Her cheek has started to slump downward, and shereaches up to touch it. Her fingers sink into her own skin like the surface has turned soft, and she jerks her hand back, horrified. Her cheeks droop further, stretching downward. Hair and scalp fall in heavy clumps that land on her shoulders. Her sweater sinks into her chest, submerged in liquifying skin.
This can’t be real. This can’t be happening.
She manages to reach for me again, but her fingers droop and stretch, bending in unnatural ways. I can’t take this. I draw in frantic, intentionally large breaths of smoke. Just let me die now. But it doesn’t even make me cough.
Silver jerks in my arms and I look down to see her face sagging too. Her lips wilt and her eyelids drain away. I clutch her tighter, trying to hold her together, but my fingers sink into the softened flesh of her back. Her body slips through my arms and spills onto the floor in a heavy mess. Isla lets out a wet broken sound at the same time and slumps over, melting into the floorboards.
A scream tears from my throat, and I drop to the floor, reaching for Isla, reaching for Silver. My body strains but I still can’t move while smoke fills my lungs and the flames close in, blistering my skin. When I open my mouth to scream, fire rushes in. All the times I’ve wanted to die and now I am.
I could’ve saved one of them, but my indecision destroys them both, destroys us all.
I jolt awake, my breath ripping in and out of me as I grip the mattress so hard my fingers cramp. Sweat drenches my neck and chest. For a moment, I’m still torn between realityand the worst nightmare I’ve ever experienced. I can still taste the smoke, hear Isla’s begging and my screams.
Silver stirs beside me, her hand soft as it touches my shoulder. “Lee, are you alright?”
Her voice is real, and I hang onto that. It’s soft and concerned. Her skin is warm and alive under my fingers when I pull her against me so tight she gasps. I bury my face in her hair, but I can’t speak, can’t begin to put it into words.
She whispers my name again, confused and gentle. Her lips press to my temple. She runs her fingers through my hair and murmurs, “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
I hold her like she might slip through my arms and melt away if I loosen my grip even a little. The nightmare fades but the terror stays, wrapped tightly around me. Now, they both haunt me. The one I saved and the one I failed.
The street is quiet in the late morning with most kids at school and adults at work. A few cars roll by now and then but they pay me no attention. The truck engine is off, and my breath fogs the windshield until I have to clear it with my sleeve to get a better view of the small blue house with a leaning mailbox.
There’s nothing that sets Joshua Haney’s place apart from the rest of the neighborhood. It’s not a bad area, but not great either. The houses are older, their paint is a little sunburned, the chain link fences sag in spots, but nothing screams danger. Just people trying to hold life together.
There’s nothing suspicious about the man at all, at least on paper. Based on what Landon has dug up, Joshua is a thirty-one year old man with no criminal record or history of violence. His tax records show a modest income as a self-employed tattoo artist, and while he isn’t well off by any means, he isn’t drowning in debt. Unless it’s to a loan shark. He’s divorced with two kids that live with their mother in Florida, but he pays child support and there are no custody disputes or big life insurance policies that would make me suspect his ex.
Our days of staking out his house and business haven’t revealed anything since there’s been no sight of him. I’m beginning to think that he knows he’s in danger and has fled when a gray sedan matching the plate number Justus gave me pulls into his driveway. Finally. I pull my baseball cap lower on my forehead in case he glances my way and watch.
He gets out of his car, pops the trunk, and opens the passenger door. The seat is crowded with backpacks, a cardboard box with school folders sticking out, and a long duffel bag. A boy and a girl, around eight years old spill out of the back doors. Joshua says something to them, and they both sling a backpack over their shoulders while he pulls two suitcases bearing cartoon characters from the trunk.
It's a little early for schools to be on winter break. It looks like they’re moving in with him. Joshua looks tired, but he returns the kids’ excited smiles as he helps the boy adjust his backpack, and hands the girl a stuffed animal. He looks more like a man strained by responsibility than a man in trouble.
A woman steps out of the house next door. Small framedwith graying hair that’s pinned back, she appears to be in her sixties. She waves both hands high as she approaches, her smile wide enough to be visible from my truck, and the kids are happy to see her. She gives them both a hug, helps them carry everything inside, then goes back to her house.
I’m going to have to move my truck farther away if the kids come outside to play. Adults may not notice me, but kids are more curious. I don’t have to worry. About thirty minutes later, the neighbor returns and Joshua emerges, locking the door behind him. He gets back in his car and drives away without sparing me a glance.
I give him half a block before starting my truck and following. He drives toward downtown, and I keep a good distance between us, though he doesn’t look concerned about his surroundings. His head is bobbing like he’s listening to music. He parks in front of his tattoo shop in the center of a small strip mall with worn pavement and faded lines. After unlocking the door, he flips aclosedsign toopenand turns on a neon light in the window. Not five minutes later, his client shows up, and he spends the next hour working on her arm while I stay across the parking lot under the shade of a billboard.
His workday gives me nothing. He has four different clients come in, and in between appointments, he cleans equipment or walks around the small shop. There’s no sign he’s dealing drugs or meeting anyone suspicious. No one argues with him or seems angry.
Once he closes the shop, I follow him across town to a thrift store. He’s shown no sign of noticing me, so I risk goingin and pretend to browse while watching him. He takes his time, looking through children’s clothes and carries two armfuls of winter clothing to the cash register. He’s not buying for himself, only the kids.
I exit before he’s finished checking out and pull into another nearby lot so he won’t notice when I turn out behind him again. This time he leads me to a grocery store where he returns with a cart full of bags before heading home. The kids rush out to help him carry in the bags, and they all go back inside.
This is the most boring stakeout ever. I sit in my truck and wait, not because I expect some dramatic reveal, but because I want to see if anyone else approaches his house. I need to know if anyone else is watching them. The babysitter leaves to return home, and the street grows quiet in the way tired neighborhoods do after work hours. The glow of TV’s leaks through curtains and a house down the road has a pizza delivered.
I stay until the clock slides past midnight, long after the house is dark. Nothing happens. I’m not sure exactly what I’m waiting for, just something to break the illusion that he’s harmless. Maybe something to confirm that whoever wrote that note has a good reason to try to use me like this. That he’s dangerous and they’re desperate or afraid. Fuck, just something that feels like an answer.
Who would want him dead, and why send the demand to me? This isn’t random. It isn’t a prank. It referenced something only a few people in my life know about.I know whereshe is. Someone expects me to break, to snap into old patterns and spill blood for answers.
My next week is spent following Joshua. I watch him drop his kids at school, go to work, shop, and come home. It doesn’t make sense. He’s not behaving like a man hiding from danger, but someone wants him dead. Badly enough to drag me into it, when they have to know that comes with a risk as well. You don’t fuck with a former murdering vigilante unless you’re insane or out of options.
Both possibilities make the person I’m dealing with particularly dangerous.
CHAPTER 12
SILVER
