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I’d figure it out.

Once I got another goddamn car.

I sighed.

It never fucking ended.

Two and a half hours after he’d texted me, Hart dropped Elliot back at the hotel. He’d had to give Hart and Raj his official statement about the day he’d been run off the road by Mosby, as well as his account of what had happened when my father had attacked him.

I was still sitting on the bed—going anywhere, the bathroom included, was an ordeal I was trying to minimize as much as possible—when Elliot came into the room, causing Sassafras to lift her head and let out a mew.

He immediately crossed to sit on the edge of the bed, lifting my hand to his lips. “How are you feeling?”

“About the same as when you left this morning,” I replied, amused by his gallantry.

“Did you do your PT?”

“Yes.” I really hated my PT. I knew it was necessary, but, God, did I hate it.

I texted Noah that Elliot was back, and we could go up to the house. He sent back a smiley face and a thumb’s up.

I pushed myself to the edge of the bed, and Elliot immediately helped me to lever myself up to my better—notice I did not saygood—leg, then handed me my crutches. “Okay?” he asked.

“As I’m going to be,” I replied with a grimace as the blood rushed down into my leg, causing the knee to pulse with a dull throb.

“We don’t have to?—”

“Yeah, unfortunately, we do,” I disagreed. “So let’s do it.”

Lulu droveand Noah sat in the passenger seat so that Elliot could serve as a living cushion for my extended injured leg. Every bump on the country highways and roads and—especially—the gravel track up to the old house made me grit my teeth. I could tell from Elliot’s expression that he was imagining the pain of each one. Even if it didn’t actually do anything to help, I appreciated the sympathy.

When Lulu pulled up to the house, I could see Helen out feeding the chickens, and I had a moment of relief that she, at least, was unharmed. I knew Ray had helped us, and I’d been worried that he and Helen would face some sort of retribution from the Community. She walked over to the fence, leaning on it as Lulu and Noah got out of the car.

“Go on and say hi to her,” I told Elliot. “She’ll be happy to see you.”

“You, too,” he replied.

“Yeah, but I’m slow.” I gave him a smile to encourage him to go.

After taking a long look at me, he sighed, then gently eased himself out from under my leg and slid out of the car. He left the crutches propped up against the door so that I could easily grab them once I managed to lever myself out of the back seat. By the time I got myself out and on my one foot, crutches painfully propped in my abused armpits, Elliot had gone over to joinHelen and waved over both Noah and Lulu to introduce them both.

I made my slow way over to them, noticing as I got closer that there was bruising on one side of Helen’s face and there were noticeable scratches on one arm that looked very much like they’d been made by a wolf. Her expression softened when she saw me. “Hey, darlin’. How are you doin’?”

I gave her a weary smile. “Okay. Better now that this mostly seems to be over.”

She nodded. “I can’t say that I’m upset about it, either,” she said. “I’m sorry it had to get so messy, though.”

“Is Ray okay?” I asked her.

“Oh, sure, darlin’.” She smiled. “He’s just layin’ low for the moment so nobody asks any questions about the chew marks on that one wolf.”

I had a moment of cognitive dissonance in which the horror of that particular sentence met the gratitude I felt at the fact that Ray had done it in order to help us—helpme, really.

“I’m not sure anybody’s going to be askinganyquestions,” Elliot remarked. “Not with the FBI treating the Community like a terrorist group.”

Helen’s eyebrows went up.

“They arenottreating them like a terrorist group,” I countered, although that hadn’t stopped Elliot from saying it the last five times I’d corrected him, either. “They’re treating them like ahategroup,” I clarified for Helen.