The first half mile or so goes smoothly. Alex limps the whole way, but he’s slow and steady. The nurse in me still winces with each step he takes. I’d never let a normal patient walk around at all on a leg like that. But then Alex is anything but a normal patient.

He insists on carrying the damn crowbar and suitcases himself. I’m actually amazed he can carry them while limping, but I feel ridiculously empty-handed considering I’m able-bodied and uninjured.

“Can I please take the suitcase?” I ask.

He just grunts at me.

“Alex–”

“You got the fishing line. You need both hands free to make sure it doesn’t tangle up.”

The fishing line weighs a few fractions of an ounce, but Alex is so bullheaded that he won’t let me carry anything. Even if he lost both of his arms, he’d probably insist I used the fishing line to bind the suitcases and crowbar to his back.

“We’re getting close,” he says after several long minutes of silence.

I notice he’s noticeably slowing down with each step. Eventually he stops walking and puts the suitcase down.

“Alex?” I ask.

“I’m fine,” he says, pulling the suitcase away from me as I try to grab it from him.

“Either let me carry it,” I say. “Or I’m going back home.”

“You can’t,” he says, “Napier will–”

I snatch the suitcase away from him while he’s distracted, and I walk five big steps in front of him. “Come on, let’s go.”

He stares me down with an angry look, but he clutches the crowbar and grudgingly follows me without further protest.

I don’t see the cabin until we’re right on top of it. There are no lights on inside, and I only notice it because the trees thin out noticeably around it.

“You’re pretty good at navigating in darkness,” I say.

He shrugs. “Let’s get inside and get a fire going. You must be freezing.”

There’s no way I’m worse off than him. Is he really thinking about my well-being more than his own right now? He looks like he can barely walk another step, and he’s worried that I feel cold?

I reach the door before him. It’s a simple wooden door, and rather than an actual built-in lock, there’s just a big padlock on the front.

“You remembered the key, right?” I ask.

“Ahh,” he says, making a show of checking his pockets. “Guess I lost them somewhere along the way.”

“We could break the windows,” I suggest.

He shakes his head. “We need the windows to keep the heat in. We’ll use this.”

He holds up his crowbar, and I back away from the door. I watch as he gets the crowbar in and starts to work the metal hinge on the door. He winces with pain as he pushes his legs into it. The veins on his neck bulge, and his face goes red. He grunts and pushes his entire body into the motion, and just when I think he’s going to break, the hinge snaps off the door.

The hinge with padlock still attached falls down into the snow, and he pulls the door open. He stands patiently while gesturing for me to walk in first.

“Nothing more chivalrous than holding a door open that you just ripped open with a crowbar,” I say, walking past him.

“It’s just my style,” he says, grinning.

We step inside, and I hold my phone up to light the cabin.

Just as I start to get my bearings, Alex grabs me, snatches the phone out of my hand, and pulls the back case off. I watch him fumble with cold fingers until he gets the SIM card out. He snaps it in two with his hands, then stomps on it.

“What the hell?”

“If Napier gets a warrant,” he says, “He can trace your phone.”

“But now we can’t make calls if we really need to. What if your leg gets infected and you can’t walk?”

He frowns. “No phone. Deal with it.”

He doesn’t sound sorry. To be honest, I’m a lot less worried about Detective Napier than I am about tending to Alex’s wounds. If his misguided need to protect me from this cop is what it takes to keep me close, then I’ll accept it. I still believe in the system, and I think that since Alex is innocent, he’ll eventually be able to clear his name. I don’t think a cop would hurt me just to get to Alex, even if he thought Alex was guilty.

Alex hits some kind of circuit breaker switch, and the whole cabin lights up.

I see a cozy little kitchen with a slow cooker and hotplates. The table is made entirely of wood, complete with wooden benches. It looks like it was all made from the trees around the forest. The refrigerator is small, and I assume empty considering the cabin wasn’t powered until now.

There’s a living room area with a leather couch and loveseat, and a fur rug beneath the coffee table. In the far corner is a door, which I assume is a walled-off bedroom. It’s the only actual room other than the main living space.

I start to take a look around, and I lean in toward one of the framed pictures on the wall. There’s a pudgy, balding man standing with a blonde woman and a child who looks to be about 12 or 13.

“Who are these people?” I ask.

I squint at the kid, wondering if it could be Alex, but the quality of the photo looks too good for it to be that old.

“The people who own the cabin,” Alex says.

My eyes widen. “What? You’re telling me we just broke in to these nice peoples’ cabin?”

He shrugs. “I told you I wasn’t innocent. Police are on my ass for murder, what’s it matter if I break into a cabin?”

“You said it was your cabin!” I’m tempted to shove the man in frustration, but he’s so strong I’d likely only push myself back in the attempt.

“I always called it the cabin,” he says. “They only come here in summer. Relax. We won’t wreck anything, and we won’t steal anything. We’ll leave it exactly like we found it.”

“We’re stealing the electricity right now,” I say.

“You want to turn it off then?” he asks.

I throw up my hands in annoyance. “You’re impossible.”

“I’m gonna get that fire started,” he says, and he limps out into the cold before I can even offer to help.