Danica nodded, then pushed her fingers through her hair and lowered her head. She sat there like that, her hands encasing her head as if she were about to scream.

But she didn’t. She spoke quietly instead. “Tell me the best-case scenario if we do this. I just want to hear it.”

“Best case is a hundred FBI agents with guns watching out for us. I’ll take those survival odds.”

“Best case is a hundred FBI agents with guns watching out for us. I’ll take those survival odds.”

The man in the green coat smiled, then couldn’t stop himself from laughing softly.

“Worst-case scenario coming your way,” he whispered.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Danica stared through the windshield as Dryden backed the Explorer out of Moss’s lot. She could see the lights of the encampment all along the river; most of them had gone out for the night, and the fires, too. She and Dryden both had their windows down, and the damp, smoky scent of wet embers came drifting through the vehicle. It reminded her of camping trips with friends, years ago.

Dryden cut the wheel and braked and put the vehicle in drive, but kept it still for a moment. He looked at Moss, standing a few feet away.

“We won’t mention your name,” Dryden said.

“If you have to,” Moss said, “go ahead. I’ve hidden from this long enough.”

“Richard Ellis was right, you know,” Dryden said. “About you saving our lives. If you’d refused to give us those drugs, they would have gotten someone else to do it. And we’d have probably died.”

Danica watched Moss’s reaction to the words: something like a shrug and a nod that seemed to say, Thanks, whether or not I deserve it.

Dryden gave him a quick wave and then let off the brake, and a moment later they were rolling past the scattered lights and fires that still glowed.

The image of long-ago camping trips was still in Danica’s head. How long had it been since she’d last done that? Ten years? More? All at once she pictured herself and Dryden camping somewhere, just the two of them, after all of this was over with.

You like him. Admit it to yourself, anyway.

Yeah, she liked him. She was pretty sure that feeling had been there almost from the moment he’d shown up in Carl’s basement. He had saved her life in about as dramatic a fashion as someone could, so there was one reason not to trust her emotions just yet. And really the adrenaline rush of those first moments had only halfway faded, even now. The situation had persisted—the life-and-death aspect of it all, hanging over them like a blade. None of that lent itself to clear thinking when it came to sorting out feelings. Nor should it, obviously. It wasn’t the time to think about that stuff.