“Jack!” Kevin, eyes shadowed by his camo baseball cap, waves at me from the doorway of the house to my right.
Relief makes me want to melt—somehow, with the appearance of Kevin, I know everything is going to be okay. I put the gun away and sprint to the house, throwing myself at him and wrapping my arms around his neck. He stumbles backward through the doorway and pushes me arm’s length away. His eyes flash and his fingers dig into my shoulders. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here, Jack.”
“The raiders. They’re in this neighborhood. Lots of them,” I explain, knowing that as soon as he hears why I’m here, he’ll agree I’ve done the right thing. “I came to warn you guys.”
Kevin stares at me for a long moment, eyes burning with fury, and then he sighs and sags, as if he’s been completely deflated. His hands drop from my shoulders, and he presses his fingers to his temples. “This isn’t what we planned. You shouldn’t have come!”
“We didn’t plan for you to get caught by raiders either!” I say. His brow furrows, and he strides over to an east-facing window, peering out of it.
We’re in a dining room that has no table and no chairs—just a dusty copper chandelier hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room and a china cabinet against one wall. The dishes inside are untouched, their gold trim gleaming.
“Where’s the note I gave you?” Kevin asks.
“I gave it to Fo. In case she needs a plan Z.”
“So, you read it.” He turns from the window and looks at me, disappointed.
I shake my head. “No. I said I wouldn’t, and I didn’t.”
“Then how do you know there are raiders in this neighborhood?” His gaze moves slowly over me, searching every inch of my body, as if it will give him the answers to his questions.
“The day you locked me in the shelter so you could meet my friends at the lake, I found the tunnel and followed it to your house. Fo and I were watching you through the telescope.” I unzip the top pocket of my vest and take out the wire initials, placing them in my palm and holding them out for him to see. “Why did you dress up as a vagabond and come to my house?”
Kevin stands perfectly still and stares at the letters. Then his eyes locked on mine. “Jacqui Bloom,” he whispers. He steps away from the window, strides up to me, and puts his hands on my shoulders. “I went to your house to see you.” He speaks fast, so fast I almost can’t understand him.
He nods. “Every time you gave me food, I could see how big of a sacrifice it was for you to part with it. It made me want to know more about you. The day you gave me applesauce, and then started crying because you didn’t want to give it away? That’s the moment I started to fall in love with you. Every time I saw you after that, I fell in love with you more, until it felt like I was living for the days when I got to see you, and the rest of my life was just spent waiting for those days.” His words are still rushed, so rushed I wonder if I’ve heard him right. I don’t have time to ponder what he said because he blurts, “And now, I need to kiss you one last time.”
He takes off his hat and leans toward me until our foreheads are touching, staring into my eyes like he’s seeing all the way to my soul, and I can’t stand it. I grab his face in my hands and kiss him. He tastes like salt, and all I can think is how glad I am that the raiders didn’t catch him, how glad I am that he is right here with me, safe. How glad I am that I made it down the mountain in time to warn him.
His hand moves to the back of my neck and squeezes, hurting my scabbed bullet wound. I pull away from him. For a moment, he studies my face, but then his eyes focus on a point above my head, and he takes a deep breath of air that fills his lungs until the buttons on his shirt start to strain.
I turn and look behind me, trying to see what he’s staring at, but there’s nothing. “Kevin?” He won’t look at me. My skin starts to crawl. “What’s wrong?” I whisper.
He puts his hands on my shoulders and gently turns me around so that my back is to him, and then he pulls his hat onto my head, tugging the bill low over my eyes. His hands trail across my shoulders and down my arms. I close my eyes and try to shake the feeling of wrongness growing in me. When he gets to my wrists, his hands stop. He tugs my arms behind my back.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his lips against my ear, and then something rough and scratchy circles my wrists, cinching them together so tightly my skin chafes. I jerk away but he’s holding me tight. He takes the gun from my belt, and then my knife, and just like that, I am disarmed and restrained.