Ellie can make all the beelines she wants - Joel's got his eyes peeled for anything suspicious all the time - that's just the way it works when you trust someone enough to have each other's backs, anyway. They each knows how the other operates by now, so it's just a matter of keeping track of where she's getting to, and hanging back to double-check their surroundings before approaching them himself.

"Another friend of yours?" he asks Ellie, eyebrows quirked in an almost-amused expression.