He finds something like a smile for me. “Everything is important stuff up there.”

“What about—?” I lean over and then hiss in pain.

He grabs my elbow, steadying me. “You up to this?”

“If I’m not, can we postpone it and go look for Jacob?”

I’m instantly sorry I asked. Hope flickers across his face, followed by dismay and then anger, as his fingers tighten.

“That’s a no,” I say, gently pulling away.

He realizes how tight he’s gripping me and apologizes as he rubs the spot. Then he straightens and says, “If you’re not up to it, I need to go alone. The council is insisting and …”

“And while we’re working on a backup plan, you aren’t eager to push them, not over this. Okay, I’ll be fine. But I should take my pills before we go. Where’s my duffle?”

I look around, and he walks across the hangar to retrieve it. While he’s gone, I slip my switchblade from my pocket. When he comes back, I’m tapping one of the wires.

“Did you check this one already?” I ask.

“Yep, I—”

I lift the cut ends. “Better check again.”

He frowns. Then he sees the knife in my other hand, and he smiles, coming over to put his hand on the back of my head, tilting my face up for a kiss.

“Thank you,” he says.

“I’m hoping it’s not easily fixed.”

“Yeah, it is, but no one else knows that. I’ll get Val out here, show her the plane’s not starting, and tell her I’ll fix it before morning.”

“And in the meantime, while it’s still light out, you should comb the forest for the guy who attacked me.”

“Yep, I should. You up to coming along?”

I hesitate. “Physically, yes, but …” I look up at him. “You don’t want me out there, Eric. You know how I react to a threat. If Jacob came after you—”

“He won’t.”

“But if he did …”

“He won’t, and if he did and you pulled your gun, then that’s what happens. You can’t worry about that, Casey. You almost got killed worrying about it. You should have had your gun out the moment we got separated in the forest.”

“So shooting your brother would have been better?”

He puts his hand on my elbow, and I realize my arm’s shaking. He tugs me over to him, his grip too firm to escape.

“You need to trust yourself more,” he says.

I stare at him. “I’m sorry, but that is the stupidest damn thing you have ever said to me. Trust myself not to kill someone who presents a threat?”

“Blaine didn’t present a threat.”

I jerk back as if slapped. He moves forward, and I try to get out of his path, but he has me trapped between him and the plane.

“We’re having this conversation, Casey. Yes, you react to threats instinctively. Yes, that’s dangerous. But the only person you’ve actually killed wasn’t a threat. He was a fucking coward who turned his back on you and let you get beaten in a way I don’t even like to imagine, because it makes me want to hop in that plane and track down those bastards and do the same thing to them, and I don’t care if they’ve cleaned up their act and become pillars of the fucking community, I’d beat them within an inch of their lives. And if Blaine was still alive? I’d beat him, and I wouldn’t stop when he was within an inch of his life. But you didn’t go there thinking, ‘I’m going to kill the son of a bitch.’ You lost control, and to you, that’s worse. But you were reacting to what he’d already done to you. So unless you’re telling me that you’re afraid you’d shoot Jacob for what he’s done to you—”

“Of course not. What he did to me isn’t important.”

He makes a face but seems to decide this isn’t the time to lecture me on why it should be important. “Then you’re not going to shoot him, are you? At least not lethally.”

“If I fire a gun—”

“Then it’s a good thing you also have that knife. Now we need to speak to Val.”

Val takes our story at face value, without so much as a glance in the engine, and she accepts Dalton’s decision to spend the rest of the day searching for my attacker, to avoid a lynch mob.

As we walk, I ask about his brother. Yes, I’m freaked out over the possibility I’ll shoot Jacob, and I’m hoping that putting a face on him will stay my hand. It’s a scattershot discussion at first, mostly me asking questions and him giving basic answers. I get the feeling I’m prying, but as we walk deeper into the forest he begins to relax, and to talk—honestly talk—about his relationship with his brother.

Jacob blamed Dalton for leaving him. He went to Rockton and never came back. It was only after their parents died in a territory dispute with hostiles that Jacob found Rockton and his brother.

When they were reunited, Jacob had expected Dalton to return to the forest. Dalton had expected Jacob to come to Rockton. Each was furious that his own brother understood him so little.

“We were kids,” Dalton says. “I was seventeen, Jacob fourteen. You can’t see the other point of view then.”

So their early relationship had been fractious. They’d go months without seeing one another. That changed as they got older.

“What you heard the other day?” he says. “He hasn’t said those things in ten years. He hasn’t acted like he felt them in ten years.”