Silas (20 page)

“
He was dying,” I snapped.
“He wasn’t going to be fine.” I looked down at him. “He’s not fine.
He’s the opposite of fine.” My voice cracked.

“
What’s wrong with you?” she
said. “Does anything get to you at all?”

I clenched my jaw. Couldn’t
she see how badly all of this was getting to me? Couldn’t she tell
that I was wrecked about all of this? I shook my head.
“Whatever.”

She turned to Emmett. “Let’s
bury him.”

Emmett rubbed his forehead.
“I guess we could cover him with leaves or something.”

“
But the coyote,” she said.
“I mean wouldn’t animals just dig under the leaves?”

“
Well, Silas is right,” said
Emmett. “We don’t have a shovel or anything to bury him
with.”

She hugged herself. “Okay,”
she said in a tiny voice. “Okay. Let’s get some leaves.”

I wanted to walk away from
both of them. They wanted to waste time covering up his body when
it was a stupid, futile gesture? Fine. I’d do the smart thing and
get moving.

But I couldn’t leave
Christa. I needed to protect her. It had been hard enough to find
her in the first place. I couldn’t let her go again.

“
All right,” I said. “We’ll
get leaves.”

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

“
Look!” said Christa. She
caught up to me and pointed. “The power lines.”

We’d been walking for hours,
ever since we left Milo behind under a pile of leaves. None of us
had been in very good mood after that.

She was right. There they were, right
ahead.

The power lines reached up higher than
the trees.

The lines were attached to
huge wooden crossbeams. There was one every so often, big thick
electric wires draped over them, traveling up a tall
hill.

The area around the lines
had been cleared of trees and bramble, but it had been done a long
time ago. It looked as if this area used to be regularly mowed, but
no one had been there to do it in a while, and the grass was now
waist high.

I looked up at the power
lines. “Wow. They’re big.”

“
They’ve got to lead
somewhere,” said Emmett.

“
They do,” said
Christa.

I grinned at them. Something
was going right. In all of the madness that we were living through,
we’d actually found something that might help us.

We stayed inside the edge of
the tree line and walked near the power lines, not out in the
clearing, where we’d be too conspicuous.

Our spirits had lifted quite a bit, and
as we walked, we discussed what we might find at the other end of
the power lines.

“
Wouldn’t it be amazing if
we crested over that hill and there was a whole town?” said
Christa.

“
But there can’t be,” I
said. “I mean, right? They wouldn’t be hunting us so close to
civilization?”

“
More likely a house or
something,” said Emmett. “Maybe more than one. This is a pretty
heavy-duty power line.”

We picked up the pace.
Finding the power lines had given us a surge of energy. The sun
began to grow heavy in the sky. The shadows grew longer. We pressed
on, climbing to the top of the hill.

Even though I knew it didn’t
make sense, half of me hoped that Christa was right, and that we’d
climb to the top of the hill and see a town spread out in front of
us. Tons of houses. Tons of people. Safety. Civilization. The end
of this nightmare. But I knew it was more likely that what we’d see
was nothing. The power lines would probably stretch through a
valley and up another hill, further into the distance. There was
probably nothing to see at the top of the hill.

Even still, as we reached the top, I
felt a little bit excited. Hopeful.

I pushed myself to go faster, to try to
get up to the top to look down over the hill.

Eventually, we made it, and
the valley below us came into view.

Like I’d thought, there was
no town.

But unlike I’d thought, the
power lines didn’t stretch out over the hills.

Instead, they…
stopped.

Actually, they’d fallen
down. There was tangle of two of the crossbeams on the ground, the
electric wires caught up in the splintered and broken
wood.

On the other side of them, the forest
closed back in. There was no clearing that used to be mowed. No
waist-high grass.

Nothing.

I shook my head at the ruin
of the power lines. What did it mean?

“
Fuck,” said
Emmett.

I looked at him.

“
Fuck.
” He took off running for the
downed crossbeams.

Christa and I watched him.

When he reached them, he
picked up one of the fat electrical cables. “Dead,” he called back
at us. “No electricity running through them.”

“
Is that bad?” said
Christa.

“
Fuck.” Emmett kicked the
downed tangle of wood and wire.

* * *

“
Must have been old power
lines,” said Emmett. We were all sitting in the woods. Night had
fallen. We hadn’t had the will to go any further that day. “Maybe
they ran them out here a long time ago. I should have been
suspicious when the grass hadn’t been cut. Should have realized
that if they aren’t being maintained, they aren’t actually in
use.”

“
You couldn’t have known,”
Christa said, putting a hand on his forearm.

He looked up at her, into her
eyes.

Her hand lingered on his
skin.

Okay, what the fuck was up
with that? Why was she touching him like that? “Yeah, it’s not your
fault, Emmett,” I said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that
we’re screwed now.”

“
Hey,” said Christa,
removing her hand. “Don’t attack him.”

“
I wasn’t,” I said. “I was
just stating a fact.” I was pleased that she wasn’t touching him
anymore, but I wasn’t happy that she was defending him.

“
We were always screwed,”
said Emmett. “We’ll just… we’ll have to think of another way out of
here.”

Right. A way out. That was
what we needed. I had promised that I’d get Christa out of this.
There had to be a way. But right now, I had to admit, it seemed
sort of hopeless.

Christa leaned back against
a tree trunk. “I feel like I should be crying or something, but I
don’t seem to have the energy for it. This has been such a bad day.
First Milo, then this.”

