7. Silas
Chapter 7
Silas
I t’s nearly ten and she’s still not home.
Where is she? Where could she have gone?
Eloise is sleeping soundly on my side of the duplex, as evidenced by her soft breathing through the baby monitor on my hip. Using a bright work light, I apply another coat of putty to Bianca’s ceiling.
It took most of the day, but Felix, the hardware store owner, and his son-in-law Alex came to help. We were able to clear the tree from Bianca’s house, got the roof closed up, and now the ceiling has been patched with sheet rock.
I glance out the open front door again. Did River’s people find Bianca? Is she gone? I climb down from the ladder, then head out onto the porch, closing the door behind me. As soon as I’m sitting, I take a drink from my bottle of water.
If I had her number, I could call her. But I didn’t allow myself to put it into my phone even after she started work at Knight Security.
The last thing I wanted was another piece of her tied to me. She already has so much of me it’s sickening.
Now I wish I had the number, if only to make sure she’s still here in Hope Springs.
Honestly, it’s more than likely she ran. Took off into the distance, just as she did all those years ago. Even as the thought graces my mind, a pair of headlights turn down our street.
She comes to a stop in front of her house and climbs out, a book in her hand.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” I don’t look up at her even as she takes a seat on the steps in front of her front door. It’s then I glance over at her. “Been at the library?”
She looks down at the book in her hands. “The church. It’s the Bible. Pastor Redding gave it to me.”
“A Bible? I didn’t take you for a believer.”
“Getting there,” she replies with a soft smile. “I’m trying to find my way to Him.”
I grunt in response. Truth is, I hardened my heart against faith after my sister’s death. Before then, I believed, sure. Though I never practiced my faith. Never prayed. Never spent a Sunday in a pew.
Not until I got the call that my sister had been in an accident.
I prayed then.
But she stayed dead.
And I haven’t dropped to my knees since.
“I’m sorry that I came to Hope Springs and that I stayed. It was never my intention to bring danger to this town.”
“Then what was your intention?” I ask. “Why did you stay?”
“The truth?”
“Would be nice for a change.”
“You.” The single word carries far more weight than I think she realizes.
“Me.”
“Yes. Things were so strained between us after?—”
“We nearly died and you bailed the moment you got the chance?”
She shakes her head, and I note that she runs her fingers over the pages of the Bible. Does it bring her comfort to do that? “I thought that if I left, you’d find peace. I was worried they’d track me down and if I was near you—they weren’t after you.”
“They were after both of us,” I remind her. “I escaped, too.”
“But I was?—”
“I know who you were,” I snap. “Who you are.” My tone is harsher than I mean it to be, so I take a deep breath. I’m not out here to argue. To let her defend a position I’ve been aware of since that day in the jungle. Truth is, in her shoes, I don’t know that I would have been upfront either. But it still stings.
Each and every moment we spent together in that jungle, running for our lives, is branded in my brain. And somehow, the worst of it wasn’t the pain or the hunger. It was finding out that the woman I had fallen in love with wasn’t who I thought she was.
That she’d been lying to me from the start.
“You mean a lot to me, Silas. I know that you’ll never want to be friends, but I needed to be near you. I can’t explain it. But it’s the truth.”
Her words are a gauntlet crashing down on top of me. Both relief and pain resonate through me, and I can’t tell which is the better feeling. “I don’t trust you, Bianca.”
“I know you don’t.”
“And that’s not going to change.” I meet her gaze now. Her gorgeous emerald eyes that haunt my every waking hour. “Ever.”
They fill with tears, and she nods.
Desperate for distance between us, I stand. “Your ceiling is patched. I’ll finish up the framing tomorrow.”
She stands. “My ceiling—you worked on my ceiling.”
“Mrs. McGinley let me in because I told her I’d fix the damage so she didn’t have to wait for a contractor.”
Her expression softens. “Thank you.”
“I did it for her. Not you.” But we both know that’s not true. My gaze dips to her lips. To the mouth I tasted briefly all those years ago, and the affection I still carry—even as I wish I could have ripped it out of my heart by the roots—springs to life.
“I appreciate it anyway.”
“Yeah. Well?—”
“I gave Lance that list of names he was looking for,” she interrupts.
“Good. Then they’ll find him in no time, I’m sure.” I turn away.
“I loved you, too, Silas.”
I freeze in place, her words carving away at my walls. “Which makes what you did even worse. Goodnight, Bianca.”
I come awake at the sound of a branch snapping. Bianca is sleeping only a few feet away from me, her breathing soft.
But I know I heard something.
