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dead.”
    “They’ll go looking for the gang.”
    “Tell them it’s a huge, armed gang.”
    “They’ll look even harder.” He sat up and looked at the pack. “I need water.”
    Shaking her head, she handed him the canteen. “You smell.”
    He laughed. “I know. Wish I could change clothes. Actually—there are more clothes in the pack. May I?”
    “This is my stuff now. It’s all I have.”
    “Jenna, come on. Let me change into something clean and dry, and we’ll go sit somewhere and figure this out, together.”
    “And then you’ll leave me alone.”
    “Yeah.”
    She opened the pack and pulled out fresh clothes and tossed them a few feet away from him.
    “Thank you.” He took off his boots and set them aside, and stripped off his clothing.
    Damn, that man had an amazing body. All those muscles . . . all that nice man-stuff going on. She averted her gaze while he changed. No sense in getting all worked up when they were going to be parting ways soon, permanently.
    “Falling asleep with you last night, in that bed,” he said, “it was the best night I’ve had since the Pulse.”
    “Me too.” God, it really had been.
    “So . . . thank you for that, even if it was all just a ploy to get my gun.”
    “You know what? Fuck you, Barker. You think I don’t have feelings? It might have started out that way, but last night meant something to me too. All right?”
    “It didn’t just ‘start out that way,’ ” he argued. “It ended that way too. When you stole my shit and left.”
    “Guess so.”
    “I’m an idiot.”
    “No . . . you’re not an idiot,” she said. “Just too trusting. Just like how you trusted the Colonel when he said he’d only question me.”
    “I know better now.”
    He was dressed again, and smelling a million times better.
    “Do you?” she asked. “Prove to me you’re awake, and not just pretending to be.”
    Barker paused. “When the Colonel first approached me to find you, he told me it was because you were a murderer who needed to be brought to justice. That’s Lanche-speak for executed.” He sighed. “It wasn’t until he realized I’d never bring you in to be killed that he changed tactics. Convince me he cared about your well-being, and that you were probably innocent, and in grave danger by being out here alone.”
    “I’m in more danger in Grand Central than I am out here.”
    “I realize that. I wanted to believe him then, but now I can’t. He’s a liar. He’s lying to everyone about that radio, even. We know it exists, or existed, at least—and yet now there’s a death penalty attached to even talking about it.”
    “Yeah,” she whispered. “It’s fucked up.”
    “Come on,” he said, walking toward her. “Now you know I’m . . . awake.”
    She aimed the rifle at him. “Don’t come any closer.”
    Barker put his hands in the air. “Don’t aim that thing at me if you don’t intend to kill me. You don’t trust me, still? After all this? If I wanted to grab the gun I’d have it by now.”
    Maybe he was right. He was a lot bigger than her, and stronger. Knew more about fighting. If he’d wanted to simply knock her out and steal it he could have.
    She lowered the gun.
----
    They sat side by side in the back seat of the unlocked car Jenna had used as an anchor. The seats were luxuriously comfortable compared to what Barker was used to sitting on.
    It meant something that she’d saved his life. She could have kept walking, but she didn’t. She really was a good person, with a good heart. At least his instincts last night weren’t completely fucked up in that regard.
    And now he had to get the Colonel off her back, forever.
    “You need to tell them that it was lost,” she said, indicating his rifle, still slung protectively around her chest.
    “I’m telling you, they’ll go out to look for it.”
    “And they won’t find it. Tell them it fell in the Hudson River and got washed away.”
    He thought about it and nodded.