“You knew what I meant,” she accused.
“I did. Perhaps not exactly, but I could hear the frustration in your voice. I may not know contemporary idioms, as you say, but I’m very good at detecting underlying emotion. I overheard conversations in many different languages during my long imprisonment.”
“So you are a smartass.”
“I’ve not heard that particular word before, but I can intuit the meaning from the ones I do know. Forgive me. My brothers and I—”
“Forget it. If I were in your situation, I’d be sitting in a corner freaking out. You’re joking around. People in your time must have been made of sterner stuff.”
He shrugged. “It was a time of nearly constant war,” he said absently, as he turned to study a reflective road sign gleaming in the wash of their headlights. “Quiet Springs,” he read.
“And a gas station,” she added happily. “Good deal. I need a restroom, anyway.”
Dragan didn’t comment. He would be happy for the stop, though he didn’t understand why it was called a restroom. From what he’d seen, they were hardly restful places—rather, the opposite. He scanned the area as Maeve pulled off the road and stopped beneath a weather-beaten metal awning, where a pair of gasoline pumps sat in the glare of yellowed overhead lights. The adjacent building was small, the only light coming from inside, where a lone male sat reading and barely glancing up at their arrival.
When she turned off the engine, she grabbed her wallet from the console and said, “It looks like I have to pay inside. I’ll get the restroom key if there is one. You need anything from the store?”
Dragan had already opened his door and was stepping out, raising his arms above his head in a stretch. He glanced at her when she gave him a questioning look over the roof of the SUV. “More coke and sweets?” he asked. “Or is it salt this time?”
She made a face. “You’re right. I’ll wait for dinner.”
He smiled at her back as she walked inside, then stepped out from under the awning to get a better view of the night sky. It had been so long since he’d seen stars, even if these were unfamiliar to him. He’d known the stars of his own world so well that he could have drawn a map, from season to season. The ones above him shone brightly, although Maeve had cautioned that wouldn’t be the case in the larger cities. Her warning only made him more determined not to live there. He couldn’t imagine it, anyway. He’d been appalled at the crowded cities they’d driven through to get this far—tall buildings huddled so closely together that they blocked the sun from each other, while vehicles clogged the streets, expelling a foul stench that filled the air people breathed. He couldn’t imagine ever living that way. Especially not after being trapped in stone for so long. He wanted, he needed, to be free for whatever life he had left. However long that turned out to be.
Noticing a dirt path leading toward the surrounding trees, he headed in that direction, wanting to get away from the lights and smells of the gas station. He was halfway there, fully concealed in shadows, though he was no more than twenty yards from the SUV, when senses he hadn’t used since his imprisonment suddenly came to life. It wasn’t a stark warning. It was a trickle of something that shouldn’t be there, not quite evil, but not human, either. He took a few more steps. The closer he got to the trees, the stronger the sense of wrongness invaded his awareness.
A bell jangled on the shop door. He heard Maeve’s voice and strode back to the SUV, arriving just as she hurried out of the store, her slender body and smooth stride set off by her tight jeans and t-shirt, her mane of red hair a tangled braid down her back. When she saw him step off the unlit path and into the light, she smiled in open welcome, as if happy to be with him on this journey. He didn’t think he was fooling himself about her feelings. He hoped not.
She held up a piece of wood with something dangling from it. “Restroom key,” she said, holding it out to him. “It’s around the side where you just were. Just the one, boys and girls share.”
He took the key, aware, by now, of the custom to lock restrooms. “I’ll stay here until you’ve finished fueling the SUV,” he said. That formless uneasiness had faded somewhat as he’d moved away from the forest, but it was still there in the back of his mind. A warning that this place wasn’t as harmless as it seemed.
Maeve gave him a puzzled look as she slid the dispensing nozzle into the SUV. “I think it’s safe enough here. The owner seemed nice. He recommended a place we can stay for tonight, too. About sixty miles ahead.” She looked around. “It’s rather peaceful, isn’t it?” she said, echoing his own observations before he’d approached the woods.
“You’ll remain with the SUV, until I return.” He tried to make it a question, rather than a command, but wasn’t sure he’d succeeded.
“Yes, sir, commander, sir.”
Obviously, he’d failed. “It’s in my nature to be protective,” he explained, by way of apology. “It’s all I know.”
She smiled. “Go. I’ll be fine.”
He went, but remained on alert, his senses high. He lingered outside the locked restroom door, studying the darkness within the dense forest, but whatever he’d sensed earlier was gone. He waited several minutes more without catching any sign of a threat, before he went into the restroom.
Maeve’s scent lingered in his nostrils from having spent so many hours next to her, and it lightened his heart in ways he’d never have predicted. It was more than gratitude, more than the fact that she’d been the one to free him. He’d spent every hour with her since they’d fled, both waking and sleeping. In a way, he’d known her for years, since she’d visited him in his stone prison nearly every day. But he realized now that what he’d known had been only a part of what made her Maeve. Yes, she was clever and compassionate, but she was so much more. Cleverness was only the smallest part of what was a striking intellect. An ability to take on a problem, break it down to its basics, and find the solution. It was a trait highly prized among warriors in his time, and one he’d never expected to find living in the body and mind of this slender female. As for compassion . . . the fact he was here, hundreds of miles away from Sotiris’s lake house, possibly no more than days away from reuniting with Nicodemus. . . . That was all due to Maeve. She hadn’t hesitated—
His thoughts shattered and reformed in an instant when Maeve screamed.
MAEVE HAD WATCHED Dragan walk around the side of the weather-worn gas station office, his stride as determined as if he were marching off to do battle. But then, wasn’t everything a battle for him lately? How would she have coped if she’d found herself in a new world and time, with everything from the glassware to public transportation an utterly new experience? She didn’t think she’d have done half as well as he was doing, and she admired that. But that didn’t mean she was blind to how difficult it was for him. His eyes sometimes betrayed such sadness that she wanted to reach out and hug him, tell him it would be okay, that he’d soon be reunited with Nicodemus and the friends he’d fought beside. She longed to reassure him almost as much as she didn’t want to give him false hope. The Nick Katsaros she’d found was as likely to be a distant relative as the real Nicodemus of Dragan’s world. If she was honest, she’d have said it was actually more likely.