“Almost there, miss?” the driver asked, glancing in the rearview mirror. He eyed my fatigues with a mixture of curiosity and respect.

“Yeah,” I whispered, my voice raspy from lack of sleep. “Just around the corner. The yellow house with the white porch.”

I replayed the movie in my head: the door swinging open, the look of shock on Ryan’s face turning to joy, the way he’d lift me off my feet and spin me around until the world blurred. I needed that. God, I needed that. After nine months of sleeping with one eye open, gripping a rifle like a teddy bear, I just wanted to close both eyes in safety. I wanted the smell of pine, the creak of cool hardwood, and the warm embrace of the man who had promised to wait.