The darkening forest flashed by in the edges of Jason's hazy vision. Green leaves painted with orange shadows. Gnarled trunks, thick roots. Hanging ivy, dripping with water. Rain. When had it started raining? His feet stumbled along the path with Rachel's, doing their best to keep up. His skin was hot, so hot he imagined the rain sizzling and evaporating as it touched him.

At least the blaze of his arm was cool, quiet. The pain had become such a constant, it seemed wrong for it to go away, like a part of him was missing. He felt like he'd slipped into a dream—one of the ones where your feet didn't work quite right.

It's not a dream, he tried to remind himself even as his vision swirled, turning the world into impossible angles. It was medicine. A second pill Rachel had fed him. Fog filled his mind, a thick, medicinal sludge he struggled to break free of. Medicine, and maybe a bit of fever.

Rachel said something, but he couldn't catch her words. He blinked up at her, water dripping down his eyelashes. The rain drenched her as well, flattening her hair like a wet cat's. She sighed at him.

"Sorry," he muttered, struggling to marshall his thoughts. "M'listening now."

"Stay. Here," she insisted, pressing him against a tree.

"Mm-hmm." He nodded, and the world swirled like water in a snowglobe.

Her face leaned in close to his. She was frowning. "And stay awake. I'll be right back."

"No, no," he tried to argue, slowly realizing she meant to leave. "Lost. Don't get—"

She was gone before he could argue anymore. Bushes rustled. Water dripped against his head, his ears. The burnt orange twilight darkened, deepened, blackened... His head jerked up, eyes snapping open. Still burnt orange, not black. He'd fallen asleep. He bit his lip, but there was no spark of pain. The twilit forest weighed down on him, trying to lull him into slumber again.

He pushed off the tree, fighting a step forward, fighting to stay awake. The world spun, and he closed his eyes. He focused on the thick, heavy feel of his shoes against the ground. He stepped again and swayed. His hand caught against a tree. Stepped forward. Another step forward. If he could just keep walking, he could keep awake...

🧬 🧬 🧬

Jason came to slowly. The cool dirt felt good against his cheek. The ground was surprisingly soft, no roots or stones stabbing against his stomach. Grass tickled his face. Rain pelted against his back.

Hands tugged against his arm, then dropped it. A girl growled, a deep, sharp noise in her throat that was almost a scream. "I leave you for five minutes," she said.

"Rach," he moaned, doing his best to pull his eyes back open.

"Don't you 'Rach' me," she huffed. "Come on, you gotta get up."

The world was fragmented, the fog in his mind blocking moments out like a curtain. One minute he was laying in the grass. The next he was on his knees, Rachel hoisting him underneath one arm. Then he was walking, a field spread before him, long shadows splintering out from the dying sun. A door squeaked. Him and Rach spilled out of the rain. It smelled like manure and mildew. Some animal, hidden in the black edges of his vision, snorted.

"We gotta get you out of these," Rachel muttered. "Lay down."

When the fog cleared next, a scratchy blanket was wrapped around him, pressed against his bare skin. Something soft yet firm, kind of like a mattress but not, shifted beneath him. Rain drummed against a roof it was too dark to see. His head fell to the side. Hay poked against his cheek. "Rach?"

"I'm here." Her whisper came from the darkness just a foot away.

"Where're my clothes?"

She snorted. "Drying, Psycho Boy. You got 'em good and drenched taking a nap in the field."

Fog still sludged in his brain, but a bit fizzled away in white hot realization. "You... took them off?"

"Don't get excited. You're not exactly the first." The fog swirled in his brain, but she added hurriedly, "Patient. You're not the first patient I've undressed. For medical reasons."

"You're not a doc," he mumbled.

"Oh, shut up," she whispered. "Sleep. We're outta here in the morning."

He started to ask where here was, but the fog rolled back in and the words stuck in his throat. The dark of the building blended into the dark of his eyes, and he slipped back to sleep.

Rachel crashed so hard that waking up felt like breaking free of a crushing ocean wave. Her body was stiff and sore, heavy and cold. Jason wore the only blanket she'd been able to find in the stable, nabbed from a horse, the sole other occupant. Last night, shivering and wet, she'd stripped out of her rain-soaked things too, but the nice blouse Jason had bought her only barely covered her underwear. The hay prickled her bare legs.

For a minute, she wasn't sure what had woken her up. Keeping still, she listened closely. The rain still beat against the wooden roof. The horse whuffled. Then light crashed into her closed eyes. Her hands rose defensively, and she tried to blink past the flare of the flashlight. "Well, well," drawled a light Southern accent. "What do we have here?"

