Joe's eyes narrowed. "You are naive," he said. "And your trust in people and their goodness will be your undoing one day. The world is not as kind as you wish it was." He exhaled, full of pain and anger still, but it was receding like a teapot that had already boiled and was now left with trembling water on the stove. He shook his head, resigned and miserable. "It doesn't deserve you."

But it had him. And Joe wasn't about to let his anger put that at risk for either of them.

He crossed over to the closet and started to pull items out for himself. Clothes. Boots. A bag of his own to fill with the firepower he expected they would need to actually get out of this mess without being captured. He scowled the whole time.

"If he betrayed us again," he warned in a voice of pure violence, "He will be spending his hundred years in agony. And you will not stop me."