I remembered what he’d been telling me at the campfire that night, that not everyone was committed. What more was he trying to let me know?
I’d seen someone tiptoeing away from camp the night of the ambush. Was that same someone secretly helping out the Brown Shirts?
A million stars exploded in the sky as I marched to the other campfire, the one surrounded by Dozer, Red, Angela, and Lacey. Once the four of them caught sight of me, they cut off their conversation and eyed me in silence.
I held out some leftover trout to them.
“We don’t need your pity,” Dozer said, turning his back to me.
“I’m just offering some food, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well, we don’t need it.”
He threw a log into the fire. A flurry of embers exploded into the black.
I looked at the other three. One by one they met my gaze … and then found reasons to look away. Lacey studied her feet. Angela ran her fingers through her stringy blond hair. Red picked at the dirt beneath his fingernails with the tip of his knife.
This was going to be more difficult than I’d imagined.
Dozer’s head swiveled back around. “You still here?” he asked.
“I just thought maybe we should talk.”
“Now? After you made the decision to leave Cat back there, now you wanna talk?”
“About those Brown Shirts,” I said. “How do you think they were able to ambush us?”
That got everyone’s attention.
“How should I know, Limp?” Dozer said, and even in the dark I could see his eyes were blazing. “They found us and opened fire. End of story.”
“But how’d they find us?”
“What do you mean how? We saw them earlier, we saw their bulldozers. They probably just followed us.”
“Those were construction workers. It was soldiers who ambushed us.”
Dozer’s hand fell to his knife, and I could see the white of his knuckles as he squeezed the handle. “What’re you saying, Limp? That one of us squealed?”
I took a deep breath; I didn’t want to make a bad situation worse. “I’m saying it seems awfully coincidental they just happened to show up when they did. Like maybe they got help or something.”
Dozer hauled himself to his feet and took a step forward. Angela and Lacey also rose, bookending him on either side.
“If you’re accusing someone of something, why don’t you just come out and say it instead of pussyfooting around? Unless that’s what you are. Pussyfoot.”
The two Sisters laughed maliciously.
“No, I’m just saying—”
“And I’m just saying: why don’t you speak your mind? Pussyfoot.”
“Skip it,” I said, my legs suddenly rubber. If I’d thought I could get Dozer to admit to being a traitor, I was sadly mistaken. I turned and walked away, half expecting to feel the point of his dagger somewhere between my shoulder blades.
“Hey!” Dozer yelled after me. “Next time you start accusing people, make sure you have some evidence to back you up.”
Even as I strode farther and farther away, their spiteful laughter rang out in the night air.
A sharp kick to the ribs jolted me awake. I opened my eyes to find Dozer holding a torch. He was flanked by his posse of three.
“Some of us have been talking,” he said. The pain in my ribs was nothing compared to the sudden knot in my stomach.
“Yeah?” I asked, rolling to a sitting position, hands pressed to my side.
“We wouldn’t be in this situation if you hadn’t convinced us to cross back from the other territory.”
“I didn’t convince you. I made the decision to come back; the rest of you followed.”
A hiss of contempt escaped his mouth. He shook his head and spat into the coals. A glob of frothy white phlegm dribbled down a log. A number of Sisters sat up, wanting to know what was going on.
“And it goes without saying that we don’t like what you did to Cat back there. So my tribe here doesn’t exactly trust you, and I can’t say I blame them.”
I wondered how much of his “tribe” had come up with that opinion and how much they had been convinced by Dozer himself. The three torch-carrying tribe members had all the makings of a vigilante mob. All that was missing were the pitchforks.
“So what’re you saying?” I asked.
“Someone sold us out to the Brown Shirts. I’m not accusing you necessarily, but someone let ’em know where we were.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Dozer was saying exactly what I’d told him hours earlier. It reminded me of a line from a lawyer movie we’d seen back at camp—Inherit the Wind. Accuse the accuser. A classic legal ploy.
“So what do you want, Dozer?”
Dozer’s response was immediate. “The tribe thinks I should be the new leader.”
I don’t know why his statement surprised me. Maybe because it made no real sense. Why would we want a leader who made it a point to bad-mouth everyone and everything? Who had made a nuisance of himself whenever given the chance?
“Fine,” I said. Truth was, I had no great desire to be the leader, and it was irrelevant to me who got us to Camp Liberty to free those Less Thans—just as long as we did it.
Dozer tried to hide his surprise. It was obvious he expected a fight. “It’s not my decision,” he said, trying to sound humble. “It’s the others.”
“I understand.”
“They trust me.”
“Okay.”
“They know I’ll be a good leader.”
The only response I could have made would have been sarcastic, so I kept my mouth shut. When it was clear I wasn’t going to say anything else, Dozer raised his torch high in the air like he was summoning the gods above.
“Listen up,” he shouted, so that all could hear. “I’m leading this group from now on. I’m in charge. But I won’t be telling you what to do. My hope is that we can make decisions as a group.”
He shot me a meaningful look, as if to say Cat would still be here if we’d followed that policy before. Although I didn’t expect anyone to challenge Dozer and his lackeys, I hoped someone would speak up on my behalf. But no one said a word. Not a single person. Not Flush. Not Twitch.
Not Hope.
I lay back down to sleep, knowing no nightmare could be worse than this reality. Dozer began to walk away.
“Just remember,” I muttered beneath my breath. “‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’”
Dozer stopped in his tracks. “What’s that?” he snapped.
Me and my Shakespeare. I regretted speaking as soon as the words left my mouth. “Nothing.”
He lowered the torch until the heat licked my cheeks. “No, what’d you just say?”
“Nothing.”
There was an almost gleeful expression on Dozer’s face as he looked to his friends. “He said something. You heard him: he said something.”