The nerves and tension that made her queasy as they snuck through the chain link fence around the equipment returned, even in the quiet of the cabin with Finn right next to her, and Lauren shivered again. The sinking feeling in her stomach had only increased as the group split up and she and Ginger poured sugar into the gas tanks of the trucks and earth-movers they could reach. The group leaders insisted there wasn’t anyone on the property at night, and that they’d disabled the security cameras before anyone else showed up. She’d been stupid to trust them. So stupid.
Finn nuzzled behind her ear, pulling her closer to link both arms around her. “A little protesting can be good.”
It only made her feel worse, that he tried to make her feel better about what terrible decisions she’d made. “Some of them had brought Molotov cocktails or something, and started booby trapping the mining explosives and the big equipment. I didn’t know it until the security guards showed up and started yelling at everyone, using spotlights to try and disorient us. Ginger and I ran, but then the explosions started and it just… There was so much smoke. We got separated. Someone started screaming and I think there were gunshots, then…”
He abruptly pulled her into his lap and kept her tight to his chest. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”
She wanted to stop, but once she’d started… the words came from somewhere else and tumbled out, one after another. But at least she curled into him for comfort and knew that whathappened was in the past, even if she still dealt with the fallout. “I went back for Ginger when I couldn’t find her. She’d fallen and broken her ankle after the explosions happened, and I had to help her get away. We managed to get into the forest, but by then all the lights were on and cops were everywhere and they were able to identify me and Ginger. So the cops charged us with destruction of property and attempted murder and a bunch of other stuff.”
Finn took a deep breath. “Someone was injured?”
Her heart cracked even more. She hated to think about any of it, but most of all about the poor security guard. “He was trying to put out the fire from the Molotov cocktail when River and Salem set off the explosives, and it really hurt him. He’s in a wheelchair forever, they told me.”
“And those two—River and Salem—were not caught or identified.”
“No.” Lauren felt like she breathe again. There. She’d told him. He could judge her and run away, or turn her in, or maybe stick around and help her figure out what to do next.
“You didn’t turn them in to save yourself? Why didn’t your friend confirm your story, that you weren’t anywhere near the explosion?”
All reasonable questions, and things she’d debated with herself every night while she sat in jail and hoped that she’d wake up from the nightmare. “I didn’t turn them in. The leader, Aspen, insisted that she’d get me a good lawyer if the movement was able to continue fundraising and doing what they did out in the open, which they couldn’t do if anyone knew they were responsible for the explosions and the man’s death.”
“I’m guessing they didn’t get you a good lawyer.”
“No.” Lauren didn’t even struggle with the disappointment and betrayal anymore. She’d sat with it for so long that it was just as familiar as the inside of the cabin. She really couldn’ttrust anyone. Maybe she owed Aspen and River and Salem a thank you for reminding her what her mother spent so long teaching her. No one would look out for you but yourself. Everyone was out for themselves, and didn’t care who got hurt in the process. “I had a public defender. I met with him for about thirty minutes. He didn’t remember my name. It wasn’t his fault,” she added hurriedly, when Finn started to growl. “He was really busy and had a ton of people he had to see and it wasn’t like he had any reason to remember me.”
Finn squeezed her and kissed her forehead. “It was his job to remember you and to defend you, and he didn’t do it. We’ll fix that.”
Lauren eyed him dubiously. She was pretty sure she’d already been charged and all the pretrial stuff had all been taken care of. They’d put in a plea deal but she didn’t know if the lawyer accepted it or not. She hadn’t wanted to say she was guilty, and since there hadn’t been any other options, she’d run.
But Finn took another deep breath. “What about your friend? Did she skip bail, too, or do we need to get her out?”
“Her parents are rich,” Lauren said. “They got her a really good lawyer, so she got community service and had to write an apology to the oil company and the security guard.”
“And it didn’t occur to her to helpyouwith her fancy lawyer?”
She loved him getting so offended on her behalf. “She asked but her parents didn’t want to help. Didn’t want her innocence to be called into question if anyone found out they helped me as well. I guess it didn’t look good to have their daughter associating with trailer trash who believed in Bigfoot.”
His frown deepened. “Don’t call yourself that.”
“It’s okay,” Lauren said, laughing. “Iamtrailer trash. Sometimes we didn’t even have the trailer and lived in the car, but I guess ‘car trash’ doesn’t have the same kind of ring, youknow? Ginger tried to help, and after I skipped bail, she brought me food and supplies and everything, and helped me hide. She got me close to here to lay low in the forest for a while, and she was working on buying me a passport so I can get into Canada.”
It sounded more absurd when she said it aloud, but Lauren couldn’t take it back. It was the only set of choices she had left that didn’t leave her walking into jail without a fight. Or living in a busted-up cabin for years on end without running water and having to chop firewood every hour of every day, until deforestation gave away her location.
Finn didn’t speak for so long that Lauren figured he’d either fallen asleep or struggled to keep from laughing at her, so she didn’t push. He kept rubbing his chin against her head, though, until her hair got all snarled and she knew it would take hours to comb out the knots. She didn’t mind.
But something else bothered her. She absently touched his chest, tracing the outline of the words on his T-shirt. “Those guys this morning… Weren’t they bounty hunters?”
He hesitated and her heart sank. If they weren’t bounty hunters, who the hell were they? They’d wanted to kill her, and probably him. What possible reason did they have for being out in this part of the forest? It was private property, and they definitely didn’t look like the thru-hikers that occasionally popped up on the trails.
Finn leaned to feed more wood into the fire, buying himself time before he said anything. Lauren braced for a hell of a lie. When he heaved a sigh and went back to nuzzling behind her ear, she tensed. His smooth, calm voice worked like the fancy laughing gas the one time she’d been to the dentist for a cavity, and she relaxed with every word he said. Even though what he said should have scared the bejesus out of her.
“They’re drug smugglers,” Finn said. “They’ve been using this part of the state to run meth in from the Dakotas andMontana. No one has been able to find the routes they’ve been using or the particular groups who are helping them along the way. So I was hired to find them.”
She frowned and ran her fingers down his forearm, noticing the array of tattoos had a variety of knives and crests and foreign languages. It made sense, maybe. He definitely looked like he was a cop or at least a soldier at some point. “Why did they hire you?”
“I used to work with cops a lot,” he said after a long pause. Lauren heard a lot of history in that pause, and filed it away for later to dig into. “One of them hired me to do some basic looking around, since he knows I have an affinity for the woods, and I agreed.”
An affinity for the woods. Sure. That was one way to put it. Lauren craned her neck back to look him in the eyes. “Because you’re a bear. You turn into a bear. That’s why you like being out here. Right? Because you’re a bear.”
