Chapter 17 #2
Z got her mixed up with bad guys?
Silas told her to run?
What the actual fuck is going on?
But before I can ask any questions or even finish picking up her things, Harper has already shoved the items back in her bag and she’s walking away from me.
She said they were watching, so I force myself not to turn my head to follow her progress. I just stay crouched there for a moment longer than necessary, pretending to check if I missed anything while my brain spins uselessly through prime numbers like that’s going to help.
The woman I love, the woman I’ve always loved, just told me she’s in danger. And now she’s walking away from me toward that heavy door that will take her out of this building and back into whatever danger that fucker Z caught her up in.
The whole reason I’m here is to make amends with Silas, but how can I do that if I just let his daughter walk away into clear and present danger?
I force myself to stop counting and proceed calmly toward the desk, keeping my voice as monotonous as possible when I ask, “Much longer, do you think?”
My question finishes right as the woman behind the desk puts a phone receiver down, and she looks at me with the same bored expression she had before.
“Sorry,” she says in a tone that suggests she’s not sorry at all. “The inmate has declined your visit.”
The words should devastate me. Ten minutes ago, they would have sent me into a shame spiral about everything I’ve done wrong.
But her eyes aren’t on me when she says it.
They’re on the door closing on the other side of the room where Harper just exited, and something about that small detail tells me everything I need to know.
Silas didn’t refuse to see me because he hates me.
He refused to see me as a way to send me a message, and that message is crystal clear even if he couldn’t tell me himself:
Follow Harper, protect Harper.
Be the man I taught you to be.
Take care of the ones you love by any means necessary.
“Thanks,” I manage to say to the corrections officer, trying to look appropriately disappointed as I turn and walk out of the facility.
I keep it cool until I make it to the parking lot, and then my eyes immediately search for Harper.
In the far corner of the lot, she’s climbing into her little sedan. I walk quickly to my Jeep while trying to make it look casual in case there are cameras watching. But once I’m inside, I peel out and take the fastest route to catch up with her.
She goes the long way around the parking lot, which means I’m able to pull out onto the main road just ahead of her. We both turn right because there’s no other direction to go, and as soon as we’re on the ranch road, I get in the slow lane and let her pass me.
I follow at a distance as she heads back toward Austin, occasionally letting another car in between us. The drive feels endless and my brain keeps spiraling into worst-case scenarios that I have to actively fight against.
What has Z gotten her into?
How bad is it if Silas is telling her to run?
Finally, she pulls off into a gravel driveway. I’ve been leaving a longer follow distance since we’ve been on this ranch road out in the hill country, so I go a little farther past her yard before I pull off to the side and duck low in my seat.
I can see through the cedar trees and tall grasses of the big front yard to the front door of the trailer situated on the nice little piece of land.
As soon as Harper parks, someone steps out from the front door.
Z.
My hands clench on the steering wheel just at seeing the bastard.
I drop down in the seat and lower the window.
“Where’s Bruiser?” Harper shouts as she walks toward the front door, and her voice carries with an edge of panic that makes my chest tight. “I did what you said. Now where’s my son?”
“You better have done exactly as I said,” Z says, and there’s something in his tone that makes my blood run cold.
He doesn’t sound right. Is he on something?
But Harper’s already shoving past him and throwing open the door.
“Bruiser!” she shouts, and then through the open front door, I see a boy come running into her arms in the foyer.
He’s maybe eight or nine years old, and Harper drops to her knees and throws her arms around him like she hasn’t seen him in years instead of days. Her whole body is shaking even from this distance, and I can see her pressing her face into his hair like she’s trying to convince herself he’s real.
Z slams the front door shut, cutting off my view.
I want to leap out of my car and tear across the street and yank that door back open because I’m going to kill that motherfucker for whatever he’s doing to Harper.
I can figure out context clues. And that scene just told me he was keeping her own son from her for some reason, maybe blackmail of some kind?
What the hell kind of man uses his own son like that?
My hands shake on the steering wheel from the effort of not committing homicide, and I have to shut my eyes hard and force myself to focus.
What does Harper need right now?
Not what do I want to do, but what does Harper actually need?
She needs to get the hell away from that maniac, that’s for damn sure.
Harper said Silas told her to run. But she won’t be running anytime soon with Z in there. As he was slamming the door, I caught a glimpse of something on his hip that looked an awful lot like a gun.
I pull out my phone and text Isaak, my friend who runs a security company. But even as I’m typing out the situation, I know it’s going to take time for him to mobilize his team.
Harper might not have time.
My heart pounds in my ears and my hands are shaking, but I force myself to move slowly and deliberately as I calmly slip out of the Jeep, keeping low.
Because here’s what I know about control:
I don’t have any and I never did.
One day your mom’s cancer treatment is working and the next she’s dead in the front yard. One day you’re planning your future with the girl you love and the next she’s gone without a trace.
Life is chaos and numbers don’t mean shit. All my counting and ritualizing never protected anyone from anything.
But here’s what else I know: just because I can’t control what happens doesn’t mean I can’t act.
My phone buzzes with Isaak’s response: Mobilization will take six hours minimum. Stay put. Do NOT engage.
Six hours.
The number sits in my head like a taunt because six is divisible by two and three. It’s perfectly even and symmetrical, the kind of number my brain wants to devour as so very reasonable.
But Harper doesn’t have six hours.
Z has a gun.
I think about Harper’s face in the prison, about the shadows under her eyes and the way she grabbed my wrist hard enough to bruise when she told me to run.
I think about Silas refusing to see me not because he hates me, but because he was sending me after his daughter.
I think about how I let her go because I didn’t fight hard enough to keep her.
I’m not making that mistake again.
I crouch down and sprint around toward the back of the house, and for once in my life I’m not counting my steps.