Atonement

{Five} Judgment

“Show me some faith now/ Trust me somehow.”

-Hide Away, Hilary Duff

   I wasn’t sure how long Russ and I had been walking. Probably a while. When Cap and Johnse first found us, it’d been dark out with the moon high in the sky. Now the sky was brightening. The sun wasn’t peaking just yet, but it would in an hour or two. My thoughts were consumed with Cap and what an idiot I’d been. All I wanted to do was ditch these guys and get out of here.

  A couple of times I even tripped over my skirt. Funny, I thought I’d gotten used to the cumbersome thing. At first I’d thought it’d be easier walking without a hoop. I was wrong. Since my skirt was made to fit a hoop skirt, it was too long once not fattened out and dragged against the ground in a horrible way. At least when I’d been running away from Cap a few hours ago, my hands had been free to clutch at the fabric. Now that was not the case. A couple of times I’d tried and it’d only made it worse. So I finally accepted the fact that I was going to fall all over myself and rely on Russ every time he quickly stooped down and helped me back to my feet.

  Cap, I noticed, just kept riding; never looking back.

  “This is wrong,” Russ grumbled he stooped to help me up after the fifteenth time of tripping.

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered. “It’s not my fault I keep tripping.”

  He shook his head in agitation. “No, not that.” He looked pointedly at Cap. “We save the guy’s life and you do nothing but hang off his every word and now he wants us dead? It’s just bullshit.”

  “Russ, you’ve gotta be quiet,” I warned, looking at Johnse to make sure he hadn’t overheard. He’d been riding closely behind us the entire time. By the concentrated way he stared ahead, I could just tell he was listening to us every step of the way. It was better to just be silent.

  “I’m tired of being quiet,” Russ growled. He sounded like me earlier—before I’d been utterly defeated. “I don’t give a damn who hears me now. I may not have approved, but you obviously care about that thick-headed moron and he just betrays you like this?”

  Now he sounded like the overprotective brother I’d grown up with. Go figure he’d be pissed that a guy had broken my heart instead of worrying over our impending doom. Between the two of us, we really needed to drop steaming over Cap’s new ‘tude and focus instead on how we were going to get out of this mess.

  “I think we’ve been gone a lot longer than we realize,” I hissed, carefully choosing my words in the presence of the eldest Hatfield boy.

  My suspicions of his eavesdropping were only confirmed when Johnse snorted at my comment.

  And then I just couldn’t take not knowing anymore. “Really,” I defended only half-heartedly. It didn’t matter what I said to them, anyway. “How long have we been gone, Johnse?”

  “You expect me to believe you have no idea?” Johnse snorted again in disapproval.

  Beside me, Russ seethed.

  But I kept my cool, easily lying, “We were sick for the longest time, you know. Staying out in that rain all night with no coverage. We came down with yellow fever.” If I remembered correctly, scarlet and yellow fever had been pretty deadly back then. “We were lucky we lived at all. As soon as we were well enough to travel, we came to West Virginia.”

  I didn’t know why I hadn’t pulled this amazing fib out of my ass before. Maybe Johnse would believe I’d been so wrapped up in seeing Cap and defending my being a spy that I’d just forgotten to mention this little factor. Either way, I was hoping he was making his own assumptions, believing it in the end.