Chapter 57 #2
The icon flashed again, and I knew there was a new document being saved to the folder.
Everything trembled.
My hands, my spirit, and my heart.
So far, I’d avoided the ones that had come in today.
Maybe some part of me was aware they were going to change everything.
Maybe instinct told me this new awakening would be crushed at its conception.
I glanced over my shoulder again, even though I knew Silas wasn’t anywhere around, the power that normally radiated in from the shop silenced in his absence.
The entire place was eerily quiet. The only sound was the raging of every one of my senses.
Each one hollered inside me. A brutal clanging as I clicked into one of the documents, which was another simple Word file.
I frowned when I read the two sentences the file contained.
It has to happen. Too much liability.
I blew out a sigh, realizing I’d clicked on a random one, so I reorganized the files in descending order so the newest would be at the top, then glided the cursor down to the first one that had been sent this morning, simply saved as “D”.
Change of plans. He has to go.
Those two sentences made my organs feel like they were being ripped out of my body.
My mind was quick to add through the clues.
D: Dereck
Change of plans: The promise Silas had made.
He has to go: Death.
Silas wouldn’t though. I knew him. He would never do that to me.
I was jumping to conclusions. I had to be.
I clicked into the next, not even sure who was saying what, but somehow knowing this was a shared folder and two people were having a conversation.
Are you sure? Intel says he’s a go.
The next.
It has to happen. Too much liability.
Hand barely cooperating, I flicked into the next.
This isn’t normally the way you play.
I know, but there’s too much riding on this. The guy’s a liar. A rat. And you know what we do with those.
Trembles rocked through me as I clicked into the last.
Understood. I’ll see that it’s done.
A blade of misery stabbed through my middle, and I nearly bent in two. A sob clung like a blob of poison at the base of my throat.
How could he? How could he do this to me?
I thought…I thought…
I beat the agony back into submission.
I didn’t have time for a broken heart. Besides, I was the idiot here. He already told me he would ruin me.
Throat closing off, I tossed my head over my shoulder, almost certain I’d find a beast behind me, ready to strike and end me, too.
The way I knew from the beginning Silas would do.
When did I become so complacent? So blind? So freaking stupid?
Nothing but a doormat who’d been used again and again.
Manipulated so I’d be thrown off track.
I mean, I’d fully stopped looking for clues. Stopped listening. Stopped asking.
Because I’d fallen into a trap and trusted Silas Mercer.
Bile rolled my throat, acid clawing at the back of my tongue the way it always did a moment before I puked.
This was no time to be sick.
I had to take action.
Frantic, I began to fly through all the documents. Comparing them against other reports.
Desperate to find a connection.
A clue.
A way to fix this betrayal.
I kept clicking through the documents, comparing addresses and numbers to Google searches.
Mentally checking off each one as a job done.
There were two addresses in different files that had been sent earlier this week. I looked them up, and neither of them had numbers beside them.
I could only deduce that these were unfinished jobs. Their slaughters yet to come.
Yet I kept searching, somehow knowing they weren’t where Dereck would be. That I was missing something.
I heaved out when I finally found one from five years ago. An address in Northern California.
Next to it was a dash with Failed written behind it.
I remembered what Silas had admitted that night.
“With the help of your brother, I’m finally going to get revenge for my mother’s death.”
Silas was returning to a failed mission.
My heart sprinted. An army of horses’ hooves walloping in my chest.
I could barely type the address into my phone, and I squinted at the screen when the only thing I saw was a massive gate.
I put it on satellite mode and zoomed out, and my insides flipped when I saw it was some sort of compound in the middle of the woods.
Remote and isolated.
Dereck would be there.
I knew he would.
I jumped from the office chair, the wheels sending it flying back. My breaths were basically hyperventilations as dizziness spun my mind in a thousand directions.
How the hell was I going to get out of here?
There were at least six men standing guard along the front wall. No question, there were more along the perimeter.
And Kai…
Agony panged my heart. How could I just leave him? My love for the child full and complete.
I couldn’t contemplate that right then. My only concern in this moment had to be saving my brother.
I grabbed my purse and slung it over my shoulder, tucked my phone into it, then slipped out into the vacant shop.
The bays were open, though it was empty. No sound of machinery or jesting voices. No question, they were trying to make it look like it was business as usual if someone were to drive by.
It only condensed the quiet that echoed like an omen.
Aching heart in my throat, I hurried to the door at the back of the shop and stepped out.
Praying I could act halfway normal as I came to the few bikers loitering at the back.
But I guess with everything going on, anxious appeared normal because they only gave me understanding juts of their chins as I headed toward the worn trail carved through the thicket that I used whenever I walked from the house to the shop or vice versa.
My spirit swirled and clashed and banged, and pain splintered through me with every step I took.
Unable to comprehend why Silas could commit this sort of treason against me.
I wanted to tear off my heels and run.
Run toward safety.
Toward my brother.
Toward Silas.
Torn in every direction.
Every urge made me feel like I would be ripped apart.
Nagging thoughts told me to go to Silas. To just lay it out and demand to know what was happening. Demand to know if it was all a game.
To know if every single thing between us was fake.
A blade drove right through my chest at that, and it nearly made me stumble over the uneven ground.
It wasn’t something I could even contemplate right then.
I needed one focus.
Warning Dereck.
I’d let myself crumble after that.
I made it to the densest part of the grove where I was completely concealed from the rest of the property, and I tossed my attention in every direction. Sure I was alone, I broke right and darted toward the fence line.
Praying I could get there without anyone noticing, or God forbid, one of those Crows waiting on the wall, ready to tear me to shreds then dance all over my grave.
I tried to keep my breaths controlled rather than expelling them like bricks, but it was nearly impossible.
The adrenaline mixing with the torment churned them into choked sobs.
My heels kept sinking into the soft earth, and the thorny brush scraped my legs, spiky limbs gripping on like they’d been grown for the sole purpose of deterring my actions.
But I wouldn’t be stopped.
I couldn’t be.
I had to find Dereck. Save him. I had to wonder if he’d even had his phone this whole time. If all my pleas had been met with silence because he’d never been given the chance to return them.
I slowed to a crawl when I finally made out the white stucco wall in the distance.
My nerves bucked like electric charges.
Trees grew right up against the barrier, and shrubs and vines crawled up over the sides and top.
I went covert as I slinked beneath the green, lush canopy.
Heart so freaking loud I didn’t know how it didn’t send the birds scattering for safety.
I slowed almost to a stop as I came up to the wall.
I looked in every direction.
Terrified.
Mortified.
Hurt.
No one was there to stop me.
A wave of relief pummeled me, or maybe it was just an exaggerated billow of grief.
The kind that drummed and churned and made you desperate to run, even though you were fully aware it was going to catch up to you at any moment and overthrow you.
I managed to get ahold of an overhead limb, and I hoisted myself up, using my feet for leverage as I hauled myself up on a branch and started to climb.
I reached the top, and a gasp of surprise that I’d actually done it escaped, before I fumbled back down the same way on the other side.
Free when it was the last thing I wanted to be.