“Back with the so-called freedom fighters, are you?” Lynell asks, instead of challenging him.

“It just might not be safe in town for a few days,” he says, using his lying voice that Lynell would recognize anywhere. He’s never been comfortable with dishonesty and all his lies have a truthful core. Maybe he really does want her to be safe. He just refuses to tell her what the danger is.

Or maybe he has no problem with lying to her anymore.

“Why do you care, Daniel?”

Daniel cuts her off with a chuckle. “You’ve always asked too many questions.”

Lynell finishes lacing the boots and stands up, crossing her arms. “I think I’m entitled to a few questions. You show up after three years, demanding I leave town, and expect me to blindly obey? You—” She’s about to throw a string of choice words in his direction when the look on his face causes the breath to stop in her throat.

His mouth is set in a tight, straight line. “You seem to have forgotten, Lynell.” He turns around and picks up his bag. “You left me.”

Lynell blinks, prepared to retaliate when he steps so close she can feel his breath.

Three years of guilt morphing into anger causes her hands to shake. She wants to scream about broken promises and broken hearts, but then he’s reaching behind her and gathering up her hair.

“What are you doing?” she asks, trying to shrug him off.

“You’ll want all this hair out of your way,” he says, looking past her face to avoid making eye contact. His arms are on either side of her head and she feels heat radiating off them. She hisses as he tugs at her hair, pulling it through a hairband. “Sorry,” he mutters before stepping back to admire his handiwork.

“I can put up my own damn hair.”

Daniel shrugs, smiling sadly, before turning to the door. “We’ve already been here too long. Let’s go.”

Without further argument, Lynell grabs her small bag, turns off the lights behind her and walks out the door without so much as a backward glance. Daniel follows.

“I feel like we should be running,” she says as they wait at a crosswalk.

“We should be as inconspicuous as possible,” Daniel says, hooking his fingers through the straps of the backpack.

The light changes and they join the crowd of people leaving the city after they’ve finished their Registration. She wonders if there will be any fulfilled Registrations on the train station platform and desperately hopes not. She’s not in the mood to see dead bodies left unattended.

Her body may add to their numbers soon enough.

Lynell speeds up her steps to keep up with Daniel’s long strides. He smiles and nods at an old woman that passes them, always polite even during what may be the last moments of her life. Under the melting sun and surrounded by people, Lynell asks, “What’s the plan here, Daniel? Why—”

He cuts her question short by grabbing her arm and pulling her to the edge of the walkway into the shade of the closest building. Someone bumps into her on the way, and her body freezes until she looks up and sees a man that is too old and short to be Price.