Brooke ‘Bookeeper’'s Arc

Chapter 14 of 32

The school fell behind them and the road ran flat through dry grass. Brooke checked her list. Every title was crossed out. The cart sat heavy behind the truck, ropes tight over the canvas. It was time to go home. Then the boy tapped her shoulder and pointed at the mirror. Three headlights wobbled in the dust, far back but holding pace. Bikes. Raven scouts. Her two escorts slumped in the truck bed, rifles across their knees. One had a torn sleeve crusted brown. The other's eyes kept closing. They had fought twice already this week. Brooke saw it in their slack shoulders and the way their hands shook on the straps. They could not win another round. Brooke killed the lights and turned off the road through a gap in a wire fence. A small metal shed leaned in a weed lot ahead, roof red with rust, door hanging on one hinge. She rolled the truck and cart behind it, out of sight from the road. She cut the engine. They waited. She pulled out her stained spiral notepad and wrote down what she saw, hands steady even as the bikes whined closer. The motors grew, then passed. Dust drifted over the shed's roof. Brooke counted to two hundred. The road went quiet. She climbed down and walked to the corner of the shed. The headlights were gone west, chasing nothing. She had bought maybe an hour. She woke the escorts and turned the truck south, off her planned route, onto a slower track home. The cart was full. The list was done. But the Ravens knew her shape now, and the road back to Rust would not be the road she came in on.