"Please don't hurt us," she gasped. Suddenly her bare legs felt less like an inconvenience and more like a vulnerability. She was exposed, cornered. The gun was tucked beneath the backpack she was using as a pillow, but she didn't think she could pull it before he crossed the few feet between them.

The flashlight lowered. Outside the barn doors, the faint pink of dawn leaked inside the structure. The farmer was all broad shoulders and muscles, and younger than she'd expected. He frowned down at her. "Looks like you stole poor Patch's blanket."

Jason was asleep on the hay bale behind her. Rachel pushed up slowly, putting herself in between him and the farmer. "He was freezing," she explained. "Please, we'll leave now."

The farmer snorted. "Not much of a gentleman that leaves a girl in her skivvies."

Her neck burned, and her hands flattened over her legs. "He's sick."

"Hm." The farmer snagged a pitchfork leaned against the wall. Rachel's hand shot toward her bag, but he didn't point the instrument at her. Casual as you please, he stabbed one of the other hay bales and dropped a serving into Patch the horse's trough. "You kids runaways?"

"We're leaving, like I said." She jumped up and snagged their clothes from the hooks she'd hung them on. "We'll be out of your way."

"Not what I asked." He stepped back toward the door, leaning on that pitch fork. In another context, it might have almost looked friendly.

"We're nineteen," she said, knowing that Jason's fake ID would back up that much at least.

The farmer snorted. "He might be. Come in the house. My wife's making breakfast." He raised an eyebrow. "She's pretty handy with that frying pan too."

Rachel wasn't quite sure if that was supposed to be a compliment to her cooking or a warning for Rachel not to try anything. Maybe both. She also wasn't sure if this was what qualified as Southern hospitality, or if it was some elaborate set up. Either way, it didn't look like Mr. Pitchfork was taking no for an answer.

Rachel's stomach growled. Surely they had time for one hot meal before they hit the road.

And she wasn't sure exactly how they were going to hit the road anyway. She couldn't carry Jason to Arizona. The few miles she'd supported him yesterday about did her in.

As she dipped a nod to the farmer, he relaxed his guard-dog stance. She moved to Jason's side and shook his good shoulder. When that didn't work, she went back to the water-in-the-face trick. He moaned, expression twisting and curling in pain.

"Let's get some food in you," she murmured, "and then you can have another pill."

His throat bobbed, and he nodded. His mouth opened as if he might say something, but then sealed shut with white tight lips. In the blanket-cocoon, his body curled onto his left shoulder, his face screwing tight. A low, muffled whimper sounded in his throat.

Rachel's stomach dropped. His soft cries drove into her skin like iron nails, all the sharper for the fact he tried to hide it.

This was her fault. She knew better. Once she'd started him on the pain meds, she should have kept managing it, making sure he was dosed at least until he started to get better. The dawn tinted the beads of sweat on his brow like watered-down blood. He'd come off the meds, and she'd slept. She'd slept, and she'd let them get caught. Rafe would have thrown her across the room for such sloppiness, and she would have let him.

"Please." Her head snapped up to the farmer. "Help me get him to a hospital."

He frowned but leaned the pitchfork against the wall and stepped closer. On instinct, she stepped back, thighs running into the hay as she angled herself between him and Jason. The man stopped a few feet away. He leaned to the side and peered. "What's he sick with?"

"He cut his arm. Bad. Please."

His lips pulled to the side, brow furrowing.

"It's infected," she said, voice pitching higher as Jason's body curled tighter on the hay bale. "Please."

"He's bad off, ain't he?" His head shook. "Let me go tell the missus." He turned, taking off at a sprint as he passed the barn doors.

While he was gone, Rachel jammed her legs into her damp pants and shoved Jason's things into the backpack. The gun, she snatched and stowed in her waistband—in the front, where it'd be easier to pull out when sitting down—and threw on her baggy, mud-soaked hoodie to hide it. She looked around the room for anything she might have missed. Her heart hammered in her chest.

"You're gonna be fine," she promised Jason.

"No," he moaned, and she paled, hurrying to his side. But he went on. "Hospital. No."

"No one's going to find you." She brushed sweat-soaked bangs away from his brow. Despite the chill, damp night they'd passed—or maybe because of it—the fever roared higher than ever on his skin. "No one's gonna find you," she promised again, even as Foster's posh snark slithered in her head: Tell her that her friends speak well of her.

"No," he insisted again. "No hos... hospi—" He broke off in another spasm of pain, and she shushed him as a humming vehicle pulled up outside. The engine idled, and a door slammed. The farmer strode back in.

"Can he make it to the truck?"

"I don't think he can walk."