“
Yeah,” I said dryly, “and
don’t forget the men chasing us trying to shoot us
dead.”

“
Oh whatever, Silas,” said
Emmett. “How many times you been shot already? You don’t even have
any idea what it’s like for the rest of us, do you?”

“
Sure I do,” I
said.

“
No,” he said. “You can’t,
because you aren’t in the same kind of danger we are. It only takes
one second for it to be over for us. We took a break this morning,
and Milo got shot. One second fine, the next second
dead.”

“
We only took that damned
break because Milo was wounded,” I said. “He was probably going to
die anyway from that arm wound. Only more slowly and more
painfully.”

“
And Silas says stupid jerky
things,” said Christa, rolling her eyes. “As usual.”

“
It’s the truth,” I said.
Christa confused the hell out of me. She spent half her time trying
to touch my dick and the other half calling me names. “Look, I’m
not saying that I wanted anything bad to happen to
Milo.”

“
You didn’t even care about
him,” she said.

“
I didn’t know him,” I said.
“None of us did. But no matter what, he didn’t deserve to go out
that way. What they did to him was fucked up.”

Emmett laughed. “You’re
saying that for her, aren’t you? Like you pulled Milo along with us
before so that she wouldn’t know that you didn’t give a rip about
him.”

I glared at him. I hadn’t
forgotten the fact that he’d given me up to Christa, telling her
all about how I’d wanted to leave Milo behind. “No. That’s not why
I’m saying it.”

He leaned forward. “I’ve
seen guys like you before, Silas. Guys that get off on violence.
Guys that don’t have any kind of conscience. You might be able to
fake it good enough for some people, but I see right through you.
You’re nothing but a mindless killing machine.”

“
That’s not what I am,” I
said.

He turned to Christa. “We’d
be better off without him. He’s going to take bad risks. He’s going
to put us in danger. He doesn’t care about anyone but
himself.”

What the hell? “No. That’s
not true.”

Christa furrowed her brow.
“You want us to leave Silas behind?”

“
He’d leave either of us
behind if it suited him,” said Emmett.

“
I wouldn’t,” I
said.

“
Of course you would,” said
Emmett. “What kind of guy are you, anyway? You’re an assassin. You
kill for money—”

“
I was
forced
to kill for
money.” I clenched my hands into fists. “You don’t know what it was
like in Op Wraith. We had to do what they said or else they had
someone else take us out. And my sister was with me. I had to
protect her. So, I had to do what they said. And I had to try to
keep her safe. Keep her safe from them, from her own head, from…
You shouldn’t talk about things you don’t
understand.”

He just smirked. “You kill
people for money, and you sleep with other men’s wives.”

I shook my head. “You don’t
understand any of it.”

Emmett looked at Christa.
“Admit it. You’re not with him, are you? You two aren’t together.
You didn’t know a damned thing about him. You’ve been angry with
him every minute that we’ve been here.”

Christa shrugged. “What if
we weren’t together, Emmett?”

“
We’re together,” I said. I
was feeling really annoyed with Emmett for saying this shit about
me.

Christa wound a strand of
hair around her finger. “Apparently, Emmett wants to fuck me
too.”

Emmett turned to her
sharply. “No, that’s not at all what I’m saying.”

She giggled. “I’d be
flattered if I weren’t the only girl here.”

Emmett looked at me, shaking
his head. “I am not trying to move in on her.”

I folded my arms over my
chest. “You’re not?”

“
I swear.”

Christa let out a dramatic
sigh. “I’m sorry, Emmett, I don’t think it would work. See, we
can’t leave Silas behind. He may be a big jerk, and he may kill
people, and be self-centered, and all the things you said,
but—”

“
I am
not
a jerk,” I
said.

She put her hands on her
hips. “I was talking.”

I sighed.

“
But,” she continued, “he’s
invincible, so if he gets shot, he comes back. And that’s something
that can be really useful to us. Besides, he’s taken care of me
thus far. All I’m saying is that I don’t want to leave him
behind.”

I smiled grimly at her.
“Well, thanks for that.”

She chewed on her lip. “I’d
say that you guys could just share, but given the fact that you
shot the man who was fucking your wife, Emmett, I’m kind of
guessing you aren’t particularly good at that.”

Emmett’s face got
red.

My lips parted, but no sound
came out. She had
not
just said that.

“
I’d let you, though, if I
needed to,” she said. “Now that there are only two of you, I think
I could handle it. As long as nobody wanted to stick it in my ass,
because there’s not a lot of lube around here.”

I coughed in surprise. I was
beginning to wonder if Christa were not seriously damaged in some
kind of way. I couldn’t
believe
she’d gone there.

She turned to me, giving me
her innocent look. “What?”

“
Oh, nothing,” I said
sarcastically, “casually talking about butt sex with two guys while
we’re all on the run from people shooting us is, you know, totally
the most normal thing on earth. Nothing about what you’re saying is
the least bit fucked up.”

She shrugged. “Whatever.
Silas, you’ve been trying to get back into my panties since the
minute you got out of them, so don’t even act like you don’t want
to hit this, because you do.” She turned to Emmett. “And I figure
it’s probably been a long time since you got laid at all. So, you
can both pretend like you weren’t thinking about it. But I know you
were.” She got up. “I’m going to go find a bush to pee behind. Play
nice, boys.”

I watched her disappear into the
woods.

I looked back at Emmett. His
face was still red. He wasn’t looking at me.