She heard the front doors opening and looked back to see Will coming in. He walked over to them, dodging Vera and Elise as they darted across the room. He smiled after them, and seeing that brought a smile to Lara’s lips, too.
“Are we going after Sandra?” Lara asked.
“Josh is taking Blaine and Danny to her now.” He glanced at his watch. “Once they get back, Danny and I will go looking for supplies. If we’re lucky, we’ll find a better place to spend the night. Josh said they were staying in a basement in one of the subdivisions. That might work out better for us than out here in the open.”
“Great,” Carly said. “So I’m doing all this unpacking for no reason?”
“Probably.”
“Then I’m going to fix the girls something to eat. I could use a snack, too.”
Carly headed off, leaving them alone at the holding cells.
When Carly was gone, Will asked, “You okay?”
“Don’t I look okay?”
Lara pulled some new shirts out of a crate. The one she was wearing was already damp from the heat. She went through at least two shirts on a good day, and more when it was really hot, which it usually was. For the life of her, she couldn’t understand how Will and Danny managed to wear the same odor-drenched clothes throughout most of the day, and sometimes for days at a time until, inevitably, either she or Carly complained.
“Not really,” he said.
“I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You know you can talk to me.”
“I know. I just don’t have anything to talk about right now, that’s all. But if I do, you’re the first person I’ll come to. Promise.”
He slipped one hand around her waist and kissed her neck. She sighed and inhaled his usual mix of sweat and dirt.
“Blaine must be excited,” she said.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“I don’t really know the guy.”
“You saved his life.”
“I wouldn’t say I saved his life. I gave him a ride. You did more for him than I did.”
“Well, he thinks you saved his life.”
“It’s his right to. This is still America, after all.”
“I can’t figure out if you’re just being humble or if you’re being a jerk.”
“That depends. Which one turns you on more?”
She turned around in his arm and sought out his mouth. His hands were already tugging her shirt out of her waistline and were searching for more when the radio clipped to his vest squawked and they heard Danny’s voice:
“We just arrived at the house the kid was staying in.”
Will grunted, pulling away from her briefly to key his radio. “Roger that.”
“Nice neighborhood,” Danny said. “We should get a couple of places here. Ones with really big lawns. The girls can raise the kids and we can have barbeques on the weekends.”
“Why just the weekends?” Will asked, playing along as usual.
“Because if I had to see your face seven days a week, I’d probably shoot myself. That, or turn on the car engine in my garage and end it peacefully. I haven’t decided yet.”
“You guys sound like married old ladies,” Lara said, rolling her eyes at Will as she pulled herself free and walked off, tucking her shirt back into her pants. “I’ll go help Carly make dinner. A woman’s work is never done.”
Blaine returned later with Danny and Josh and a pretty teenage girl Josh introduced as Gaby. But there was no Sandra, which explained why Blaine looked like someone had punched him in the ribs, then shot him three more times. Lara thought about going over to comfort him, but realized she didn’t really know him all that well, and she wasn’t sure how he would take it. Maybe he didn’t want some stranger to comfort him at that moment.
The positive news was that Sandra was still alive.
“She left about an hour after Josh did,” Gaby told them.
They were gathered back inside the courthouse, eating canned fruit. Gaby seemed to relish every drop of the same syrupy flavor that Lara had grown tired of, and she envied the teenager’s appetite.
“She found a car in the garage of the house we were hiding in,” Gaby said. “There were keys, and she packed up as much stuff as she could carry. The last I saw of her, she was driving off.”
“Did she say where she was going?” Will asked.
Blaine had apparently heard all this before, either on the ride over or at the house, and he left the courthouse without a word. Lara considered going after him again but thought better of it. He didn’t look like he wanted company.
“She went looking for him,” Gaby said, looking back at the door after Blaine. “She thought he was dead. She said he had been shot, and he looked like he was dead when they dragged her out of the woods and threw her into the semitrailer and brought her here.”
“Why did she go back looking for him if she thought he was dead?” Carly asked.
Lara thought she knew the answer. She looked over at Will, but he didn’t catch her glance. She would go back for him, too, even if she knew he was dead. She knew without a doubt Will would do the same for her.
“She wanted to bury him,” Gaby said. “He wasn’t bitten, so he wouldn’t have turned, right? Isn’t that how it works?”
“We’re not sure,” Lara said. “I don’t think anyone is.”
“Sandra didn’t think he had turned, anyway, which was why she went back. Or maybe she just wanted to be sure he wasn’t still lying out there on the road.” Gaby shrugged. She turned her attention back to the can, tilting it up to her lips, and drank down the sugary liquid. “God, these are good.”
Carly handed her another Del Monte can, this one with peaches.
“Are you sure?” Gaby said, looking almost embarrassed by her appetite.
“We have more than enough to spare,” Carly said. “Take it.”
She took it gratefully and pulled open the top lid and dug in. “God, these are so good,” she said again, between mouthfuls of peaches dripping with syrup.
Gaby was young and painfully pretty. Even though Gaby’s hair was dirty and her face hadn’t seen makeup in months, Lara couldn’t help feeling a little bit jealous looking at the teenager. She didn’t have to guess why Josh stood so close to Gaby at all times. Josh was a decent-looking kid, with disheveled brown hair that she guessed someone had cut for him recently (probably Gaby) and mellow brown eyes that weren’t quite as striking as Will’s. There was really nothing extraordinary about Josh physically, and she couldn’t picture the two of them together in high school. They were about the same height, which made the poor kid stand out even less.
But she had to admit, Josh had done a remarkable job keeping the two of them alive, especially after they were captured by Folger’s men yesterday. It had been his idea to escape, Gaby said, and Lara saw the way Gaby responded to him. She might not have given him the time of day eight months ago, but things had changed since.
Lara saw Will looking down at his watch. “Three fourteen,” he announced. “That gives us two hours to find a better place to bed down for the night. If we don’t find anything by then, we’ll come back and fortify the courthouse.”
“Be careful,” Lara said.
He nodded and went outside, where Danny was already waiting.
That left Lara and Carly with Josh and Gaby. She watched the blonde teenager devour the can of peaches until there was nothing left.
Wish I had that appetite…
“Danny said you guys were going to some island,” Josh said. “Is that true? He said it might be safe. Like a sanctuary.”
“Song Island,” Lara nodded. “And that’s what we’re hoping — that it’s safe. It’s somewhere on Beaufont Lake in Louisiana. It’s better if you hear it for yourself.”