"Can. I can," Jason insisted, and pushed up onto his elbow as if to spite her. "Ahh," he gasped and crashed back down.

A rough, breathy noise punched past his lips. She spun to check on him, hands flittering over his form even though she couldn't see anything through the thick blanket. He looked like a sweating skull, skin pale and hollows under his eyes dark. "Always gotta play the hero, don't you?" she hissed, throat tight.

"Honey," the farmer said, "I can probably lift him if you'll let me past."

Rachel glanced over her shoulder. The man nodded reassuringly. She sucked on her lip, hesitant to let an outsider close to one of her patients. But Jason's heaving breaths picked away at her will, and she stepped aside.

"Watch his left shoulder, upper arm, that area. That's where he got cut."

The farmer gave one warm, solid nod and sidled past her. He slid an arm under Jason's back and knees and hoisted him up. Grunting, he jerked his head. "Go open the back door."

Rachel ran out the barn to a black Ford, bag bouncing against her back. The headlights speared her eyes in the early dawn. She threw the extended cab doors open and climbed in herself, sliding all the way in to the passenger side. In the front, a woman with a sleep-mussed braid and wide brown eyes threw a worried glance back.

The farmer stepped half-into the truck and laid Jason in the back seat. His head lolled in Rachel's lap, and she placed the back of her hand against his cheek—partly because her hand was almost an icepack compared to his fevered skin, but mostly to keep his ear from bumping into her gun.

The doors slammed, and the farmer threw the truck into reverse. The field, the one Jason somehow walked a hundred yards through on his own last night and now couldn't stand in at all, zoomed past the windows. Why do you always have to be so stubborn?

They roared onto a road. The wife took the farmer's right hand, and their fingers twined together. Rachel swallowed, but not quite enough to digest the guilt as the gun pressed against her stomach.

"Hospital's not far," the farmer promised.

Outside passed other fields and farms and houses, horses and cows, trees and ponds, and slow-moving people already hard at work in the blushing dawn. The truck jarred over back roads. Jason's muscles tensed and rolled with each bump. The wheels bounced from dirt onto pavement, and they sped onto the highway.

Rachel slipped the gun out from her waistband. It was cold and heavy in her hand. Quickly, she pressed it against the farmer's wife's head. "I'm so sorry about this," she said as the woman froze beneath the metal's touch, "but I need your car."

The farmer's eyes darted. The truck slowed to a crawl. "My wife hasn't done nothing to you, miss." The farmer stopped in the middle of the road. "Please don't hurt her. We'll take you wherever you want to go."

Rachel's stomach twisted. The gun trembled in her hand—not because her hand was shaking, but because the woman was. The farmer eyed her warily, one hand held in a pleading gesture, the other squeezing his wife's. Rachel's hand, on the right side of the headrest, was out of his reach, but she didn't even think he was considering grabbing it.

However Rachel's stomach flipped, her voice held steady. "Where are your phones? Put them on the dash."

"Please don't hurt her," the man said. "It's in my coat pocket. Can I get it out?"

Rachel jerked a nod. The old-timey flip phone hit the dash.

"Hers too."

The woman's voice wavered in hiccups of air. "My—my—mine's at the—the house."

"She hardly takes it anywhere," the man swore.

"Leave the car on. You get out. Just you," she said to him.

"I can't leave her in here."

"I don't want her in here anymore than you do," Rachel snapped, tired of their sweetness and fear and care and concern. "I just want your car. Get out, and before I go, she can get out too."

"Rach?" Jason murmured.

Rachel pressed the gun harder against the woman's head, and the woman squeaked, shrinking in her seat. "I'm not telling you again," she said to the man. "Get. Out."

"D-d-do it, Cole," the woman stammered.

The man's face twisted into a scowl. "We would have helped you." But his door popped open, and he hopped out.

Rachel twisted her hips so Jason's head fell into the seat while she half-rose. He groaned. As the man ran around to his wife's door, Rachel grabbed her hair with her left hand and pressed the gun to the same side. The woman sobbed. Rachel slid over the high console, where the couple had held hands moments before, and into the driver's seat.

The man jerked his wife's door open. Rachel let go off her hair and lowered the gun enough for him to pull her, bawling, out of the car.

They're never going to help anyone ever again.

It didn't matter. Right now, Rachel had all the help she needed. She floored the gas pedal. The truck jerked forward, passenger door slamming as she blazed down the road.

Her lips twisted bitterly. "Arizona or bust, right, Jason?"

She glanced back in the rearview mirror to check on him, but her eyes caught on the couple instead, helpless on the side of the road, wrapped in each other's arms.