Rebirth by Sophie Littlefield Read Free Book Online Page B

been attacked and lived—would he? Dor’s tone was almost admiring, which gave her pause. The man had never had any use for her…had he? From the moment they met there had been wariness between them, distrust and dislike.
    “You don’t need him,” Dor repeated. “And believing you do is giving your strength away. I don’t have to tell you that between your girl and yourself, you don’t have any extra to spare.”
    He hesitated, then reached for her hand. He squeezed it once, roughly, then slid his hand up her arm to let it rest on her shoulder. The gesture was awkward—she could sense that Dor meant it to be a comfort. But it was not. It was something both more and less, something needful, and he must have felt it too because he jerked his hand away as though the touch burned him.
    “Stay in the Box,” he muttered, turning away. “Don’t worry about trade. Everything’s covered. In the spring when your garden comes up you’ll be producing enough to share. I’ll set it all up. I’ll make sure you have what you need.”
    “You’re leaving, too,” Cass said, realization dawning on her. “You’re going to Colima. You’re going to look for Sammi.”
    Of course—she should have known it from the moment Smoke told her what happened at the library. Cass herself had risked everything to find Ruthie, so why did the notion of Dor doing the same for his daughter fill her with such bleak hopelessness? And when Dor nodded, jaw set hard, it seemed as though the air got even colder.
    “You won’t be alone. Cass, I’ll tell Faye. I’ll tell Charles. They’ll look after you. I’ll send word if I can, and so will Smoke. We’ll both be back…you need to have more faith in him. He beat them once already—there’s no reason he can’t do it again. He’s well armed and well trained.”
    “ Your training,” Cass said bitterly. “ Your guns.”
    As if that made Dor responsible.
    A disproportionate number of the citizens who’d survived this long had done so because they had a strong desire for self-preservation along with the skills to back it up. Skills that came from time spent in law enforcement, or in the service or jail or a gang. Dor’s forces were all ex-something—ex-cop, ex-Marine, ex-Norteño…all except for Smoke.
    Smoke had told Cass only that he’d been an executive coach Before, and didn’t elaborate in the months they’d been together, always deflecting her questions, turning the conversation elsewhere. Cass hadn’t pushed; she wasn’t ready to tell him everything about her own past, so she hardly felt entitled to demand the same from him.
    Smoke’s background may have been inauspicious for survival, much less commanding Box security, but he had some penchant for enduring—plus the legend of the rock slide, which was enough to earn the respect of the others. He’d been a decent shot before joining their ranks; now he was excellent. He’d been fit; now he was hard-muscled and lean. When Smoke slipped out of the tent before dawn to shoot at cans or practice strikes with Joe or put his body through ever-harder workouts, Cass tried to tell herself, He is doing this for us, for our little family, and ignore the fact that he was turning from someone she hadn’t known long into someone she didn’t know well.
    “Look, Cass.” Dor looked as though he was going to reach for her again and Cass shrank away from him. “He asked me not to say anything. He’s leaving tonight. He’s… He didn’t want to have to say goodbye.”
    Cass made a sound in her throat. Smoke wouldn’t do that, wouldn’t leave without telling her—would he? Smoke, who’d grown more silent with every passing week, whose mind drifted a thousand miles away. Who reached for her less and less often in the night.
    “He didn’t want to hurt you more than he had to. I don’t—if he…he just didn’t want to hurt you.”
    “Well, it’s a little late for that, isn’t it? He knew damn well he was hurting me— us