Gripping the scalpel I’ve been carrying since our escape, I roll up to the balls of my feet, then creep off to the side. Two men move through the jungle, dressed head-to-toe in tactical gear. If it weren’t for the armbands around their biceps, they could have been friendlies here to find us.
But the black diamond sigil on their armbands is that of Lucian Culvers. The very man who’d captured me and killed my entire team.
My hand tightens around the handle of the blade, but I remain hidden. They may just move past us…but Bianca whimpers in her sleep, something she does rather regularly due to nightmares.
The men hear her, and they raise their weapons, then turn toward where she sleeps. I have mere seconds to react before they break through the brush that serves as our shield.
She whimpers again.
“Come on out here, sweetheart, we won’t hurt you,” one man calls out, then grins at the other. “Much,” he adds.
They take another step.
Then another.
I lunge, slamming my body into the first man and taking him to the ground. “Run!” I bellow, hoping she hears me so at least one of us gets away. Maybe that’s my purpose in all this, to get her free so she can do good in the world.
I slam my fist into the man’s face, but the second man is faster. He slams the stock of his weapon into my head and my vision goes blurry. I fall over to the side and Bianca slides to her knees beside me.
“There she is. Little princess.”
Bianca straightens. “You will not hurt him.”
“Or what?”
She raises the scalpel I hadn’t realized she’d picked up from the ground and presses the blade to her throat. “I’ll take away my uncle’s ability to get revenge. Isn’t that what you’re after?”
“What are you talking about?” I ask as I try to sit up. The world around me spins, and the pain is nearly blinding.
“Stay down,” Bianca tells me as the man I’d tackled aims his weapon right at me. And as I sit here, staring down the barrel of a loaded weapon, I’m hit with the realization that I’ve been on the run with a woman I know nothing about.
“Who are you?”
“You don’t know?” the first man says with a laugh. His beard is graying, his eyes hard and amused all at the same time. “You’ve been running around with the daughter of the very man who killed all your buddies.”
Sleep didn’t come last night.
I tried. I counted sheep, the fan blades as they whirred around above my head, I even turned on white noise on my phone to see if it would help slow my brain down. But all I could think of was Bianca’s words over and over again.
“I loved you too, Silas.”
Love. What a joke. I’d fallen for her, sure, but we’d been starving, exhausted, in pain, unsure if we’d live to see another sunset. It took time for me to realize that it hadn’t been actual love. I’d just been too stupid to see it then.
I pour another mug of coffee and down the dark liquid as I watch Eloise play happily with her dolls.
She turns toward me. “Uncle Lassy?”
With a smile on my face, I carry my coffee into the living room, then set it on the end table as I take a seat on the couch. Eloise kneels on the floor between the couch and the coffee table, a pile of dolls in front of her.
“What is it, Nugget?”
Eloise holds up a doll that’s half-dressed with what I can only imagine is supposed to be a silver ballgown. “I can’t get her dress on,” she says, holding the doll out for me. I take the doll from her and work the dress up over the top of her, then Velcro it in the back. When I hand it back to Eloise, she’s beaming at me like I’m her hero.
“You’re the best, Uncle Lassy,” she says, happily taking the doll and adding her to the collection of other dressed dolls on the table.
Uncle Lassy. No matter how many times I hear it, it never gets old. The power this little girl has over me is endless. No matter how poor my mood is, one smile from her and it’s instantly lifted.
“I try. So where are they all going?”
“A fancy party,” she replies. “Like the one we had for Jaxson and Margot.”
“A wedding, then?”
She shakes her head. “No, not a wedding. It’s like the one they had, but not exactly.” She uses a small hairbrush to smooth the blonde strands of doll hair. “No one is getting married, they just met!”
“Ooh, okay. I gotcha.”
As I reach over for my mug, my gaze lands on a picture of my sister and her husband. My heart aches at the sight of my twin sister smiling widely, her husband right beside her. Eloise may never get the chance to meet her parents, but I’m going to make certain she recognizes them.
My sister would have wanted that.
I may not be a praying man, but I do hope that wherever she is, Sierra knows just how much I love her little girl.
The doorbell rings, startling me out of my reminiscing.
My heart thuds in my chest, faster than normal, and on instinct, my hand goes to my lower back where the large knife I always carry is sheathed. It doesn’t matter how long I’ve been home, I still fear not knowing who’s on the other side of the door.
Especially now, knowing who’s coming after Bianca. Given that I let her out, it’s possible they’re coming for me, too.
After checking the peephole, I drop my hand from the knife and open the door. Lance stands on the other side, his auburn hair shining in the bright sun. He’s dressed in work jeans that are stained with paint from who knows when and a blue flannel with a white shirt underneath. It’s his typical handyman clothing, which likely means he’s either here to offer me help or he’s stopping by on his way to another job.
