Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138169 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138169 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
I’m this close to the Arrendells’ secrets.
Talia’s a distraction.
This pure pink doll, just begging to get her dirty.
If I don’t keep my mind on track, I’m going to piss away years of work just to have a taste of her.
So the moment I’m certain she’s got a proper grip on the mug, I let go and step back, reclaiming my seat on my log.
“Eat up,” I say tersely, rummaging in my pack for the small bag of freeze-dried meat kibble I brought for Rolf. He’s heading over the second he hears the bag rustle, still shaking himself dry from the water. “We need to get moving again. The site we’re staking is still a few more miles upstream.”
Talia only answers with a wordless murmur.
Does this crackling energy between us disturb her as much as it does me?
I fold a large green leaf into a makeshift bowl for Rolf and leave him scarfing his kibble while I tuck into my own lunch.
We use the flatbread as pita pockets, pouring the chili and vegetables inside. Easy, quick, and filling.
Though Talia dribbles down her chin every few bites before catching it and wiping her face off, all delicate manners even out here in the wilderness.
I try to keep myself from laughing.
I don’t know how any grown-ass woman can be so adorable.
Once we’re done, I douse the fire with creek water, then rub Rolf down with a towel from my pack before packing up, clipping his leash back onto his harness, and setting back out.
Talia’s quieter as we hit the trail again.
She doesn’t seem upset, just thoughtful, looking around and occasionally smiling as she sees a hawk soaring against the sun or turns her head to track a chipmunk bounding through tree roots.
She doesn’t complain, not even when I can tell she’s starting to get tired. I admit I’m keeping a close eye on her breathing, too, but I don’t ask about her asthma.
I know what it’s like having people smother you with concern, and I won’t do that.
It doesn’t seem like it’s triggered too much by physical exertion, though. Mostly by distress.
Which just adds another pebble on the scale of guilt for what I could end up putting her through.
She’s clearly flagging by the time we reach the campsite I scoped out a few days ago.
Tracking the Jacobins feels like a second job where I moonlight by learning how to find them even when Chief Bowden gets creative with diverting the crew’s attention.
You don’t have to catch them skulking around in the dead of night. There are little markers that will tell you where they’re planning to migrate next.
They’ll find a good, discreet spot in the woods, somewhere they can stay deep and hidden. Usually an old logging site with a lot of new growth, easy saplings they can clear.
They’ll cut themselves a road or reopen an old logging trail the forest reclaimed.
Not a big road, not something you can see from a hill. More like the kind of thing that you could walk right past five feet away without knowing it’s there on the other side of the dense growth.
Here’s where they get clever—the trees they fell for that road, they lay down on the path to create a sort of bumpy paving for their trucks. No wheel ruts people can find later.
Once that’s done, they’ll come swooping in and set up their portable sheds, supposedly with their moonshine stills inside.
They’ll hover around in one spot for about a week and disappear again, leaving behind a ghostly patch of cleared earth—hard for anyone to use as evidence when it could just be an area cleared by one of the Arrendell-owned timber companies, a little storm damage, or somebody’s weekend retreat.
They know how to make it look innocent.
They know how to disappear.
And I know how to find them, just like now.
I tell Talia to wait for me in a secluded nook in the trees partly down the slope from one of the hills while I take Rolf and climb up for a look, checking the coordinates on my phone.
Right on the money.
The last time I was here, they’d already cleared the brush and saplings.
Now, there it is.
That subtle path cut through the woods, leading north, just wide enough for their trucks and paved with fallen logs stripped of their limbs.
It’ll come out about a mile north, I think, on an old farmer’s trail, and then another few miles west to the highway. Home free to wherever they want to go next.
If the logs are there, they’ll definitely be here tonight.
I climb back down to Talia.
She’s puffing a little, sitting on a large mossy rock and sipping from a water bottle.
When I emerge through the trees, she jumps, squealing and splashing water down her front.
“You okay?”
“Y-yeah, you’re just really quiet, you know that?” She gives me a wide-eyed look. “I didn’t even hear you coming. His collar didn’t jingle.”