"So what do we do now?"

The week that had passed since their narrow and bloody escape from the farm had been a maelstrom of phone calls and e-mail, only half of which had been returned. Emma was steadfastly ignoring their calls; Roderick or one of the other Followers had replaced her phone, and the only responses they got were from Roderick, who told them to remain at the safe house until Doctor Tarr could visit them.

He arrived 3 hours after they did, and by that point Paul had been near delirious and pasty white with blood loss. Jacob paced for another hour as the doctor stitched Paul up and transfused him with some blood he had on hand.

"What do you mean, 'What do we do?' We wait for our orders. Tarr's coming here again tomorrow for a check-up but he said I would probably be ready to move in another few days," Paul said, subconsciously rubbing his abdomen as he waited for the painkillers to kick in. The damned doctor had given him simple ibuprofen, claiming Joe didn't want him becoming impaired in case they needed to vacate the premise quickly.

"Charlie called earlier and said that our phones and the e-mail were clean again, but I don't like it. I don't like any of this." Jacob seemed to be talking to himself at this point, mumbling the words out hurriedly.

Paul watched Jacob pace wishing he could get up and go to him. Fucking Hardy.

"What else can we do but wait, Jacob? Joe will rearrange his plans."

"Rearrange?! Emma obviously knew about some kind of backup. She's somewhere with Joey and it was probably all part of the plan. I bet we weren't even meant to survive that raid!"

Paul didn't like hearing Jacob question the plan. It meant he was questioning Joe, and that gave Paul a pain in his gut that had nothing to do with the stab wounds.

"Think rationally. Those men that saved us were Followers. Roderick is in contact with us. We've heard from Charlie, been visited by Tarr. Our part in this isn't done."

"It can be."

There was thick heavy silence, and Jacob's pacing finally stopped when he noticed how stiff Paul had become.

"What does that mean?" Paul breathed out.

"I know someone who is very discrete who works the border. They owe me a really big favor; we can be in Canada in two days' time. It'll be easy enough to disguise ourselves, and Charlie told us that the custody transfer has begun. The Feds are still busy looking for Emma and Joey. It would be easy –"

"Jacob."

"NO! She abandoned us, Paul! She fucking left me, and you were all bloodied up and practically gutted. I thought you were dead when we got here!"

"But I'm not –"

"Roderick isn't answering our questions, just telling us what he thinks we need to know, and Charlie only told us about clean communications and that the tunnel safe house in the city was compromised. What more can we do?" Jacob was back to pacing, unable to meet Paul's pitying eyes.

"Come here," Paul whispered. He motioned for Jacob who was staunchly ignoring his appeal.

"What am I even doing?!" Jacob hissed out.

"Jacob, come here," Paul said, harder this time. Jacob turned towards him, slowly trudging his way towards the couch on which Paul was reclined. He sat down on the coffee table, looking around the sparsely furnished two-room cabin in which they were currently residing; anything to stave off looking Paul in the eyes.

"We can't run. You and I both know you talk a big game, but in the end you wouldn't be able to live with that. Shit. I'm not sure how far we would get anyway. Joe Carroll is not the guy to turn his back on. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He loves us. Don't doubt that."

Jacob thought he heard a certain inflection in Paul's voice.

"He doesn't know about my connection at the border. And he thought Emma and I were meant to be. I thought she was my soul mate. But we were both wrong about that."

"But he also knew enough to put us together. As lovers."

Jacob pulled away from the hand that was slowly reaching towards him.

"The only person he's playing mind games with in this is Hardy. He didn't have plans for us to – for what went down between us."

"Jesus, you still can't even say it. Can you talk about what happened between the THREE of us?"

Jacob got up and headed towards the door.

"You can't be naïve enough to think Joe didn't have bigger plans for all of us, Jacob. They aren't mind games. He's a loving parent, and he's putting us in the situations that we'll learn from most. You have to see that. Emma's chapter is going to be with Joey and Claire. Our chapter was with Sarah and each other; that's the one he had planned out. But where we go from here is up to us."

"THERE IS NO 'US'!"

Jacob stormed out of the cabin, the resounding thud of the door echoing through his cluttered thoughts.

What was he doing?