Silas Read online

  She dragged her hands over her face. “Just shut up, okay? Just shut up. Let me think.” She began to massage her temples.

  I waited.

  She stood there, rubbing her forehead, her eyes squeezed shut.

  “Listen,” I said gently.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t have to listen to you. This is all your fault, anyway. If you had just left me alone—”

  “You think I don’t know that?” I said. “You think it doesn’t kill me that you’re here? That you’re in danger?”

  She scoffed. “Kill you? Don’t even try that. Emmett was right about you. You don’t care about anyone except yourself.”

  “That isn’t true, Christa,” I said.

  “It isn’t?” She raised her eyebrows. “I was only a piece of ass to you and don’t deny it.”

  “You were a piece of ass to me? What the hell was I to you? Don’t even act like I’m the one trying to take advantage of you right now.”

  “Take advantage? Is that how you feel, Silas? Did I use you and hurt your little feelings?”

  I clenched my hands in fists.

  “You want me,” she said. “You want me very, very badly. That’s what this is about. It’s not about what I want at all. Maybe I don’t even really like sex. Maybe I didn’t like having sex with you. And you know what? If I could be anywhere except here with you right now, I’d be there.”

  “So would I,” I said. “You think I want to be stuck in the woods with no water?”

  “Fine,” she said. “Why don’t we split up then? It would be better not to have to look at your stupid face. You can walk whatever direction you want, okay?”

  What? “No,” I said. “We’re not splitting up.”

  “Why not? Because you can’t find the water without me?”

  “No,” I said. “Because I’ve got the gun. And if the hunters find you, they might hurt you.”

  She narrowed her eyes.

  I stalked close to her and took her by the elbow. “Look, think whatever you want about me. I’m not saying that I haven’t been an asshole. Sure, I’ve done a lot of dick things. But whatever you think, the truth is that I do care about what happens to you, and I’m making it my personal mission to make sure you live through this. So, we’re not splitting up. You got that?”

  She pulled her elbow away. She searched my gaze with her own, as if she was expecting to see if I was lying or not written all over my face.

  She must have decided to believe me, because she looked away. She looked back up at the sun, and then she turned. “This way’s south. Come on.”

  * * *

  I put my finger in Christa’s face. “Wait.”

  “But the water!” Her voice was shrill.

  The stream was ahead of us. It was evening, just starting to get dark, and the sound of the rushing water was driving me crazy too. I was barely holding myself back. I pulled out the canteen that I’d gotten from the hunter yesterday. “I’m going to fill this up.”

  “Silas—”

  “Listen to me, Christa, they could be waiting for us.” We’d walked directly past the place where the scuffle had happened yesterday. Emmett’s body was still there, but the hunter’s wasn’t. That meant that they knew what had happened. They’d wanted us bad before, but now that we’d hurt someone, they were going to want us even more. “They could be watching the stream, knowing that we’ve got to come back for water at some point.”

  She drew in a noisy breath. “Okay, okay.”

  I took the gun off of my shoulder and handed it to her. “These are the shells. You put them in here.” I showed her. “Then you pump it. Then you can shoot. You got that?”

  She furrowed her brow. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “You won’t have to shoot. I’ll just go up to the stream, and I’ll fill up this canteen, and I’ll come right back to you, okay? I swear, I’ll give you the first drink.”

  She nodded.

  “But if I get shot, then you might need to use this. Don’t use it unless you’re sure they saw you. It’ll give away your position for sure. Okay?”

  “Silas, don’t get shot,” she said. She looked nervous.

  I shrugged. “Better for me to get shot than you, huh?”

  She bit her lip.

  I darted forward to the edge of the stream, unscrewing the cap on the canteen as I moved.

  I knelt down by the babbling water and submerged the canteen in the water.

  It began to fill up.

  I looked across the stream. My gaze flitted from left to right. I didn’t see anyone. But it was dark. And they were good at hiding. I hadn’t seen them the first day, when we’d come out of the cellar where they’d kept us.

  I listened too, but all I could hear was the gentle chirp of night insects.

  The canteen was full.

  I pulled it out of the stream and straightened up.

  Now I needed to get back to Christa.

  “Drake.” It was a deep voice. Male. Threatening. It was Rolf.

