Chapter 289: Her Sweet Face Was Doing Overtime

The door opened six inches, and Lyle looked through with a towel over one shoulder.

Dove was already on her feet. Her hand had gone to her pocket before she remembered that a bent chair wire was not a weapon she knew how to use well.

"Washroom’s clear," he said. "Other door goes into the shed. Keep this one closed when you’re done."

He stepped back. Dove looked past him into a narrow room with a toilet, a cracked sink, and shelves holding soap, paper towels, and greasy work gloves. The second entrance opened beside the card table in the shed. She could hear the men arguing about a hand.

She could see both doors from the sink. If somebody blocked the one to her room, she might still reach the shed. She kept that to herself.

"Can I wash my hair?" she asked.

Lyle looked startled. "Here?"

"Unless you have a salon tucked behind the trucks."

"Water’s in the blue barrel. Faucet doesn’t work. Don’t waste it."

She thanked him and waited until he returned to the shed. The door remained open because the room was shared. That gave her a view of the table and the little side entrance, where sunlight cut across the concrete.

She washed only her hands. Her pool water was private, and she had already used it. What she needed now was an excuse to stand somewhere other than her cot.

Alden had gone to the front office. She heard his voice through the open doors between the buildings, carrying instructions about the truck. The radio remained on the desk there. Dove could picture it so clearly that she wanted to scream.

Can I store it from here?

You can’t see it from here.

I know where it is.

That doesn’t make it within reach.

She pressed her wet palms against her skirt. The awful, exhausting trick with the raiders’ sled had not turned her into someone who could collect whatever she imagined. If she wanted the radio, she needed to get to the radio.

"Lyle?" she called through the washroom door.

He looked over from the card table, where he had stopped to inspect somebody’s hand. "What?"

"The towel you brought smells like oil."

"It’s a work towel."

"I gathered. Is there a non-work towel, for a person who would rather not smell like a truck?"

The younger card player laughed. Lyle rubbed his face, then told her to stay there while he checked the office closet. She watched him leave with the keys at his belt.

She also watched Alden step out of the front office to meet him.

Dove turned toward the younger man. "Could I borrow that chair?"

"For what?"

"Reaching the shelf. There’s paper towels up there."

He stood immediately. The older player caught his wrist.

"Leave her alone. She can ask if she needs carrying."

Dove looked at him, surprised. He shrugged without meeting her eyes. It wasn’t friendship. It was the smallest scrap of manners in a place she hated, and she took it without turning it into trust.

The younger man carried the chair into the washroom. Dove let him set it beneath the shelf, then pointed at a sealed paper-towel pack high above it.

"That one, please."

He climbed before she finished asking. His friend called out that he would break his neck. Both looked up, one reaching and the other criticizing.

Dove stepped through the little side door into the narrow path between the buildings.

She didn’t run. Running would make noise. She crossed the six feet to the rear office door, entered the hallway, and followed Alden’s voice toward the breakroom on the left.

The front office was on the right. Its door stood open.

Four steps. She took them.

The radio’s screen glowed above a charging light. Dove lifted it without unplugging anything else. She didn’t know the buttons on this particular model, so she looked first instead of stabbing at them and hoping.

A voice crackled through, giving a road closure. Then another repeated the workshop location.

Her hand tightened.

"Both injured men aboard," the voice said. "Heading for the reservoir station. Eastern loop."

Two patients. It could mean Edrik. It could mean someone else. She needed to ask, but first she needed to know whether anybody was listening close enough to hear her speak.

Alden’s voice rose in the breakroom. Lyle answered. They were arguing about fuel and who had taken the spare can.

Dove pressed the button on the side.

"Woman from the workshop," she whispered. "I’m at a county road yard. Low office, metal shed, orange trucks. Rusk is here. I need to know if my beast husband is alive."

A chair scraped in the hall behind her.

She released the button and lowered the radio against her leg. The front-office doorway remained clear. Beyond it, through the hall, Lyle was carrying a chair toward the breakroom, still arguing with Alden.

She had seconds, not safety.

Dove pressed the button again. "Don’t answer yet. Please."

She set the radio back into its charger and turned. On the desk beside it lay a folded road map. A hand-drawn circle marked the yard, but the road name was hidden beneath a mug. She moved the mug just far enough to read COUNTY LINE ROAD, then put it back exactly where it had been.

The radio message had come through another driver on the road, judging by the engine noise behind it. This little desk set might reach him without reaching the medical convoy directly. Dove hoped he would repeat what she had said. She could not make him hear by wanting harder, and she could not stay beside the radio long enough to argue. At least she had given them something concrete to look for.

Footsteps entered the hallway.

Dove reached for the paper-towel roll beside the desk and held it against her chest.

Lyle stopped in the doorway. His gaze moved from her face to the radio, then to the charger wire hanging beneath the desk.

She kept the roll visible, her fingers loose around it, and made herself look annoyed instead of caught. Annoyed was easier. She had plenty to work with.

"What are you doing in here?"