The train wasn't going fast, barely at all really, but it was picking up quick. Heart in her throat, Rachel climbed down from her perch on the crate to the narrow ledge below. Jason doubled his pace, arms pumping, injury thrown to the wind. Cutting across the ground diagonally, he'd almost made it to the opening. The train couldn't be going very fast—kiddie kart speeds, maybe five or ten miles an hour.

On foot, that was just fast enough to get left in the dust.

Wrapping her arm around the inside of the opening, Rachel leaned out as far as she could, hand outstretched. "Come on!"

He ran a few more steps, body thrown forward, then reached for her hand. Their fingertips brushed, but Jason's grasp slipped through hers. Right beside him, the massive wheels ate rocks and churned dust.

We don't have to do this. The sudden realization sliced through Rachel. I could jump off right now, and we could find another train. He's going to get himself killed.

But the wild part of her wanted to see if he could make it, to see how far he would go, how far they could get. Her arm stretched out further.

Sweat beading his brow, Jason gritted his teeth. He surged forward, and this time when his hand reached out, their grips clasped tight. Rachel jerked. Using the train's momentum, she swung Jason onto the ledge with her.

She leaned back as far as the crates would allow, waiting for her arm to stop aching and her heart to stop beating against her skin. The lights and shadows of the city flashed over them. When she finally straightened, she found Jason with his head and arms laying on top of a crate, still catching his breath.

Rachel climbed onto the double-stacked cargo. "Hope you don't plan to hang out on the ledge all night."

Jason raised his head just enough to look at her. Pain glazed his eyes, but he slipped on a small, tired smile. "Hey, you never know," he called breathlessly, words almost snatched away by the rushing wind. "Might be the place to be. It's got good air conditioning."

"If you wanna freeze to death." She rolled her eyes, offering him a hand up.

Together, they crawled toward the front of the car, out of the way of both the opening and the wind. Backs to the wall, they settled as comfortably as possible against hard wood and metal. It was dark enough that she could barely make out his face, but she didn't need to see to hear his labored breathing.

"Let me look at your arm."

He waved it away, but his voice was still choked for air. "I'm fine."

"I believe that's the same thing you said when you still had the bullet in you." She turned on her phone, and the display dispelled some of the dark. "Now, I know this might be impossible, but tamp down on the bravado and let me have a look."

He stiffened but didn't otherwise protest as she crawled around to his other side. She tried to keep her expression neutral as pulled up his sleeve. The bandage was wet and stained red. He must have pulled a couple of stitches.

Gingerly, she plied off the gauze to check. Sure enough, he'd split it open, right near the middle. Blood oozed through the hole.

"Everything okay?" Jason asked between clenched teeth.

"Peachy," she answered back. As peachy as it could be, at least. There was nothing they could do tonight, and it wasn't like he was going to bleed out. She shifted the bandage to where a dry spot was over the broken stitches and wrapped him back up. No, what they really had to watch for was infection. If that set in, there wasn't much she could do. And in the meantime, there wasn't much she could do to protect him from it. Keep it clean, that was all. Easier said than done with no supplies.

She leaned back against the wall, turning off her phone to conserve battery. Jason lay down, and she settled into the corner.

It was quiet other than the rhythm of the train wheels. The silence grated on her, churning up too many unanswered questions, so even as Jason's breathing started to even out, she spoke up. "You said you didn't think these people were cops after all?" Her voice sounded small in her ears, and she cleared her throat. "Right?"

"I don't know who they are." The bits of humor that had lightened his voice earlier had gone dark now. Back was the flat, empty voice of the boy staring out the cafe window searching for a sister that wasn't there.

She swallowed, knowing it would be kinder to shut up, but her mouth moved anyway. "But if they're not the cops, how did they get my photo so fast?"

"Aren't arrests public record?"

She wrapped her arms around herself. That had been her first attempt at crime, a bit of petty theft she'd sprung on her own trying to convince Rafe that she was good for more than just sitting around the house all day, waiting for something to go wrong. When it ended in a record, she'd worried he'd kick her out. Instead, he said if she was going to go get herself into trouble, the least he could do was show her how to keep from getting caught.

"What was it for anyway?" he asked.

"It was for being a kid on the wrong side of town," she snapped. "What's it to you?"

"Rach—" he started to protest before cutting himself off. With a sigh, the flat edge crept back into his words. "It's nothing to me. Nothing at all."

Stung, she cradled her arms tighter. "Well. Night then. Let me know how your arm is in the morning."

She slid onto the floor, back firmly against the wall. The gun in her waistband pressed into her skin, and she jammed it into her hoodie pocket. For a pillow, she shoved her arm beneath her head. Sucking on her lip, she tried to dampen the angry beat of her heart.

The silence stretched. The train rocked. Her pulse slowed. It got quiet long enough that she'd almost managed to drop off.

"You're being illogical." His voice was flat, like an open hand slap.

She sat bolt upright. "Excuse me?"

Evenly, slowly, coldly, he said, "You keep trying to save me, but you don't owe me anything. I don't need you. When the train stops, so should you. You're safer on your own, and you know it."

