“Did anyone see y-of course they did. You bought things. How many people saw you?”
He blinked again. “Did I do something wrong?”
“You went into town?” A deep voice rumbled behind her.
Daniel shifted his gaze to a point over her head. “Yeah – I mean, you guys were pretty short on groceries. I just wanted to get some nonfrozen stuff, you know? You seemed busy…”
She turned to look at Arnie. His face was impassive, but she knew it well enough now to see little breaks in the façade – stress marks around his eyes, one slightly more prominent vein in his forehead.
“Do you have a way to contact Kevin?” she asked him.
“You mean Joe?”
“Probably. Daniel’s brother.”
“Nope.”
“What did I do?” Daniel asked pleadingly.
She sighed as she turned back to him. “Do you remember when Kevin said that no one around here had ever seen his face? Well… now they have.”
Daniel’s color started to ebb as he processed that. “But… I used a fake name. I – I said I was just passing through.”
“How many people did you talk to?”
“Just the cashier at the grocery store and the one at the -”
“How many places did you go into?”
“Three…”
She and Arnie exchanged a glance – horrified on her part, more inscrutable on his.
“Kevin left me money for things I might need – I assumed he meant stuff like eggs and milk,” Daniel offered.
“He meant fake IDs,” Alex snapped.
The rest of Daniel’s color vanished, and his mouth fell open.
They stared at him for a long moment.
Daniel took a deep breath, visibly centering himself.
“Okay,” he said. “I screwed up. Can we take the groceries in before you tell me how bad? It only adds waste to my mistake if the perishables spoil in the truck.”
Lips pressed into a tight line – ignoring the irritating glob of superglue – Alex nodded once and went around to the back of the truck to help unload. She saw all the bags inside the camper and felt the blood behind her bruises again.
Of course, on top of going into the closest town, he would have bought enough food to feed an army. And if there was any other thing that would make him more memorable, he’d probably done that, too.
In ominous silence, Alex and Arnie brought all the bags in and put them on the counter. Daniel worked back and forth between the cupboards and the fridge, sorting each item into the right spot. Alex might have thought that he wasn’t taking this seriously enough except for the fact that his color kept changing; though his expression was steady, his cheeks and neck would suddenly flush, and then he’d go white again.
The cooling-off period was probably a good idea. It gave Alex a chance to think everything through and be realistic about the danger posed. She’d been about ready to steal Arnie’s truck and disappear, but she knew that would be overreacting. Sometimes overreactions saved your life; sometimes they just put you in more danger. She had to remember her face; running now would only cause her more problems.
Daniel placed the last item – some kind of leafy green vegetable – in the fridge and shut the door. He didn’t turn, just stood there with his head slightly bowed toward the stainless steel.
“How bad?” he asked quietly.
She looked at Arnie. He didn’t seem inclined to speak.
“Tell me you paid cash,” she began.
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s something, at least.”
“But not everything,” Daniel guessed.
“No. Childress is a very small town.”
“Just over six thousand people,” Arnie rumbled.
It was worse than she’d thought; she knew of high schools with bigger student bodies.
“So a stranger in town is memorable,” she said. “You would have been noticed.”
Daniel turned to her. His face was composed, but his eyes were troubled.
“Yes, I can see that,” he agreed.
“You were in Arnie’s truck, with Arnie’s dog,” Alex said. “Someone could connect you back to Arnie.”
“Einstein stayed in the truck,” Daniel said. “I don’t think anyone was watching me get in or out.”
“There’re a hundred similar trucks in town. Five that are the exact same color, year, and model; two of those have campers,” Arnie said, not to Daniel, but to Alex. “Half the people there would have a dog with them.”
“That’s helpful,” she told Arnie. “You guys did good here.”
“How much does this affect you?” Daniel asked him.
Arnie shrugged. “No way to know. People forget stuff pretty quick when they’ve got no real reason to remember. We lie low, it’ll probably come to nothing.”
“Anyway, what’s done is done,” Alex mused. “We’ll just have to be extra careful.”
“Kevin’s going to be furious.” Daniel sighed.
“When isn’t he furious?” Alex asked, and Arnie actually laughed out one brief chuckle. “Anyway, it’s his own fault for not explaining anything to you. A mistake I’m not going to repeat.” She gestured toward the couch.
Arnie nodded to himself, then clumped out the front door, back to his work. Kevin had picked a good partner. She found herself wishing that Arnie were Daniel’s brother rather than Kevin. Arnie was so much easier to deal with.
“How about I make lunch while you lecture?” Daniel offered. “I’m suffering extreme hunger pangs. I don’t know what Arnie survives on around here.”
“Sure,” she said. She grabbed a bar stool and planted herself.
“I did honestly think that I was helping,” Daniel murmured as he went back to the fridge.
“I know, Daniel, I know. And I’m hungry, too,” she conceded.
“I’ll ask first next time,” he promised.
She sighed. “That’s a start.”
Though she didn’t want to admit it, the large sandwich Daniel made for her did a lot to mellow her perspective on the incident. She gave him the basics while they ate – there’d be time for more detail when they had a specific task ahead of them – and he listened attentively.
“I don’t know how to see the world that way,” he confessed. “It all seems so paranoid.”
“Yes! Paranoia is exactly what we’re shooting for. Paranoia is good.”
“That’s a little contradictory to how they teach it in the real world, but I’ll work on flipping my perspective. I know I can do this much – I will check with you on everything from now on. Before I breathe.”
“You’ll start to get it. It becomes habit after a while. But don’t think of what you used to know as the real world. The things that happen in this world are a whole lot more real, and a whole lot more permanent. It’s primitive – survival instincts. I know you have them; you were born with them. You just have to tap into that part of yourself.”
“I have to think like the hunted.” He tried to keep his face positive, but she could see how much the idea devastated him.
“Yes. You are the hunted. And so am I. And so is your brother. And hell, so is Arnie, apparently. It’s a very popular state of being around here.”
“But you,” he said slowly, “and my brother, and probably even Arnie, are still predators. I’m just prey.”
She shook her head. “I started out as prey. I learned. You’ve got advantages I never had. You share an exact genetic code with your brother, the apex predator. I saw you down at the range – once those instincts kick in, you’ll be plenty able to take care of yourself.”
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”
“I’m saying that because I’m jealous. If I could be tall, and strong, and a natural shot, it would change this game I’m playing.”