Page 121 of Bought for Blood

“I’m fine.”

She lifts a hand, and it drops before it goes anywhere. “You were dying. I saw you…”

“They gave me something. It’ll wear off.” I get my hand onto her hair. “Go back to sleep.”

“Is Crowe here?”

“Against the wall behind you.”

She turns her head enough to find him, then lets it drop back.

“Kalli,” she says. “Did anyone go after the truck?”

Crowe’s head comes up.

Nobody answers.

“No,” I tell her. “There was nobody to spare.”

Serenity’s eyes stay open for a few seconds, fixed on blank space.

“Oh,” she says, and she’s gone again before I can tell whether she understood any of it.

Crowe sits against the opposite wall all afternoon and doesn’t take his coat off. There’s blood dried to both his hands and up his forearms. He hasn’t washed any of it.

He’s watching the door. Every time somebody comes through it, his head comes up. Every time it isn’t what he wants.

“How many trucks got out?” I ask him.

“Two.”

“And the second one?”

“Forty minutes ahead of us on a road with three junctions.” He doesn’t move.

“Which one was Kalli?”

“Red-haired woman. Dragon.”

“Dragon. Who told you what she is?”

He doesn’t answer that.

“I couldn’t go after her. Faine stopped me, but she was right. I’d have got twelve feet up that ramp.” His hands are open on his knees. “Then nobody would have held the bay. They would have finished loading the trucks before Odile’s people could stop them. We’d have walked out of there with far fewer than we did.”

“You did the right thing.”

“I said I would get her out.”

“You got the others out.”

He turns and eyes me until I stop talking.

After a moment, he takes an envelope out of his coat and holds it across to me. My deed. My letter. My signature on both.

“Take it back,” he says.

“Keep it.”