Rafe doesn’t seem concerned by the possibility. “Maybe. But by then, Silvercreek will be burning, and there won’t be anything left worth saving.”
He turns and stalks toward the door without elaborating. I want to call after him, demand to know what he means, but I stay silent. Showing too much interest will only give him more power over me.
The metal door clangs shut behind him, and his footsteps fade down the corridor until silence swallows them.
I wait until I can’t hear anything but my own breathing before I let out the breath I’ve been holding. My face throbs where he grabbed me, and my neck burns where the silver collar touches my skin. But I’m alive. For now, I’m alive, and that has to count for something.
“Are you okay?” Dina whispers from her cell.
“Fine.” I test my bound hands again and search for any give in the ropes. “What did he mean about Silvercreek burning?”
Dina crawls closer to the bars between us with her voice dropping so low I have to strain to hear it. “I’ve been listening to the guards when they talk. They think I’m too weak to pay attention, so they don’t bother being careful around me. Last week, I heard two of them talking about explosives. Something about planting them in key locations throughout Silvercreek and waiting for the right moment to set them off.”
My face tingles as the blood drains from my face. “How many explosives?”
“I don’t know, but it sounded like a lot from the way they were talking. Enough to do serious damage.” Dina’s eyes are wide and frightened. “They’re planning something coordinated. The attack on your border, grabbing you… I think it’s all meant to distract your pack while they get everything else in place.”
I close my eyes and will myself to think. Bryan will come for me. I know he will, because that’s who he is. But if Rafe is expecting him, if this whole kidnapping is just bait in a larger trap, then walking into a rescue could get Bryan killed and leave Silvercreek defenseless.
I need more information. I need to understand exactly what we’re dealing with.
“The guard rotations,” I begin as I open my eyes. “Tell me everything you know. Every detail, no matter how small.”
Dina nods and begins to speak with her voice barely above a whisper. I listen carefully and memorize every detail she shares.
Chapter 19 - Bryan
After two days without sleep, my body finally betrays me.
I don’t remember sitting down in the conference room chair. I don’t remember closing my eyes. One moment, I’m staring at the map spread across the table, working out possible routes to Cheslem safe houses for the hundredth time, and the next, I’m somewhere else entirely.
The nightmare drags me under before I realize I’ve fallen asleep.
I’m standing in front of my family’s house, the one I burned to the ground ten years ago. It looks exactly the way I remember it—white siding, blue shutters, and my mother’s rosebushes climbing the porch railings. Dawn breaks over the roofline, and a mockingbird sings from the oak tree in the front yard, the same oak tree where my father hung a tire swing when I was seven.
I don’t want to go inside. I know what’s waiting for me.
But my feet carry me forward anyway, up the porch steps that creak in all the familiar places and through the front door that swings open at my touch. The smell hits me first. Copper and smoke and death.
My father lies in the hallway with his throat ripped out. His reading glasses are still perched on his nose, though they’re cracked and spattered with blood. My mother is crumpled at the base of the stairs with her hand still reaching toward the second floor, where my sister’s bedroom was. She died trying to protect her baby, and she never made it past the third step.
Mira is sprawled across her bedroom floor, barely fifteen years old, with her nightgown soaked in blood. Her eyes areopen and staring at the ceiling, and there’s a look of surprise frozen on her face. She didn’t even have time to be afraid.
I’ve had this dream a thousand times. I know every detail by heart—the angle of my father’s arm, the way my mother’s hair spills across her face, and the single shoe Mira lost somewhere between her bed and the window. I’ve memorized it all because my brain won’t let me forget, no matter how much I want to.
But something is different this time.
There’s a fourth body.
She’s lying near the fireplace with her copper hair fanned out around her head like a halo. Her eyes are open, and she’s staring at nothing. Her throat bears the same ragged wound as my father’s. Blood pools beneath her, soaking into the rug my mother spent two months weaving by hand.
Skylar.
I try to scream, but no sound comes out. I try to run to her, but my legs won’t move. All I can do is stand there and stare at her empty eyes while the house fills with smoke and the flames begin to climb the walls. The mockingbird outside keeps singing like nothing is wrong.
“Bryan.”
Someone is shaking my shoulder. I lunge upward with my fist already swinging before I’m fully awake, and Thomas catches my wrist an inch from his face.
