Page 117 of Savage Surrender

“I didn’t say they did.”

“Your face did,” Megan says. “It’s doing the guilty martyr thing.”

“I don’t have a guilty martyr thing.”

Megan tips her head while Ezra waits me out.

“Fuck you both.”

Megan’s grin comes back. “Much less annoying. We left buildings, bitch. We got the people out.”

Ezra nods once. “The decision was ours. We’d make it again.”

I pick at the edge of the blanket over my knees. “What did you lose?”

“Food. Tools. Some equipment. Personal things.” Ezra’s gaze stays on my face. “Not your bow.”

The blanket edge slips from my fingers.

Megan points toward the front of the house. “It’s in the van with the ugly bowl I made you.”

“I’m sure it’s not ugly, M.”

She points at Ezra. “This asshole tried to leave it behind.”

“It’s cracked,” Ezra says.

“That’s how it was made, Ezra.”

“It doesn’t hold water.”

“Neither does a colander, and people still keep those.”

I laugh again, softer this time. I think I saw this relationship coming.

“No one followed you here?” Weller asks.

“No. We checked.”

Megan’s eyes snap to my face and her mouth flattens. “What happened out there?”

I look down at the blanket. “They spotted me in the village.”

“One of them grabbed me outside the shop, but I stabbed him and got loose. They crushed my phone. The golf cart cut off the boardwalk, and after that...” My scraped shoulder pulls when I shrug. “There weren’t a lot of places left.”

“So you went into a red-flag current,” Megan says.

“It looked better than getting into their golf cart. Their sons were bad enough, and they’re probably worse.”

“Low fucking bar.”

“Drowning is preferable to... whatever they might’ve had in mind for me.”

Her eyes shine again. “Yeah, well. Put it on your calendar next time so I can schedule some mental health days because you scared me to death.”

“What happened to them?”

Tristan hasn’t taken his eyes off me once. “They didn’t come out.”