrik’s body locked. His fingers clenched, his jaw tightened, and the arm reaching for Dove stopped halfway through the movement. He was awake. She could see him seeing her.

It was only a few seconds. She knew that because she’d watched the thief move again outside the diner.

A few seconds were enough for the other man to get both arms around her.

Dove drove her heel into his shin and bit the hand that tried to cover her mouth. He shouted, loosening his grip, and she twisted the way Edrik had taught her. For an instant her wrist was free.

She slashed at his face with her nails and ran one step toward Edrik.

Behind her, Edrik’s arm jerked free of the spasm. He tried to rise and collapsed onto one elbow, his injured legs folding beneath him. He was moving again. He still couldn’t reach her.

Another hand caught the back of her shirt. Fabric pulled against her throat. She grabbed at the doorframe, missed, and was dragged into the yard with her feet scraping over gravel.

"Let me go, you fucking creep!"

The man spat blood onto the gravel and tightened his grip. Dove twisted toward his injured face, trying to make him flinch again, but his companion caught her other arm. They were talking over her shouts, telling each other to hurry, as though she was something heavy they had to lift.

Dove kicked backward again. The man holding her cursed, and she used the movement to shake her bright clothespin from the small pocket of her skirt. Edrik had watched her use it on the curtain. It fell beside the square board, a ridiculous little yellow thing against the dust.

A small, bright trail somebody might find.

Her hands were caught before she could touch the board and store it. She tried to drop her weight, tried to get one foot off the square, but the transport user stepped close and locked his arm around her shoulders while the other man shoved her fully onto it.

She heard Edrik move inside the workshop.

He hauled himself farther toward the doorway with a sound she had never heard from him before, raw enough to go through her chest. His legs wouldn’t hold him, but he reached anyway.

One of the men released her wrist to shove her shoulder toward the transport user. Dove reached back with her free hand.

For one terrible moment she could see his hand and knew exactly how far away it was.

Then the yard disappeared.

She hit a wooden surface on her knees. The man beside her staggered and sat down hard, breathing through his mouth. The hot smell of gravel was gone. Around her stood a high fence, a low building with barred windows, and a second square board beneath her hands.

The arrival point. Already waiting. Nearby, if he had told the truth.

Edrik’s roar cut off as the yard vanished. She had seen him reaching, had poured everything in the jug over him, but she hadn’t seen him get up. Now there was no radio in her hand and no way to see whether anyone had gone back into that workshop.

*Don’t tell me he’s fine unless you know,* she warned Sprout.

*I can’t see him from here.*

The bond still tugged beneath her ribs. Alive, for this moment, but it could not tell her whether he would last until help reached him. She had to get out.

Dove’s first urge was to run at the fence until something stopped her. Her second was to scream. Both were honest, and neither would tell her where the gate was or how many men watched it.

She made herself look.

Four men in the yard. The transport user too exhausted to stand quickly. A door behind the nearest one. Her storage still there when she reached for the familiar sense of it, her supplies still hers. Sprout silent until she asked, mercifully silent.

Then somebody laughed.

Rusk stood beside the building, his chipped tooth showing. The former Warren guard waited near him, looking at Dove with the same awful willingness to follow somebody else’s order.

"Well, look who needed help, Dove."

She let her shoulders shake. That part wasn’t difficult. She was terrified for Edrik, furious enough to hurt, and far from the people who loved her.

Rusk mistook the lowered head for defeat and came closer.

Dove kept her eyes on the ground until she could trust her face.

"I don’t know what to do," she whispered, and let him believe it.