Cate stopped, breathing heavily, but not nearly as heavily as Jack, and she knew that if it weren’t so dark, she would have been checking his abdomen; she’d caught him groaning in pain earlier, and although he’d insisted he was fine, she hadn’t believed him.

“How are you doing?” she asked him.

“Fine,” he muttered, his pace increasing. “I’m doing just fine, don’t you worry about me.”

But when she cast her light over him, she could see that his face was wet from the exertion. Something was terribly wrong inside him, she just knew it.

“We don’t have far to go,” Cate said, feeling Elise shiver beside her, wishing she could comfort her friend but knowing that the best thing they could all do was focus on putting one foot in front of the other.

“Please,” Jack murmured. “Go on ahead if you can go faster.”

Every word sounded pained, and a piece of her heart shattered every time she looked at him. She’d wasted so much time being angry with him, when it was something that should have been forgivable, given everything else they’d been through together.

“Don’t try telling me to leave you, because it’s not happening,” she said. “I’m not getting on that boat without you, and that’s final, so we all go at this pace.”

Cate turned her attention to Elise, just as worried about her ability to keep walking as Jack’s.

“Elise,” she whispered, as her friend fell back. “We need to keep going.”

Elise hadn’t just slowed, she’d stopped entirely. She had dropped down low, her arms caught around herself in a little huddle on her haunches, and Cate stopped too, to wrap her arms around her.

“All I want to do is comfort you, but—”

“We need to move,” Elise said woodenly, as if she wasn’t really there. “I know. I just . . . just needed to rest. I don’t know if I can keep going.”

Cate refused to cry, knowing she needed to stay strong. She was the trained nurse; she was the one who could lead them to safety. She was the one they were all depending on now, even though Adelaide’s death and Harry being taken hurt her almost as much as Elise. She’d grown to love Addy, and Harry was a good, kind-hearted man.

Much to her relief, Elise rose and started to move slowly.

“You might need to go on ahead,” Jack said, out of breath as he doubled over. “Something’s not right, I can tell.”