“I guess all we can do now is wait then, right?”

“Yeah,” I said as I sat down in the cave and laid my backpack on the ground.

“What is the plan that you guys decided to enact, exactly?” Stacy asked.

I opened my mouth to answer her, but when I started to speak it suddenly dawned on me how crazy this plan would sound. I felt all the blood drain from my face and felt an instant wave of dizzying nausea sweep over me.

“Are you alright?” she asked as she reached for a water canteen and handed it to me. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”

“Oh my god,” I whispered. “I just realized how bad our plan is.”

“What?” she asked with a look of shock. “If it’s a bad plan then why did you guys decide to do it?”

“I don’t know,” I said in a panic. “It seemed like a good idea at the time, or at least a decent idea in the face of limited options.”

Stacy sat down right in front of me and crossed her legs. Then she rested her hands on her thighs and looked me straight in the eyes.

“I know a lot about plans and also a lot about failed missions,” she said. “Tell me what the plan is. What are Michael and Adam on their way to go do?”

I took a long sip of the water and then sucked in a deep breath.

“They’re on their way to go rob the police station,” I said.

Damn, it sounded even crazier out loud than it did in my head.

“Wait, what?”

I nodded my head to combat her disbelief.

“What do you mean rob?” she asked.

“I mean like hold-up, burglarize. You know, with guns and masks and stuff,” I answered. “Yeah, this was not a very well thought-out plan in hindsight.”

“Whose idea was this anyway?” she asked.

“Mine.”

Stacy’s jaw dropped as she looked at me.

“What in the world would make you think that was a good idea?”

“You are not making me feel any calmer about this,” I said as I felt myself creep closer to the edge of a panic attack.

“Sorry,” she said as she shook her head as if to shake off her astonishment. “It’s just that idea seems really rash and risky. I thought the whole point was to rescue Rob, not draw more attention to him by trying to knock over a police station. You do know that police stations are heavily guarded and armed, right?”

I nodded. We expected as much.

“And that they have automatic self-sealing doors that will lock the building down in the event of a breach?”

Now that part I did not know. Shit.

“I just thought that it would be unexpected,” I continued. “And Michael and Adam agreed. They’re going to break into the station, hold up the officers there and then pretend to kidnap Rob as a hostage to bargain with. Then, once they are free from being followed, they’ll slip into the mountains and trek back through the woods here with Rob until they reach us. It will look as if Rob has been taken against his will, so he’ll look innocent. From here, we’ll head up the east coast to the Canadian border. Then we’ll all just disappear.”

“The east coast,” Stacy said. “The exact same part of the nation that is home to the very same circle of violent and corrupt criminals that are embedded into the system and that will be trying to hunt you down at all cost since they know you can expose them?”

I gulped so hard that it hurt my throat.

“Yeah,” I said. “That east coast.”

“Look,” she said as she rubbed her temple with her forefinger. “I’m not saying that the plan can’t work, just that it’s really brazen, and very, very dangerous. If their cover gets blown, they’ll be killed on the spot. And even if they manage to make it out, they’ll almost surely be followed into the woods. And even if they make it here and then we all try to get up the coast without being spotted, there’s still—”

“I know,” I said abruptly cutting her off.

She immediately stopped talking.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that I already know about all the things that could go wrong. But it’s too late. We’re in the plan now. So we need to hope that the guys can pull it off and that they’re going to show up here in the next day or so.”

Stacy was silent as she stared into the small fire next to us.

“And if they don’t?” she asked.

“Then we go get them,” I said. “Do you have any other weapons on you?”

Her mouth curved into a small smile that the shadows of the flickering flames danced against. She reached both hands down into the sides of her boots and when she pulled them back out, each one had a small handgun clenched in her grasp.

I laughed a little.

“I thought I was the only one that hid weapons in my boots,” I said.

“Not at all,” she chuckled. “And by the way, I’m down for it.”

“For what?”

“For rescuing those guys if we need to. I’m not at all afraid to march headfirst back into that police station and lighting some shit up,” she said. There was a definite aura of vigilantism around her. If we did need to go for the guys, I knew that Stacy would be the best person to have by my side. She had a score to settle; I could tell.

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” I said.

We spent the rest of the evening talking about an assortment of random memories to take our minds off the period of stagnant waiting. Stacy told me about some of her funniest and fondest memories of working shifts alongside Rob, which actually gave me a peek into a whole other side of him that seemed more playful and also more loyal. I wish that Michael had been able to see more of the side of Rob that Stacy was talking about. When she asked about Michael and Adam, I somehow fell down the rabbit hole of past recollections and ended up in a long and emotional recount of all of us and how we had all managed to fall in love. I even told her about Julian and about David, and about my mother. It was admittedly strange, considering that I barely knew this woman, but I guess that’s the sort of thing that happens when you’re stuck in a cave in the middle of nowhere with someone while you wait to see which way your life is going to fall next. We didn’t even need whiskey, the stories flowed just the same.

“You know,” Stacy said after a long while of conversation as we both started to get tired. “I think you would have made a pretty good partner too.”

“You mean like a cop?” I laughed, immediately followed by a yawn. “Trust me, I am definitely not cop material.”

“I think you’re wrong about that,” she said. “You’re pretty damn brave if you ask me.”

I shook my head and felt my eyes roll under my increasingly heavy eyelids.

“I’m not sure why people keep saying that,” I said as we walked into the tent to go to bed.