The coffee was terrible, but at least it was hot. Samantha wrapped both hands around the cup and let it burn a little.
Marcus was crouched next to her, talking. He had brought her the coffee before she asked for it. He clearly wanted something. She drank and let him talk.
Her hips ached but her legs felt good. She was used to sleeping on the ground and she knew that the cold helped her recover. She looked at Vlad and made eye contact with him. He was still at the far end of the log, where he’d been when she fell asleep.
Marcus was still going. One message to Seth. Vlad writes it, Vlad sends it, Vlad picks the words. We’re alive, we’re fine, stop looking. Seth made one call yesterday and went quiet. Marcus laid it out in order, counting the points off on his fingers. She’d watched him do this many times on video calls and in conference rooms she’d been dragged to.
“No,” Vlad said. Not to Marcus. To the fire.
“Sam.” Marcus turned to her. “I’m not asking you to take my side. I’m asking you to decide. You hear it, you make the call, I live with it.”
“She is not a tiebreaker,” Vlad said.
“She’s a founder.”
“He has been practicing this since before you woke up,” Vlad said to Samantha. “The version you got is shorter. It is not better.”
Samantha drank her coffee. She wanted to break camp and get moving before the sun cleared the ridge.
“We’re not doing this,” she said. “Fire out. Pack up. We move in twenty minutes.”
Marcus opened his mouth.
“Twenty minutes.”
Vlad got up and kicked dirt over the coals without a word. Marcus stood there a second, then went to get his bag.
They’d both do what she told them. Neither would budge for the other.
She rolled her sleeping bag tight and leaned on it with a knee to get the strap through the buckle. Behind her it started again, low and fast.
“— one sentence, Vlad. It costs you nothing —”
“No.”
“— you won’t even talk about —”
“No.”
This was not her fight. She could have her pack on in two minutes and be half a mile down the trail by sunup, while the two of them stood around arguing about writing a sentence.
“Then we ask Sam and do what she says,” Marcus said, loud now.
“You do not want her decision,” Vlad said. “You want a second vote.”
“That’s not what I —”
Samantha stopped packing.
She walked back to the fire ring with the half-rolled bag under her arm and stood between them.
“Stop,” she said.
They stopped.
“This isn’t about Seth.” She looked at Marcus. “You want to be forgiven.” She looked at Vlad. “You want to be right.”
Neither of them said anything. The dirt Vlad had kicked over the coals was still smoking.
“I sat in that Jeep yesterday and drove while you two fought. I didn’t say one word. That was my mistake. I’m done making it.”
“Sam —” Marcus started, in the soft voice.
“Nobody writes to anybody today. Nobody decides anything today.”
“The light is coming,” Vlad said. “We should be moving.”
“I know what the light’s doing.” She sat down on the log between them and set the bag at her feet.
“Sit down, Marcus.”
He sat.
“We’re going to take turns,” she said. “Each of us says what is going on. What we aren’t saying. Out loud. Right now. All of it.”
Vlad looked at her over the dead fire. “And if it makes everything worse?”
“Then we know.”
She looked at the two of them.
“I’ll start.”