Scarlett Hopper's Arc

Chapter 17 of 33

Dawn came gray. Scarlett pulled up the camera feed on the small screen John had wired to the kitchen table. Two figures on the ridge. Closer than yesterday. Not in the pines anymore. Down in the scree, behind a low wall. She could see the shape of a rifle across one man's back. "They moved in the night," she said. John set down his cup. Maranda came in from the stove, sandals quiet on the boards. She looked at the screen and her mouth tightened. "Two," Maranda said. "There are more behind them. I feel it in the ground." "Who," Scarlett said. "That's what I need. If they're Bern's people we talk. If they're yours we fight. If they're something else I want to know before they cross the wall." John leaned on the table. "We can't wait them out. They'll pick their hour." "No," Scarlett said. "We send eyes." She crouched and put her hand on the dog's ruff. Duke lifted his head. She pictured the ridge in her mind, the two men, the wall they hid behind. She pictured him circling wide through the broken lots, low and quiet, close enough to see faces. She pictured him coming back. Duke pushed an image back at her — himself trotting through dry grass, then the same ridge from below. He understood. He stood, shook once, and went to the door. "Stay downwind," she said. "Don't be seen." She let him out. He was gone in three steps. Maranda watched the door close. "He is a good one." "He's the best one," Scarlett said. She turned to John. "While we wait, we make her a room. She's not sleeping on the floor another night." They cleared the small back room together. John hauled out a broken dresser and a crate of rusted tins. Scarlett swept the boards and washed the window. Maranda brought in a mattress from the couch and laid it against the far wall. She salted the sill herself, quick and neat, and set a small pouch under the pillow. "Enough," Maranda said. She sat on the edge of the mattress. "Thank you." Scarlett nodded. She did not say more. Duke came back before the ash wind. He came in panting and dropped at Scarlett's feet. She knelt. The image hit her clean — two men behind the wall, and behind them, five more in a dry wash. She saw a patch sewn to a jacket. A black circle with a red mark inside it. She saw a woman with a notebook, writing. Maranda went still. Her hand closed on the doorframe. "That's mine," she said. "That mark is mine. They followed me here." Scarlett stood. The screen on the table blinked green. Seven of them. Named now, at least in Maranda's face. "Then we know," Scarlett said. "Load the revolvers."