A Girl Undone Read Online Free PDF

stack of wood. I threw on my clothes.
    In the kitchen, Vera was peeling potatoes. She nodded at the window. “He’s been at that for an hour. Harris got tired of watching him pace the office. Why don’t you take him some coffee?”
    Cup in hand, I headed outside. A face appeared in a window next door, but I pretended I didn’t see it.
    Luke had tossed his jacket on the ground, and rolled up his sleeves. His brow was beaded with sweat. He raised the ax over his head and swung it down in a perfect arc and the wood split and flew apart.
    “Hey, honey,” I said, loud enough for the neighbor to hear. “Thought you’d like some coffee.”
    He put down the ax and I handed him the cup. “Neighbor’s watching,” I whispered.
    I beamed at him like he was the sun rising over the ocean. The center of my world. The one I loved more than any other.
    “I like your hair,” he said. Luke smiled, and the look in his eyes made me drop my gaze. It felt real, not like my playacting.
    He kept his voice down. “The color reminds me of a snowshoe hare, wears a white coat in winter.”
    I felt for the soft fringe poking out from under my hat, not quite comfortable with how I was pleased he’d noticed. “Survival of the fittest,” I joked.
    Luke took a sip of coffee and frowned into the cup. “For the future, Vera’s coffee could use a couple tablespoons of sugar.”
    “That bad?”
    “Maybe next time you’d spill a little?”
    “Sure.”
    The sun was dipping down to the west. Mounds of ice lay on the grass like leaf-flecked lace. I nodded at the wood Luke had split. “This was nice of you.”
    “Least I could do. Them risking arrest for us.”
    A screen door creaked open behind me, and I heard a woman call, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.”
    Luke caught my eye. “Don’t turn around. It’s the neighbor. She’s come out twice already.”
    I shivered despite my winter jacket. “Has she tried to talk to you?”
    “Nah, she’s keeping her distance. Come help me stack.”
    We filled our arms with wood, then carried it over to the stack, and laid the newly cut pieces on top. The screen creaked again.
    “She’s gone.” Luke picked up his coat, and I saw him stop and look at the mountains brushed with the last light.
    They weren’t the mountains he’d grown up in. His were a couple hundred miles away. “I miss my home, too,” I said.
    “I never should have let them put me in that tunnel.”
    I searched for something to say. “We’ll know more about Salvation tomorrow. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”
    “You really believe that?”
    He took a step toward the house, but I stopped him, wanting a few more minutes alone. “Why Laramie?” I asked.
    Luke’s gaze darted away from me. “There’s a man who can help us.”
    “Yeah, who?”
    “Someone Barnabas knew.”
    “And he’s supposed to help us do what? Because you’re insane if you think we should go all the way to D.C. right now.”
    Luke didn’t answer.
    “That’s what you think, right? The feds didn’t stop us on the way to Pocatello so you think it’ll be easy. We’re risking our lives if we try going across the entire country to find Maggie’s contact.”
    “And you think the solution is to hightail it to Canada,” he shot back. “Well, I’m not leaving my country. And you shouldn’t, either.”
    My breath caught at the growl in his voice. I hardly knew Luke, but this didn’t feel even remotely like him.
    “Okay, so what do you think this man—”
    “Not out here,” he said. He flicked his eyes at the neighbor’s house and reached for my arm to take me inside.
    A face peered at us from the neighbor’s window and this time I noticed the large lead-colored glasses like a pair of binoculars trained right on us. I hoped Harris found us a ride even if it meant going to Laramie. At least that would take us closer to the border crossing in Detroit.

 
    5
    The evening news was on when Luke and I walked in the house. Vera guarded a frying