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NINE

While Cullen and Archie rushed to take last-minute items to the ATV, Kit stared at Nico, who glared back at her from his position on the floor.

She relished seeing him helpless. It gave her a rush of triumph and hope.

He’d sent Simon on an assignment somewhere, so maybe that meant Annette was still alive.

Again her heart lurched as if she too were running alone and scared.

She prayed with everything in her that Tot’s mom would keep a step ahead of Simon.

Archie hefted the first aid kit and jiggled the keys to the ATV, and Cullen entered behind him. “All set.” He arched a grizzled brow at Nico. “Should we leave him here? Let his brother or the volcano get him, whichever comes first?”

Kit picked up Tot and soothed her. She wanted to leave Nico to his fate, render him helpless and victimized like he’d left Annette. Tot grabbed at her hair and tugged. She looked into the vibrant baby eyes, rimmed with thick eyelashes. So innocent.

Would she want to tell Tot someday about this man who might be her father?

That they’d left him to die? Helpless and alone?

That because of his horrific choices, she had the right to abandon him?

As much as she longed to punish him, something deep down whispered that it wasn’t right.

Why that should be important now, she didn’t know.

Cullen and Archie were both looking at her, waiting. “This is my decision?”

“Not completely, but you’ve got a say,” Cullen said.

She glanced at Tot and back at the two waiting men. “How do you two vote?”

“Take him,” Cullen said at the very same moment Archie said, “Leave him.”

Archie rolled his eyes. “I say we leave his sorry self behind to find his own way out.”

“See, Kit? We need a tiebreaker,” Cullen said.

She groaned. “Take him.”

“You two are simpering softies,” Archie grumbled.

True, she thought, but she also felt a sense of relief knowing she wouldn’t have a death sentence weighing on her soul.

Cullen scooped up Tot and delivered her to Archie, who began to coo and hum. “I know you want your bottle, love. You’ll have to take it to go. It’s adventure time, sweetheart.”

Nico looked on in poisonous fury. Archie caught his glare and tucked Tot closer, hitching his shoulder to block Nico’s view. “Not going to let my bitty girl get a case of the heartburn, having that nasty mug looking at her.”

Kit checked the break room one last time while Archie shimmied a clean diaper onto Tot.

A wave of wind-born soot puffed along the ground when she joined the men. The sky was a wall of thick, gray steel. It hit her that they were actually going to take an infant out into the massive roiling darkness, away from walls and any shred of protection.

A fool’s errand. She felt the edges of panic nibbling at her stomach until Cullen caught her attention with a wink.

The cheeky move made her smile, and he did in spite of the eye that was swollen nearly shut with an angry welt forming below it.

Cullen believed God would help them make it.

What if he was right? Maybe his belief could at least prop up her own.

“God’s gonna watch over you, Tottie girl,” Archie said.

But had he saved her mother, Annette? She thought of the young woman’s newspaper photo. What had she risked to escape?

Everything. The magnitude of that thought urged her on.

Kit accepted Tot from Archie. Cullen shoved the paper map in his pocket before he and Archie hauled Nico to his feet and exited the library.

Kit followed and climbed into the rear seat with the crying Tot, whom she quieted with the bottle. Even with her borrowed clothing and trusty knit cap, the air inside felt frigid, and she had to stop her teeth from chattering.

Archie quickly unzipped one of the sleeping bags and fed it over the seat to Kit. “Bundle up. It’ll help if we crash too. Extra padding.”

Cullen deposited Nico in the seat next to her and buckled him in. “Can’t be too safe, now can we?”

Nico was still bound at the wrists and ankles, and his mouth was taped.

Cullen leaned forward until his face was inches from Nico’s.

“If you cause one lick of trouble, we toss you out into the ash and drive away without a backward glance.” Then he gave Kit a friendly nod, closed the door, climbed behind the wheel, and cranked the engine.

“Keep the lights off till we get over the ridge,” Archie said. “Don’t want to alert Brother Simon.”

“Easy for you to say.”

Kit could understand Cullen’s trepidation.

The landscape was a palette of black, less black, and gray, and he could not exceed a slow creep without risking damage to the vehicle or its occupants.

