The Three Most Wanted (8 page)

“Carefully down the slope, Josh.” I drew him after Bane. “Don’t turn your ankle
again
, will you?”

“Babes in the wood,” sniggered Dominique,
almost
inaudibly, watching Jon’s careful descent.

I ignored her and got Jon seated with his leg on Bane’s backpack. He promptly lay back on the grass and closed his eyes. Less time he spent awake and not reacting to visual things the better.

We pitched camp quickly and soon we all sat in a big circle, heating potato cakes from their solar-powered cool bag on our stove while they fried fresh bacon and cubed steak. My mouth watered like mad.

“So how far are you three planning to go?” asked Juwan.

“Oh, we thought we’d toddle along as far as the Alps,” said Bane. “Then head down to the south of the department, perhaps, see your mountains too. Depends how Josh’s leg is feeling.”

“Why’d he go hiking with a bad leg?” asked Dominique.

“It wasn’t bad when we started off.” I’d better play the role of indignant girlfriend. “When it started playing up he thought he might be able to manage with the stick and he has, but it does leave him über-tired.”

Dominique shrugged.

“Fair enough.”

“I think the meat’s done,” put in Louis.

I smothered a suspiciously overenthusiastic noise and woke Jon. Dominique, Louis and Juwan had taken off their sunglasses some time ago, and it was now so dark Bane and I followed suit. Playfully, I snagged Jon’s and put them away for him, drawing a pretend grumble of, “I’m not a complete invalid.”

“’Course not.” I placed a laughing kiss on his cheek and slipped an arm around him. Staying draped around each other might help disguise the fact he never focused on anything.

I tried not to eat as though I hadn’t tasted anything like this for weeks, but fortunately everyone was hungry and for a while there was nothing but silent chomping.

“When’s your term start?” asked Louis eventually.

“Beginning of October,” said Bane. “You?”

“Same. What are you guys studying?”

“History.”

“And me,” I said.

“Physics,” said Jon, head still on my shoulder.

“I’m doing Chemistry,” said Dominique. “I want to be an explosives engineer. Make things go bang.”

“You should see what she can do with a cupboard of household cleaning products.” Juwan spoke rather proudly.

“Yeah, she
already
makes things go bang.” Louis shuddered. “Downright scary, sometimes.”

“What sort of career would you be looking at?” Jon would keep awake for science!

“Oh, you can go into lots of things,” said Dominique. “Mine and quarry consultants, manufacturing companies, military, research...”

“...Resistance,” sniggered Louis.

Juwan punched him in the arm. “Shut it! That’s not funny! ‘Course not Resistance.” He and Dominique glanced at each other, glanced at us… Afraid we’d be reporting the joke a.s.a.p.? Stupid thing to say in front of three complete strangers—especially if there was any truth in it.

Bane just laughed, and Jon and I laughed too.

“Resistance, that’s a good one,” said Bane. “I mean, seriously, who’d join the Resistance?”

“
Suicidal!”
Dominique twirled a finger beside her head to indicate insanity.

“Absolutely,” I agreed.

We all laughed some more while Louis rubbed his arm and glared at Juwan.

“How about you?” I asked Juwan, as Jon shifted to put his head in my lap and proceeded to go straight back to sleep. I stroked his hair—it’d grown quite a bit since we left the British department. Perhaps I’d better not call attention to it. I stopped stroking.

“I’m going into Law. To be a defense barrister.”

“Wow, lot more studying, then.”

He shrugged, then said, “Huh, Josh really is bushed, isn’t he?”

“Anyone got a pen?” said Louis. “We could give him specs and a moustache.”

“Oh, come on, be nice,” I objected.

“Okay, okay. Don’t you Brits have a sense of humor?”

“Only when it’s funny,” said Bane.

Louis looked offended—awkward silence.

“Well, if we’d known we’d meet you three again, we wouldn’t have drunk the wine yesterday, would we?” said Dominique.

“
I
would,” said Juwan. “Shocking to waste a vintage like that on
les rosbifs
.”

“Well, these
roast beefs
will live without it,” said Bane.

Thank goodness it
was
gone, we’d have hardly dared either drink or refuse!

We chatted for a bit longer, for politeness’s sake, then pleaded sleepiness. Jon got into the tent without any obvious groping around, thanks to Bane talking him to the entrance with inconsequential remarks, and soon all three of us were zipped up inside. Sliding into his sleeping bag like a rabbit into a burrow, Jon was asleep again almost at once, but Bane drew me to him in the dark and kissed me thoroughly. Horrible for him watching me and Jon be all cozy-cozy.

I burrowed my nose into his neck and he stroked my hair and rested his lips against my scarred brow. Eventually he drew back enough to murmur, “You and I will have to keep watch tonight. Keep listen, anyway, we can hardly do it outside the tent.”

“Okay.”

“Sorry.”

“No, we’ve got to. Can’t be helped. Though if one of them does go into the forest we’re not going to know if it’s nature’s call or a phone call they’ve got in mind, are we?”

Getting up the very instant the birds began to sing looked a bit suspicious, so I whiled away the time trimming Jon’s hair with the tiny scissors on my pocketknife. He didn’t stir as I rolled him over to do the other side. Bane woke at the first snip at his own hair, grabbing my wrist.

“
Bane
.”

“Oh. Sorry, Margo. What’re you doing?”

“Cutting your hair. Go back to sleep. Don’t scowl, it’s getting too long.”

“Okay, okay. We’d better get moving soon, though.”

“Yes, so lie still.”

A barber would’ve had a fit, but they’d both be wearing their hats. Hopefully the overnight trim would go unremarked.

