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mind, you can leave, and there won’t be any hard feelings. Because I can’t ask you to risk your life unless you’re doing it for yourself, for liberty, and not just a misguided sense of pride or peer pressure.”
    There were about two dozen men and some women, too. They nodded in agreement.
    One woman pushed her curly, black hair off her forehead in frustration and raised her hand. “My husband is here because I couldn’t stop him. But we have two kids, and I don’t want him to go into a battle.”
    Her husband glared at her and shook his head. “I need to. What if it were you and the kids living there? Wouldn’t you want someone to care enough to help?”
    “Let someone else help,” the woman cried. “I need you alive.”
    “We’ll need help on the home front, too,” Trent said quickly. “If you want to stick around, I’m sure we could find a position that won’t involve being on the front line.”
    The wife looked relieved. “Okay. Thank you.”
    But the man didn’t. “So you want me to stay here while I let one of these women go and fight in my place?” He crossed his arms, his chocolate-toned skin contrasting brilliantly against his white T-shirt. “That’s not right.”
    A woman, one who looked as tough and resilient as Clarissa knew she must be to have survived this long, shook her head. “Come on, Bill. We’re not delicate flowers here. And the women on the Tracks, if it’s anything like Clarissa and Jenna have told us, will probably be more willing to escape with women than with a bunch of strange men with guns.”
    Clarissa nodded. “That’s true. We don’t want to go through all the effort of breaking into the camp only to find out that no one feels safe enough to leave with us.”
    “Let’s meet again tomorrow at noon,” Trent said. “See if anyone else is willing to come. We’ll need more people than this if we’re going to have a fighting chance. And we need to think about ways to get the citizens at Grand Central on our side. Maybe even get the soldiers there on our side, so they don’t try to kill us on sight.”
    The wife, Bill’s wife, shook her head and muttered.
    Trent glanced at Clarissa, and she offered him what she hoped was an encouraging smile. Without Trent to help them convince the people of Letliv to join them, they’d be lost.
    Trent nodded. “And I’ll work with Clarissa, Jenna, and Barker to make a map of the grounds. We won’t be going in blind.”
    The meeting adjourned, and Clarissa followed Trent back up to his house.
    “Thank you,” she said, when they got into his living room.
    “For what?”
    “For everything.”
    They were alone again. Barker and Jenna had gone fishing with one of the crews, determined to put in their fair share of work in the town.
    Trent still looked pumped from the meeting, as if his adrenaline and excitement had stayed with him even after the last person had filed out of the church.
    “You don’t need to thank me,” he said. “I’m doing this for Annie, too. I want my sister safe. And you . . . you knew her. You helped her. That earns you a place in my house, any day of the week.”
    “Jenna seemed to think you might have other motives,” Clarissa said quietly. “For asking me to stay with you, I mean.”
    Trent paused, looking down at her from his significant height advantage. “I told you I wouldn’t hurt you.”
    “I know that,” she whispered. She did. He was good, she trusted her gut on that. “But I don’t think she . . . Jenna doesn’t think you’ll hurt me. Against my will, I mean.”
    The air was thick with shimmering desire between them, and for once, Clarissa didn’t attempt to tamp it down.
    She hadn’t felt desire, true need, in a long time. Sex on the Tracks was currency, and it hadn’t been fun. Not for her, anyway. Sex with Roy had basically been an experiment with mediocre results. When the time had come for her to actually let Roy inside her, her body had tensed, as if her body