Cade knelt on the back seat and peered out the window long after Gray had driven the Jeep out of Tupelo. She gripped the back of the seat in both hands as she watched for Ethan. She had convinced herself that he would follow them, that he would change his mind and turn around and catch up with them. But as the city of Tupelo receded into the horizon behind them, Cade’s shoulders slumped. He wasn’t going to show up.
The disappointment was overwhelming.
A hand pressed gently against Cade’s back. She didn’t have to turn to know that it was Theo attempting to offer her some level of comfort. She drew in a heavy rattling breath and gave Theo a grateful smile. His touch was the catalyst that allowed her to loosen her grip on the seat and sink down into it limply.
“Are you okay?” Theo asked, settling down in his seat beside her.
Cade clenched her teeth, squared her shoulders, and sat up straighter in her seat. She refused to be seen as weak. It wasn’t in her personality to allow weakness to crack the façade of hard-as-nails badass that she had spent years cultivating in the IDF to prove her worth. She would never allow that hard work to go to waste over a moment’s grief.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she answered shortly.
How many times had she insisted that she was fine in the past day alone?
Cade shifted her gaze to the dashboard of the car. She watched the flickering lights on the police scanner emptily. No matter how many times she tried to focus on something other than thoughts of Ethan, her mind kept going right back to the way he’d looked at her when he’d told her he was leaving. It had been a look of disbelief, a look that said he couldn’t wrap his mind around why Cade had protested his departure. As she replayed their argument over and over again in her head, Cade only felt one emotion, one that threatened to overpower her completely: guilt.
Before Cade could pursue her analysis of her feelings any further, Brandt’s voice broke in.
“Cade! You still with us?” Brandt asked from the front seat. He snapped the words out, his tone hinting that he’d had to call her name more than once. “Stop moping and clue in. We’ve got shit to plan, and I don’t need you zoned out while we’re doing it.”
Cade gritted her teeth and punched the back of Brandt’s seat. Brandt yelped in protest as he jolted forward, and he turned in his seat to glare at her.
“What the hell?” he demanded.
“Shut up, Brandt,” Cade snarled. Her irritation and lingering guilt overrode her normally collected exterior. She punched the back of his seat again in warning as she spoke, and he put both hands up defensively as the seat back rocked again.
“What the hell did I do to you?” Brandt asked in bewilderment. “You’ve been all punch-Brandt today, and while I like my women forceful, I can’t say I’m particularly enjoying it all that much.”
“You breathed my air,” Cade said, a heavy dose of sarcasm in her voice. She fought the urge to punch his seat—or perhaps his face—again.
“Cut it out, both of you,” Theo interjected sternly. He put a hand between them to block Cade’s view of Brandt—as if she were a dog, easily distracted when her view was diverted. Cade gave Theo an ugly look and swatted at his hand. “We don’t have time for all this! We have plans to make, important ones. You can bitch at each other all you want after we get where we’re going, okay? But not in the Jeep.”
“I second that motion,” Gray said from the driver’s seat.
“You would,” Cade muttered. She glanced at him and saw that he still watched the road intently, both hands gripping the steering wheel.
“We’re officially declaring the Jeep a Bitch-Free Zone,” Gray announced. “No bitching, no whining, no exceptions.”
A silence fell over the interior of the vehicle, broken only by the sound of the Jeep’s tires on the highway. Cade clamped her lips shut and turned her head to look out the side window as she struggled to rein in her emotions. As she’d done the month before, in the aftermath of her escape from Memphis with Ethan, she shoved the emotions to the back of her mind and buried them, fastening them down tight so they wouldn’t escape and wreak havoc again.
“So, ah, what’s the plan?” Cade finally asked. She avoided Brandt’s face as she looked instead at Gray. The man had begun to dig in the green bag resting against the console between the front seats, searching frantically through it with one hand. “You do have a plan, right?”
“Well, I figure if we can make it to Meridian, we’ll be okay for the night,” Gray said. He turned the wheel to avoid a stalled car in the middle of the road, and Cade’s stomach lurched as the Jeep swerved. She gripped the armrest between her and Theo, digging her nails into the upholstery. Gray pulled a folded paper out of the bag and shook it wildly as he tried to unfold it. Once he’d successfully rattled the paper loose—and Cade’s nerves along with it—he attempted to look at it and the road at the same time.
“I figure if you’ll keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road, we’ll be more likely to make it to Meridian and be okay for the night,” Cade said with a smirk. She felt her old nonchalant cheerfulness start to seep back in, slowly but surely. Gray glanced at Cade in the rearview mirror in acknowledgement before he passed the paper to Brandt. He put both hands obediently on the wheel again as he relaxed back in his seat. “So what’s the plan then?” Cade prompted again.
“I figure we should do everything we can to avoid getting out of the Jeep,” Brandt spoke up. “Maybe we can find a house that looks secure enough, park the Jeep in the garage, and sleep in here.”
“Sleep in the Jeep?” Theo repeated incredulously. “Like … where? This isn’t exactly the world’s roomiest vehicle, you know.”
“We’ll manage,” Cade said flippantly. She shifted her eyes to Brandt, and her breath caught in her throat as she realized he was already looking right back at her. She forced a breath into her lungs and broke her eyes away from his. “We can’t run the engine to keep warm,” she managed to add. “It would use too much fuel. It does get pretty cold at night, you know.”
Brandt nodded absently and flipped the page in his hands over, as if he expected to find the secret of life doodled on the back. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “As you say, we’ll manage. There are blankets in the back somewhere, and we can leave the engine on until the temperature gets comfortable enough in here before we turn it off. Will that work?”
Cade shrugged and brushed a hand through her hair. She grimaced at how oily it felt. For just a split second, she wished for a shower, preferably one with warm water. She was sure that if she had a good, thorough bath, she would start to feel a little more human again. But instead of dwelling on the idea, Cade took her dark hair down from its band and pulled it into a new ponytail so she wouldn’t get into the habit of running her hand through it and experiencing the grossness all over again. “If it has to work, it will work,” she said serenely as she snapped the band into place.