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on his face. I know how he feels. Not long ago, I was just like him, scrounging to get by with every meal here in the mountains. I am hardly much better now.
    “ Here, take this!” the man says, taking off his bow and quiver of arrows. “It’s yours! I mean no harm!”
    “ Move slowly,” Logan cautions, still suspicious.
    The man reaches out gingerly and hands out the weapon.
    “ Brooke, you get it,” Logan says.
    I step forward, grab the bow and arrows, and throw them in the back of the truck.
    “ See,” the man says, breaking into a smile. “I’m no threat. I just want to join you. Please. You can’t leave me here to die.”
    Slowly, Logan relaxes his guard and lowers his gun just a bit. But he still keeps an eye trained on the man.
    “ Sorry,” Logan says. “We can’t have another mouth to feed.”
    “ Wait!” I yell at Logan. “You’re not the only one here. You don’t make all the decisions.” I turn to the man. “What’s your name?” I ask. “Where are you from?”
    He looks at me desperately.
    “ My name is Rupert,” he says. “I’ve survived up here for two years. I’ve seen you and your sister before. When the slaverunners took her, I tried to help. I’m the one that chopped down that tree!”
    My heart breaks as he says this. He’s the one that tried to help us. I can’t just leave him here. It’s not right.
    “ We have to take him,” I say to Logan. “We can find room for one more.”
    “ You don’t know him,” Logan replies. “Besides, we don’t have the food.”
    “ I can hunt,” the man says. “I’ve got the bow and arrow.”
    “ Much good it’s doing you up here,” Logan says.
    “ Please,” Rupert says. “I can help. Please. I don’t want any of your food.”
    “ We’re taking him,” I say to Logan.
    “ No we’re not,” he says back. “You don’t know this man. You don’t know anything about him.”
    “ I barely know anything about you ,” I say to Logan, my anger hardening. I hate how he can be so cynical, so guarded. “You’re not the only one who has the right to live.”
    “ If you take him, you jeopardize all of us,” he says. “Not just you. Your sister, too.”
    “ There are three of us here last I checked,” comes Bree’s voice.
    I turn and see she’s jumped out of the truck and stands behind us.
    “ And that means we’re a democracy. And my vote counts. And I vote we take him. We can’t just leave him here to die.”
    Logan shakes his head, looking disgusted. Without another word, his jaw hardening, he turns and jumps back into the truck.
    The man looks at me with a huge smile, his face crumpling in a thousand wrinkles.
    “ Thank you,” he whispers. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
    “ Just move, before he changes his mind,” I say as we turn back to the truck.
    As Rupert approaches the door, Logan says, “You’re not sitting upfront. Get in the back of the pickup.”
    Before I can argue, Rupert happily jumps into the back of pickup. Bree jumps in, as do I, and we take off.
    It is a nerve-racking remainder of the ride back to the river. As we go, the skies darkening, I constantly watching the sunset, bleeding red through the clouds. It’s getting colder out by the second, and the snow is hardening even as we drive, turning to ice in some places, and making driving more precarious. The gas gauge is dropping, flashing red, and though we only have a mile or so to go, I feel as if we’re fighting for every inch. I also feel how on-edge Logan is about our new passenger. It is just one more unknown. One more mouth to feed.
    I silently will the truck to keep going, the sky to stay light, the snow not to harden as I step on the gas. Just when I think we’ll never get there, we round the bend, and I see our turnoff. I turn hard onto the narrow country lane, sloping down towards the river, willing the truck to make it. The boat, I know, is only a couple hundred yards away.
    We round another bend, and as we do, my heart