Unzipping the tent, we began briskly and quietly striking camp. We’d just call a goodbye into the other tent as we headed off...
Or not
. Dominique and Juwan emerged, stretching in a way that made it clear they weren’t just nipping into the forest and heading back to their sleeping bags.

“If you get some water heating on your stove, we’ll warm the croissants,” said Dominique, as Juwan went to fetch their food bag from where it was suspended at the other end of the meadow.

“Are you sure you’ve got enough?” Damn and blast! Why were they up so early?

Dominique waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, we can be in Clermont by tomorrow morning and we’ve enough food for all of us until then.”

Blast, blast and double blast. How to get away? Simply refuse and march off? Could set them thinking. If Dominique wasn’t thinking already. Get in an argument with them? But if they did suspect... better if they like us.

“It’s very nice of you,” Bane was saying. “But we don’t want to eat all your food.”

“We’re just going to buy more in Clermont anyway and the old stuff never gets eaten.” Juwan dropped the food bag by Dominique’s feet. “Here you go,
petite alchimiste
.”

Trying to look happy about this, I went to wake Jon. Bane had the water boiling by the time we emerged, carefully entwined. I propped Jon’s ankle on Bane’s pack again and he tried very hard not to fall asleep between every bite.

“Are you two registering?” asked Dominique. The normal question New Adults asked each other.

“Yeah, probably,” I replied. Hard to avoid all lies at the moment.

“My dad wants me to register with Louis,” Dominique said sourly. “He topped up our funds on condition Louis came along—like having to share a tent with him for three months is going to change my mind!”

We laughed and made appropriately sympathetic noises.

“Louis, we’re about to eat your croissants!” Juwan chucked a stick onto their tent. A lot bigger than ours, complete with a porch. He glanced at our tent and lack of clutter. “You three certainly travel light.”

“Nice to be unencumbered,” said Bane.

“You’re taking it to extremes with the
no food
thing,” snorted Dominique.

“Yeah, we messed up. We did notice.” A slight edge to Bane’s voice. Also considering the argument ploy or just tired?

Juwan shot us a look and touched Dominique’s arm. “I think they did notice, eh, Doms?”

“Okay, sorry, I’ll stop going on about it. It’s just really...” She caught Juwan’s look and threw up her hands. “Oh, never mind!”

Stupid. Yeah, really stupid. So long as you go on thinking that. If that is what you’re really thinking. Perhaps it was paranoia, but it seemed to me that she looked at us rather a lot.

Louis ruined any remaining chance of picking a fight with them by scrambling out of the tent, yawning and half dressed.

“Showing your chest isn’t going to make me register with you, y’know,” said Dominique.

“Ha ha.” Louis kicked some twigs her way. “I’m mad at my dad too, okay?” Grabbing a croissant in each hand, he added under his breath, “Though I’ve not noticed you explaining why you’re
so
set against it.”

“Well, apart from anything else, my parents are dead against registering before University. They say I can have a fab registration party—but only after I graduate.” Dominique sounded, strangely, ten times more bitter than Louis. Wasn’t that sort of promise/restriction pretty much the norm for well-off families? She caught my puzzled look and added quickly—and much more lightly, “S’not like I’d want to start a family before then, of course.”

“If ever,” muttered Juwan blackly. Dominique shot him a look, then began putting away the stove.

“Stable Population Committee would have something to say about
that
, Ju,” said Louis nastily.

Juwan lunged at him—he bolted into the trees. Juwan moved to give chase, then stopped, threw up his hands and shouted something after him in French. I’d a feeling the gist of it was,
you’re going to wake up one day and find you’ve got no friends, and don’t come running to me when you do
.

He disappeared into the tent, and Dominique left the stove half packed and followed him. A murmur of French came through the canvas wall.

Bane and I glanced at each other and said nothing. Did he share my growing sense that our French companions weren’t quite as happy and carefree as most backpacking New Adults? There was something in their group dynamic I wasn’t getting, too, and I’d an odd feeling it ought to be obvious.

Bane got on with packing up the last of our stuff—other than the stove it was only the tent, and that was just a question of taking out the pegs, reeling in the guy ropes and pushing the lever to make it retract back into its neat little tin. Juwan and Dominique soon appeared, sleeping bags and mats packed. Louis came back, and they had their tent down in no time. No one mentioned the argument as we shouldered our packs and headed up the slope to the trail, Jon and I arm in arm again, and Bane walking close to his other side.

We didn’t need to talk much. Louis babbled on with a steady stream of witty and not so witty remarks, and Juwan and Dominique seemed happy to just walk along ahead of us—though a couple of times they tried to pass something to Jon. Fortunately I noticed each time and took it from them with an “Oh, yes, please,” or a “Wake up, Josh!” but was it just my imagination that they looked at Jon more and more as the day went on?

Lunch was more like what we were used to: baguettes, cheese and sliced sausage, but Dominique and Juwan fixed another deluxe camping meal once we’d pitched camp. My mouth watered as it cooked. Mustn’t stare at the pan like a hungry dog, no, no...

Bane was also trying not to look at the food too often, but Jon was asleep on my shoulder, only my arm keeping him upright—best not to make a big thing of just how tired he was.

“Poor Josh, out like a light again,” said Dominique.

So much for that. “Umm, that bad ankle really tires him out,” I agreed.

“Despite the snail’s pace,” snorted Louis.

“We made it clear we wouldn’t be offended if you wanted to go on without us,” said Bane sharply.

“Okay, okay, just saying!”

“More firewood, Louis?” interrupted Dominique.

“Fine!” Louis stamped off into the forest.

“He’s an old friend but he can be hard work,” Dominique confided.

“Yeah, we’d... noticed,” I said mildly.

“I don’t care how large his father’s business is. I couldn’t register with him even if... Well, whatever.”

“Nice to hear,” muttered Juwan, for some reason.