Even at that slug pace, he still seemed to hit every buried branch and sunken spot.

Tot cried out at a particularly bad lurch and screamed so robustly Kit lost her grip on the bottle.

It fell to the floor and rolled under the front seat.

Archie scrambled and retrieved it, wiping the nipple carefully on the hem of his shirt before handing it back. She pulled Tot closer and offered the milk again. The seat felt too small, forcing her and Tot to breathe in Nico’s anger. He was a toxin, adding his own pollutants to the air.

It was bizarre. The man responsible for their current predicament was mere inches away from her, breathing in short bursts through his nose, brows drawn in a line.

Though she did not stare at him directly, she kept him in her peripheral vision because the hatred on his face indicated he was far from done destroying lives if given the opportunity.

She recoiled as far as she could, gathering up the corners of their sleeping bag so not even the fabric would touch him.

The pungent scent of smoke and ash pried its way into the vehicle.

She smoothed Tot’s hair. Those tiny, inexperienced lungs .

.. a wilderness full of foul air. She thought suddenly of the picture in the Your Baby , Month by Month book of the developing fetal lungs in chapter 2 that were no bigger than moth wings, fragile as gossamer.

Tot’s were stronger, surely. She tried to make a sort of hood around the baby’s face with the sleeping bag, though it wouldn’t actually help much.

She’d grabbed medical masks at the convenience store, but she didn’t want to rummage around to snag them.

The vehicle plunged into a dip, and she slid against Nico. He shoved a shoulder at her, and she braced and got away from him, scalded by his touch.

“Sorry.” Cullen found her in the rearview. His eyes were pained before they slid suspiciously to Nico. “Is he causing a problem?”

She shook her head.

Archie turned to glare at Nico. “Watchin’ you. Give me a reason to chuck you out, buddy boy. It’d be a pleasure and a half.”

Nico retorted something, but the tape over his mouth contained the vitriol.

Kit watched fixedly out the window where she could track Nico in the reflection. Through the film of soot, she tried to pick out landscape features. It was as if they were caught in a darkened snow globe, shaken and tumbled. It left them dizzy, no footing, no bearings.

She tried to discern which direction her rig lay buried.

Heart squeezed, she pressed her forehead to the glass.

Though she tried to convince herself otherwise, the tractor part was a total loss, even if the trailer was salvageable.

Why hadn’t she gone for the premium insurance package instead of partial?

Because you needed to have enough for the website , fuel , rent , and basic necessities like secondhand raincoats and food.

The last loan payment had been tantalizingly close. When she pictured her ruined truck, it felt like a death, this stabbing sensation in her chest. You can still fix things. It’s not too late.

A plan started scrolling through her thoughts.

The insurance payment would help her restart.

She’d take out a new loan. Or there could be pieces to salvage.

Maybe the engine, or the tires, or ...

All the custom modifications, though. The luxuries she’d scraped and saved for to make her rig a rolling home.

The cupboards designed and built to her specifications, the expensive blackout curtains.

The alarm system that would alert her if anyone was breaking into her rig while she slept.

A memory from long ago shot to the surface, her father’s voice gravelly from years of smoking.

“Kitten , you always want the same story. How about a new one?”

“No , Daddy. The one about the man and the wagon.”

From age four, she’d relished turning the pages of the tattered book her father would read to her about the man who sold hats, making his way along the countryside under apple trees and along windy lanes.

When the last page was turned, she’d put her cheek on his tobacco-scented shoulder, and they’d talk about what it would be like if they embarked on such journeys, rambling the roads every day, the people they’d see, the campfire meals they’d cook together under a canopy of stars.

“Someday , Kitten. I’m going to quit my bean counter job and get a trailer , and we’ll go on rides together.”

That would spin a whole new thread of conversation about their destinations, warm tropical places, faraway deserts, the dangerous ice roads through Canada, forests, sandy stretches of California coastline, and everything in between.

When she heard the sadness creep into her father’s voice, she’d hold him extra tight.

She didn’t understand that he was trapped in a job he despised, a life he struggled to afford, quietly growing more desperate each day.

He’d never gotten that trailer.