The truck bed smelled like metal and sweat. Before Lee’s eyes could adjust to the dimness, a hand curled around her arm. She jerked backward and nearly fell off the tailgate.
“Lee.”
She skimmed her hands over the air and found his shoulder, then his arm. He’d been crawling forward on hands and knees, or one knee, more likely. His breaths labored.
“Lie down,” she said.
“What happened?”
“Marcus, you need to—”
“Tell me.”
She did, omitting the panic attack. Even without that detail, he asked three times if she and Violet were okay. He didn’t crawl back to the mattress until she’d finished the story. As he settled, a coughing spell racked him. They came more frequently now. A good sign where his prognosis was concerned, but the effort and pain drained him. Lee propped him forward with one arm, an easier position from which to expel the phlegm from his lungs. When he could draw a full breath, she eased him back to the pillows.
For a minute, he could manage only a rasping “Thanks.” Then he met her eyes. “You’re right about the truck. We can’t drive it again. They’ll run the plates and put everything together.”
“And you can’t walk.” As if any of them could walk to Texas.
“I can make it for a while.”
“Don’t. Please. I need—” Her voice splintered.
“Lee?”
“You can’t help me form a strategy if you won’t factor your condition into the scenario.”
This silence was the new, jagged one. It sawed through the reserves she had left. She turned her head and pushed away from him. She clasped her hands together. Holding in.
“I’ll discuss this with Austin and Violet and inform you of the plan.”
Her feet hit the cement as he said, “Wait.”
She turned back. “Yes?”
The word wasn’t supposed to bite. But shock and the flashback had worn off, and now all the things she should have done pounded in her brain. Pull half the money out of the envelope and leave her bag in the truck. Drive after the man. Something. She could only move forward, though, not back, and if Marcus couldn’t be honest enough with himself to help her, then she had to do this without him.
“Don’t …” he said.
Don’t what? She waited, but he was quiet. What did Jason Mayweather do to your words? He’d never had many to begin with, but this … She pushed away everything but the present juggernaut and scooted back into the truck.
“I don’t know what to do, Marcus. We have nothing.”
“I know.” Another, different silence followed, not a wall but a cracked door. “How much is left?”
Realistic focus on the physical plight. Exactly what she needed. “I believe Austin has around five hundred dollars.”
He closed his eyes a moment.
“Yes,” she said.
“The faster you can move, the better chance you have.”
“You mean … go on without you?”
“You won’t make it with me.”
“That is the most absurd—”
“When you had … resources …” He coughed. “I lowered them. Now you’ve got nothing. So I’ll put you in the red.”
“Marcus, we all consume resources.”
“But you each give things back.”
A slow pressure built in her chest. She was going to scream at him. Instead, her words emerged on a whisper. “You idiot.”
Confusion gathered between his eyes. “It’s the truth.”
“What do you think I’m doing right now? Giving you an opportunity to contribute. Asking for strategy assistance from the man who coordinated the efforts of an entire resistance organization. Asking for … for …”
For you to anchor me. As you always do.
She drew her knees up. “Would you leave me?”
He growled.
“All right, that’s settled.”
“Lee, I—” He coughed once, twice, couldn’t stop. His right arm pressed against his ribs. Lee held him forward again, and by the time this spell ended, he was limp in her arms. He moaned as she lowered him.
“Shh,” she said. “Easy.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head away.
“Marcus?”
No response. Not even a quiet thanks, his mantra for the last few days, which she noticed only in its absence. She leaned nearer, circled his wrist with her fingers, and Marcus jerked his arm.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
The silence shouted the answer. Marcus couldn’t do anything. It was an absurd overstatement, yet she knew his thoughts as if he spoke them. In fact, she should have seen long before now. He couldn’t walk. He couldn’t sit upright. Until today, he couldn’t feed himself. Yet his own list wouldn’t stop there. She could imagine it written out in his block handwriting.
Can’t drive. Can’t help. Can’t protect.
And the rest of the list, unrolling like a scroll, because Marcus would be aware of every small thing his body was incapable of. He would hate every disability. No, more than that, he would be …
“Marcus, look at me,” she said.
He turned his head to face her, and even in the dimness, with the floodlight sneaking in the open tailgate, the flush in his cheeks was obvious. Yes, she should have known. She’d seen the same reaction so many times, but on a smaller scale. Attempting to treat lacerations on his own, until she made him promise to call her anytime he bled for longer than ten minutes. Fully using his hands while they healed from his latest work injury and ignoring pain any logical person would consider the body’s warning sign. Slicing the Constabulary tracker from his own back and intending to dress it himself (how, Lee still didn’t know) until Aubrey Weston intervened by calling her.
But he couldn’t push through it now, this degree of physical incapacitation. Again she saw Austin standing over him, Marcus’s hunched posture in the tub. Humiliated. Ashamed.
“You’re mending,” Lee said. “In time, you’ll be whole again.”
His mouth quivered. “I don’t know.”
“You will. But that’s irrelevant.”
His stare was as loud as any words. It’s not irrelevant. It’s the whole point.
“Listen to me. If you were in a coma right now, or you had lost your four limbs, or you were deaf and blind and wheelchair-bound—you would not cease to be yourself.”
He stiffened against the pillows. Yeah, I would, Lee.
“No,” she said. “You would be Marcus. And I would not leave you.”
His hands curled. Lee grasped his wrist and sat for a while, letting his pulse beat against her fingers. Then she took a deep breath—I can do this—felt again his wet handprint on her back. She slid her fingers along his hand until he opened it. She nestled her hand inside his, and he gripped it like a man in the dark who’d been offered a guide into the light.