  I turned in a circle.

  “You killed Granger,” said Rolf. “He was one of my friends.”

  “Gee sorry about that,” I said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “No matter what you do, I’m not going to stop. I’m going to make sure you understand what it feels like to have a woman you care about stolen from you.”

  “I already know,” I said. “You already did.”

  “Bullshit, Drake,” he said. “Bullshit.”

  Then there were shots. A volley of them, coming from several different directions.

  They tore into me—into my chest and belly and arms.

  I screamed.

  The shots kept coming. Big shotgun shells exploded into my flesh.

  I fell. The water in the canteen was spilling.

  And then I went dark.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  When I woke up, I didn’t move. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out, and I didn’t know if Rolf and the others were watching me. It was full dark. I was cold.

  I was afraid to get up. I was afraid to call for Christa. What if they were waiting for me to go to her, and they’d ambush us then? What if they’d kill her right in front of me, and it would be my fault, because I called out to her.

  So I waited.

  It felt like hours.

  I was covered in my own sticky, dried blood. My clothes were ruined, full of bullet holes, drenched in blood.

  I felt half-dead already, even though I was still breathing.

  “Silas?” A whispered voice.

  I didn’t move. That sounded like Christa, but maybe it was a trap.

  “Silas, Jesus, don’t actually be dead.” She knelt down next to me.

  I looked up. It was her. “Christa. What about Rolf?”

  “Gone,” she said. “He and the others left a while ago. I could hear them talking about how they were going to have fun hunting you down over and over again. They said you were the best prey they’d ever had, because you never die.”

  I got to my feet, groaning. “Great. That sounds like a blast.”

  She handed me the canteen. It was full of water. “I filled this up after they left. You were still out of it.”

  I drained the entire thing, sucking down the cool, sweet liquid. Water had never tasted so good to me. Dying and coming back really took a lot out of me, and my body wasn’t at its best. “How long was I out of it?”

  “A long time,” she said.

  “It’s taking me longer than usual to recover,” I said. “My body must be worn down. Can’t heal quickly if I’m run down.”

  “What do you think that means? Do you think that you could get to point where you don’t heal at all?”

  “I don’t know. Far as I know, no one else who has the serum has ever let their bodies get so run down.” I chuckled. “That’d show Rolf, wouldn’t it? He wouldn’t be able to hunt me forever if I eventually just died of sheer exhaustion and hunger.”

 
She didn’t laugh. “Why did he say that he was going to show you what it was like to see a woman you care about stolen from you?”

  I cast my glance away from her.

  “What the hell does that mean, Silas?” she said.

  “Nothing,” I said. “It doesn’t mean anything, because I’m not going to let him get his hands on you.”

  She shivered, hugging herself. “And this is all because you slept with his wife.”

  I was sick of the way they all kept blaming me for Sylvia. “You know, I didn’t really have a choice. I had to sleep with his wife.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “What are you talking about?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing. Never mind.”

  “No,” she said. “You’re going to tell me what the hell you meant by that.”

  “We need to find someplace to hide,” I said. “They may have gone, but they’ll be back.”

  She folded her arms over her chest. “You’re infuriating.”

  “Yeah, we’ve established that,” I muttered.

  * * *

  Eventually, we found another cave. It didn’t have nearly as large of an opening as the last one. It was just a tiny three-foot wide circle near the ground. We had to crawl inside. But once we got in, it was actually pretty spacious inside.

  We could both stand up, and it was warm and dry. We were relatively close to water, so one of us could run and fill up the canteen. We both thought that it would be a tough place to find us. We felt safe there.

  It was late. I’d been shot at and dehydrated and threatened. I was exhausted.

  I threw myself down on the floor of the cave. I needed rest.

  My stomach growled. Damn it. We hadn’t had anything to eat except the berries earlier. Food would have been nice, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen.

  “Are you hungry?” whispered Christa.

  “Starving,” I said.

  “Me too.” She sounded sad and beaten.

  I reached out for her in the darkness, finding her hand. “We’ll eat tomorrow. We’re near the stream. We can get fish.”

  She crawled closer, and her body was against mine. “You’ll teach me how to catch them?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We’ll make spears like Emmett taught me.”

