Page 41 of Shatter

He doesn't say anything, but he eases off the gas.

It's ten minutes to two in the morning, forty-seven hours since Colin Dufresne said my name in the dark.

I know because I've counted every one of them.

I'm wearing Hakon's black hoodie, the sleeves rolled four times at the wrist and the hem hanging halfway to my knees, and one of Ulf's ball caps pulled low over my copper hair.

Under the hoodie, my ribs are taped so tight I can only breathe in sips.

The painkillers Vail gave me an hour ago are starting to work, a soft, warm fog creeping in around the edges of the pain, and I hate it.

I need my head clear tonight.

I need my hands steady.

"You still with me?" Hakon keeps his eyes on the road.

"I'm fine." I unclench my fingers from the door handle one at a time.

"You're not fine." He turns onto the side street behind the laundromat. "You're a funny color."

"You're very charming." I let my head fall back against the seat.

"I've been told." One corner of his mouth twitches, barely, and then it's gone.

He pulls into the dark behind the laundromat and kills the engine.

Silence rushes in, broken only by the tick of the cooling motor and the hum of the Coke machine on the other side of the wall.

The same Coke machine.

Two nights ago, I lay on the asphalt forty feet from here and listened to it while a man went to his trunk for cable ties.

My palms go damp inside my borrowed sleeves.

It took most of a day to get here.

I told Hakon what I needed was inside the diner and I had to be the one to get it, and I wouldn't say anything else.

He didn't push, only studied me for a long moment with his thumb rubbing over his split knuckles.

Then he went upstairs, and Tor's voice came through the ceiling again, lower this time.

When Hakon came back, his jaw was set, and he had a plan.

Tor's conditions.

I stay in the truck until they say it's clear, and then I'm in and out in ten minutes.

If anything goes wrong, anything at all, I get down on the floor of the truck and I don't get up until Hakon tells me.

I agreed to all of it.

I would've agreed to anything.

Hakon's phone buzzes on the dash.

He puts it on speaker and sets it on his knee.