“He’s a nice man.”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know him?”
Will changed gears as they neared the highway. “He was an army recruiter ‘round these parts. All the kids like me knew him.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you mean, kids like me?”
“Army kids.”
Lilah nodded, though she didn’t understand. “Do you mean you wanted to be in the army?”
“Sure.”
She pursed her lips. “Yet you didn’t enlist?”
“No.”
“I …” He shook his head. “It’s complicated.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t we have some time stuck in a car together?”
He expelled a sigh. “Why do I feel like I’m going to regret this rescue mission?”
“I don’t know. And besides, what’s done is done. So tell me about your abortive army career.”
His smile was perfunctory. “He wouldn’t enlist me.”
She frowned. “I don’t really understand the way your military works. I thought it was the job of an enlister…”
“It is,” he grimaced. “Harry was different.”
“Do you wish you’d served?”
“No.” He floored the engine to push it up to speed on the highway. “Harry told me there were other ways to serve. And he was right.”
“By being a journalist?”
He shifted his steely gaze to her. In the glow of the moonlight, she felt goosebumps dance along her flesh. “I made the wars I covered a reality for anyone and everyone. People in their living rooms knew about atrocities and unspeakable acts because I was there to report on them.”
Lilah had a thousand and one questions firing through her brain, but she was also inexplicably weary. She pushed her head back against the seat and stared at the passing streetscape. “Where are we going now?”
“Somewhere no one will ever find us.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Even when he cut the engine, Lilah didn’t stir.
Will pulled the keys from the dashboard quietly, careful not to clink them together as he normally would. He held them tight in his palm.
The cabin loomed before them, only-partially illuminated by a sliver of moonlight that had made its way through the canopy of pine trees.
It was just as it had been described.