Chapter 8 #2
Aubrey let silence hold a beat. She didn’t let him hide. Instead, she let him breathe.
Then quietly, but with iron-core sincerity: “You didn’t pull the trigger. The bad guys did. And guilt doesn’t get to rewrite God’s truth. Something I should probably remember.”
His head snapped up.
She stood, brushing dust from her jeans. Met his eyes. “And the God who kept you alive that day didn’t do it just to watch you drown in blame.”
He surged to his feet again, but this time it wasn’t an explosion. It was protest wrapped around panic. “It’s best if you stay far away from me. You’ll eventually be hurt.”
“You’re assuming all the guilt.” She stepped into his path, forcing him to halt. “Remorse isn’t proof you’re dangerous. It’s proof your conscience still works.” A breath. “What you lost was devastating. But you aren’t the one who cost people their lives or ruined the plan.”
He stared at her, his chest caving as though trying to bear an impossible weight.
She touched his arm. “I have to remember that grace doesn’t erase the worst day; it meets you in it. And God’s mercy is big enough to hold both of us.”
This moment belonged to two humans standing at the edge of a spiritual fault line.
Her hand slid down his arm until her fingers laced with his. She gave a soft squeeze, the small gesture settling between them like a prayer. “You don’t get to sentence yourself to isolation for the crimes of evil men, Ethan Butler. God didn’t save you just to watch you disappear from the world.”
His pulse hammered, but the metal taste was gone.
Because maybe—just maybe—love hadn’t been the distraction that killed his team.
Maybe love was the appeal that could finally save him.
“Aren’t you doing the same thing?” He held her gaze, the frustration from earlier ebbing into something closer to concern than accusation. “I know you’re scared of Finn Donovan. That maybe you blame yourself for what happened to your sister.”
She looked away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
He nodded once, absorbing the deflection without striking back. “Okay.” A beat. Then, with a sigh that carried more disappointment than irritation: “I open the vault, you shut yours. Just feels…uneven.”
Aubrey blinked. “Ethan…”
“And I don’t mean the case,” he clarified, his voice gentling another degree. “I mean us. You asked for truth, so I gave it.” His tone dipped low, steady now. “I don’t expect you to pull the wall down all at once. I just hoped you’d trust me enough to hand me a brick.”
She swallowed. “It’s not the same.”
Ethan shifted back half a step, putting a sliver of space between them while keeping hold of her hand. “Maybe not, but fear is fear. And running is running.” His thumb brushed once over the back of her hand. “So tell me this much. What are you fighting that you don’t want to name?”
She swallowed, her throat raw from the emotion, and tugged her hand from his. A faint tremor moved through her, and she crossed her arms over her middle. “The devil.” Her voice was barely audible in the quiet room.
Ethan stilled. No rebuttal. No pressure. Just a slow exhale.
“Then you’re braver than you think,” he murmured. “Because most people don’t admit the shape of their enemy.”
Aubrey pulled her hand from his and he let her.
But his voice followed her retreat, soft, stripped of battle. “And if the devil is what you’re up against, then maybe you and I are on the same side after all.”
He watched as she struggled with the emotion of it all. He could almost see the fear as old memories resurfaced. With tentative steps, he went over and sat on the loveseat. He had to keep his distance, for both their sakes. “Tell me what happened, Aubrey.”
She nodded once and inhaled, as if fortifying herself for the story she was about to tell. “As a kid growing up, you have no idea of the evil that exists in this world.”
He nodded his encouragement. “And that’s why, as adults, it’s easy to become jaded.”
“When your childhood is ripped from you, it’s an entirely different story.” Her eyes took on a faraway look. “When I was twelve, I saw a man commit murder in broad daylight.”
“Where were you?”
“In a small Southern town in North Carolina.”
“Quite different than Colorado. I thought I detected a slight Southern twang.” He smiled to soften his words.
“Yeah, I’ve worked hard to get rid of my Southern accent.
It’s difficult but makes me harder to trace.
” She took another deep breath. “It was a hot summer day that morphed into a hot summer night. My older sister, Kayla, was my best friend. We were invited to go swimming in the neighbor’s pool after dinner.
Since it was still daylight, our mom let us ride our bikes.
It was less than three blocks away, but we decided to take a shortcut through one of the neighbors’ yards. ” She bit her lower lip, looked away.
Ethan gently squeezed her clenched hands. “You’re doing great.”
Aubrey nodded. “We knew the path well since we always traveled back and forth between the neighbor’s house and ours. It was humid, and our T-shirts clung to our backs. I remember the scent of honeysuckle.”
She closed her eyes and exhaled. “At the back of the fence line, there were only trees and some small shrubs. The streetlights hadn’t come on yet.
We were laughing but stopped when we saw some shadows move.
There was a huge man with lots of muscles.
It looked like he was hugging and kissing this woman. Or rather, we thought he was.”
Aubrey opened her eyes. “But she was trying to remove his hands from around her neck. He was strangling her. Kayla yelled, and I told her to ride away, but she sat there on her bike and screamed and screamed. He saw her.”
She bit her lip. “The neighbors had a motion detector light in the backyard, and I saw him, saw his face and the tattoo he had on his neck.”
He had to tread carefully. “What happened next?”
“He strangled the woman, and she slumped to the ground. We hightailed it out of there, and I thought Kayla was right behind me. She wasn’t. He’d caught her, and I kept going because I didn’t know.”
Dear Lord. “I’m sorry, Aubrey.”
“My parents called the police, and everyone searched the neighborhood for the woman and my sister, but they didn’t find anything. My parents were frantic. A couple of days later, the police found the woman’s body, along with Kayla’s, in the wooded area, in a shallow grave.”
“And your family went into the WITSEC program?”
She nodded. “But as long as Donovan is alive, the threat will always be there. That’s why I’m here. I left my family in Idaho—my parents and my other sister. And I left WITSEC when I moved here, so I could keep them safe, because if they’re near me, then they’ll always be in danger.”
He placed a finger under her chin and tilted her face toward him. “How long is it since you’ve seen them?”
“Six years, since I moved to Renegade.” She pulled away from his touch, then stood, arms crossed over her waist, and moved to the window overlooking the front yard.
He watched as her shoulders moved up and down, as if the struggle to tell him everything was overwhelming. “You did the right thing testifying.”
“Testifying changed my family forever.”
He shook his head. “Finn Donovan did that.”
She inhaled and turned back to look at him, her eyes wide with fear. “If he was on the plane that crashed, then he’s here. In Renegade.” Goosebumps rose on her arms, and she tried to rub away the cold seeping into her bones. “He’s coming after me.”
Ethan cupped her shoulders. “We’re going to keep you safe while we find him.”
Aubrey’s lower lip trembled. “The anniversary of Kayla’s death is coming up.”
He pulled her in for a hug, and she wrapped her arms around him. Ethan held her. “You’re going to be safe. I’ll make sure of it.”
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
Minutes later, when he checked it, he found a message from Adam.
Adam
We know where to look for the plane.