"You got me on the news," she protested. "You got the cops looking for me."

"New York cops, who won't find you."

"You know who's being illogical?" she said. "You. You don't need me?" She sneered. "You can't even see your own freaking arm. You barely got on the train. You would have fallen asleep in that dump-hole of a bus station and let the cops come scoop you up! You're an absolute idiot."

The words burned her mouth like vodka. The tracks rolled thrum-thrum, thrum-thrum, thrum-thrum beneath them. His outline lay unmoving for a long moment. Finally, his voice came again, but it didn't rail at her or argue. "Check the gun," was all he said. Fabric rustled as he rolled over.

She waited for him to explain, to qualify, but he didn't. Slowly, she slid its weight from her pocket, brow drawn. Black against the night, she couldn't see it at all. And she wasn't sure she wanted to. His words carried a weight to them, a threat. Check the gun.

What... what had he done to it? He'd only had it for a minute in the apartment building, and she was with him the whole time. Check the gun.

Curiosity burned through her, but the terrifying kind: the kind that made you turn on the horror movie, that made you open the door when you heard something go bump in the night, that made you peer closer at corpses. The kind that promised something unpleasant and dragged you toward it anyway.

Swallowing a lump in her throat, she stowed the weapon away. She didn't have to know. Not tonight. Tonight, she got to sleep. Tomorrow, he'd be begging her to stay. Tomorrow, he wouldn't be delirious and ridiculous.

She settled back down. She waited for her heart to quit racing again. As she fell asleep, her fingers rubbed the grip of the gun.

Despite the lullaby of the wheels and the rocking motion of the train, Rachel didn't rest much. Jason's unconscious moaning woke her several times, and she couldn't help but check on him. Every time she fell back asleep, she dreamed about the first one she ever lost.

It was a month after her dad had died. Thirteen years old, she sat alone in the corner of someone else's grimy apartment. It was the one Rafe had rented in his dead brother's name, back before the landlord got wise. None of the Lost Boys were old enough to be renting anything.

The AC was out, and sweat clung to her skin. The older kids were out on a job, but Rafe wouldn't let her come. Not Miss Med's place, he'd said, ruffling her hair with a smirk. So instead, bored and hot, she flipped through out-of-date car magazines.

Then the door burst open. Rafe stormed in, followed by the others dragging another boy between them.

"Rachel!" Rafe shouted.

She sat frozen on the sticky tile. Red ran down the boy—the one whose name she couldn't even remember right then. It ran down his sleeve, all the way from his soaked shoulder to his dripping arm. She stared and stared.

Rafe crossed the room and grabbed the front of her hoodie, hauling her to her feet. "Time to earn your way," he growled. He pushed her toward the dining table where the other kids had laid the wounded boy. She stumbled forward. "Fix him, doctor girl! You said you got skills. Use 'em."

Rachel studied the boy, stomach churning. Her quick, shaky fingers ripped open his torn shirt. He'd been shot in the shoulder, and the wound was gushing blood. "I need my kit," she called, voice shaking as she put pressure on the boy's arm. The blood ran warm and sticky around her fingers, but she pressed harder, even though everything in her screamed to recoil.

She'd patched up her dad before, when he'd come home from the bar too late, or when Mom came at him with fingernails or scissors or kitchen knives for betting the rent money again. She'd sat across the kitchen table from him after shifts at the ER; she'd pestered him with questions until he couldn't keep his eyes open anymore. She knew what she was doing. She knew what she was doing. Right?

Rafe hovered at her shoulder. "Why aren't you doing anything?"

One of the boys ran back with the kit of rag-tag items she'd slowly been collecting—a Dollar Tree sewing kit, a rusty pair of tweezers she'd scrubbed with alcohol till they gleamed, some bandages their little gang had swiped from a local convenience store. Taking a deep breath, she dove in.

He didn't die right away. She kept him alive for several days in that tiny, hot apartment, and for a while, she even thought he was going to live. But before he ever got his strength back, fever set in.

She sat by him day and night, through delusional fits and times he was so still, she thought he'd stopped breathing. Rafe checked in every day. "He's doing good. Right?" She nodded. He was still alive. Rafe nodded back. "You're doing good," he'd say, and pat her shoulder. He never stayed long—busy, she'd thought, but later she realized he just couldn't bear to sit with them. But she did, watching, rubbing bleary eyes, for hours that bled into days.

Then, one night, her eyes slipped closed. She woke in a panic. In front of her, lit by the moonlight, the boy's eyes shone flat and still as glass. She hadn't seen him draw his final breath, hadn't listened to his final words, hadn't tried to save him in his final moments. He was just suddenly, irrevocably dead.

Rachel startled awake again, the train bumping beneath her, the boy's glass eyes still staring at her in her mind. Dawn was just beginning to touch the sky. Rachel glanced over at Jason's sleeping form. She curled her arms in on herself, tight.

Rachel had gambled with Death plenty. She wasn't losing her wager this time.