“Morning,” I greet.
“Morning. Can I come in?”
“Sure thing.” I step aside, and he comes in.
“Lance!” Eloise leaps up from where she sits on the floor and rushes forward to jump into Lance’s waiting embrace.
“Morning there, little El! How are you this morning?”
“Awesome. I slept soooo good,” she says, stretching out the ‘so.’
“I’m glad to hear it.” He releases her and stands. “Can we talk?”
I nod. “Coffee?”
“That would be great, thanks.”
I head into the kitchen and he follows. After filling a mug with fresh coffee, I offer it to him, then lean back against the counter. “If this is about Bianca, I’m sorry for not telling you sooner. It wasn’t my story to tell.”
“I get that.” He takes a seat at the counter. “I do wish you would have told me, as a friend, but I can understand why you didn’t. What I want to know is how deep your connection to her runs.”
I should have seen this coming. “You’re worried they’re coming for me, too?”
“I’m worried your head is clouded. I want to make sure it’s clear.”
“It’s clear. Whatever was between us all those years ago is gone. I feel nothing for her.”
“Even nothing is something,” Lance replies.
“Not this time. Bianca lied to me. I don’t have tolerance for people who do that.”
“So you have no feelings for her whatsoever? When she walks in the room, your gaze isn’t immediately drawn to her?” When I don’t immediately answer, he continues, “Because I also don’t care to be lied to.”
Defeated, I run a hand through my hair. “Whatever is still there is only lingering feelings that haven’t burned off yet.”
“What happened to you two in that jungle?”
“She didn’t tell you?” I assumed that after I left yesterday, she’d told them everything. About what a sucker I was for my feelings and how easily I’d fallen.
“No. And I didn’t ask. I am asking you. As your friend and someone who wants to make sure you’re both operating with full transparency.”
I sigh, knowing I owe him an explanation. After checking to make sure Eloise is distracted with her dolls, softly humming to herself as she has them dance around, I lean in and lower my voice. “When I was being held, I’d come to the understanding that I was going to die. I knew it without a second thought, that each time they came to pull information from me could be my last. And then, one night, a man showed up in my cell. He told me that he was there to rescue me, but that he couldn’t guide me out. He told me which direction to run and that the door would be unlocked. Then he unshackled me. And as soon as I could stand up, he slipped out.” I remember the day like it was yesterday—the stench of the cell, the sound of water dripping down the stone walls…the feel of my bare feet against the concrete floor. “As I was leaving, I heard a woman yell right before two of Culvers’ guards came out. They were going to kill her, I knew that much, and I had this feeling that I needed to save her, too. That I needed to get her out. So I did.”
Lance remains silent as I finish up my coffee and pour another cup, topping off his as well.
“I was injured badly, and she stitched me up a couple times. We ran for weeks. Living off of what game we could find and whatever fresh water we managed to get ahold of. It was just the two of us for weeks,” I tell him. “Feelings were bound to blossom. We kissed. Once. Then two guards found us and nearly killed us before my cousin’s search and rescue team showed up to rescue us.”
“I remember you saying your cousins pulled you out.”
“They’d just gotten their company off the ground, and we were their first rescue.” My cousins—five brothers on my mom’s side—opened up their own search and rescue company out of Texas. They find what no one else can, and my sister had them looking for me.
“So they pulled you out.”
“Right after I’d found out that the woman I’d been protecting, the one I rescued, was the daughter of the same man who slaughtered my entire team and tortured me for weeks.”
“Bianca didn’t get to choose her father.”
“No,” I admit. “But she could have told me.”
Lance considers. “What would you have done, if you’d known who she was? Would you have left her there to die?”
Save her. Even now the words come rushing back to me. “No. I would have pulled her out anyway.”
“And if she’d told you after you rescued her. Would you have killed her for who she was?”
I think that’s what stings the most, though, is that even after the weeks of us being together, of my protecting her and us relying only on each other, she still didn’t trust me enough to tell me. “No.”
“Look, Bianca grew up in a world that was kill or be killed, yet when it came down to surviving or taking the easy way out and remaining with her father, she chose to leave and survive on her own. I’m not saying what she did was right. I’m not a fan of lies, but forgiving her is going to be the first step in moving forward.”
“I’m working on it.”
“I know you’ve struggled with your faith for a long time, but if you want to pray about it, I’m here.”
There’s a heaviness that settles over my heart that I can’t explain, so I rub the palm of my hand against my chest. “I don’t.”
“When that changes, I’ll still be here.”