  “Oh god,” she said. “Emmett’s gone.”

  I rolled away from her. “Before you got to fuck him. Such a tragedy.”

  “Fuck you,” she muttered. “I wasn’t going to sleep with Emmett. If you’d listened to anything I’d said, I explained to him that I didn’t think he could share. I said it to shock him. To throw him off balance. I didn’t want you guys arguing anymore.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “You’d sleep with anything, wouldn’t you?”

  “Funny,” she said. “That’s what everyone says about you.”

  “Hey,” I said. “I have standards. I only have sex with young, hot, willing chicks. In safe situations. Not out in the wilderness when I need to stay sharp because I’m in a lot of fucking danger.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m too hungry right now to try to jump you. You’re safe from my disturbing feminine wiles.”

  “Good,” I said.

  It was quiet. I lay alone in the darkness of the cave. My stomach rumbled again. It hurt. I was really fucking hungry.

  “Silas?”

  “What?”

  “Did something happen to you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Is that why it freaked you out that I gave you that hand job the other night? Because it reminded you of something bad?”

  “No,” I said. “No, it was only that it was weird.”

  “Why’d you say that thing about Rolf’s wife? That you had to sleep with her?”

  “Go to sleep, Christa.” My stomach rumbled again.

  “Maybe you really don’t want me,” she murmured. “Is that really all it is?”

  I sighed. “I want to go to sleep. That’s all I want.”

  I felt her get closer to me again, tentatively. “It’s cold,” she said softly. “If I promise to keep my hands off of you, can I—”

  “Whatever.” I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her into my chest. Truth was, I was kind of cold myself, considering I had no shirt. It had been riddled with bullet holes. “Now, shut up.”

  Her stomach made noises.

  Mine answered in return.

  And I had to admit that it was nice to have her in my arms like that, safe and close and secure.

  Sleep began to tug at me. Dreams bled into reality, and I was running through the woods again, only this time, I couldn’t see Christa, and I was afraid to yell for her, because then Rolf would know she was alive.

  * * *

  “Like this?” Christa was working with a sharp rock to try and whittle a sharp end on the long sticks we’d gathered. It was morning, and we were sitting outside the cave.

  I peered at her handiwork. “Yeah, that looks pretty good. You got it.”

  “So, this is going to take a while, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, probably.” And I was even more damned hungry now than I’d been last night.

  “So, we’ve got time. Tell me about Rolf’s wife.”

  I sighed. “You really want to know about that?”

  “I want to understand why he hates you so much,” she said.

  I busied myself with my own stick, dragging the sharp rock over the bark. “It’s not actually something I like talking about.”

  “Yeah, I can tell that,” she said. “But I think I need to understand everything. So, if you had to do it, then why? Did someone force you?”

  “Basically,” I said.

  “Who? Rolf’s wife?”

  “No,” I said. “Not exactly. Her name was Sylvia, incidentally.”

  “Then who?”

  I peered down at the stick. Would it really hurt to talk about it? “There was this woman named Jolene French. She was one of the people who headed up Op Wraith. She was a psychologist, but she was kind of psychotic.” After Griffin had gone after Marcel, we’d blown her to smithereens, at least we hope we did. No one had heard from her in a while. “She was awful. And she used the assassins in Op Wraith for other jobs besides killing people.”

  “Other jobs?”

  “Well, at first it seemed innocent enough,” I said. “Like, she had Sloane and me work at servers at this soiree for all the big investors in Dewhurst-McFarland. We had to dress up in white button-up shirts and black ties and carry around trays of champagne. I guess that’s how Sylvia saw me in the first place. I don’t remember talking to her, but I had to be polite to a bunch of people that day.”

  “I don’t understand why this Jolene person would use assassins as servers,” said Christa. “It doesn’t seem like the same skill set.”

  I laughed. “No, you wouldn’t think so, would you? French did it because she was greedy. She had a budget for servers, but if she used us, we were free labor, and she could pocket that money.”

  “But none of the assassins got into fights or were rude to the guests?”

  “We did what we were told,” I said. “It had been illustrated to us, pretty graphically, that if Op Wraith was displeased with our performance in any way, we’d be killed.”

  “Oh,” she said. “So you didn’t have a choice.”

  “Not at all,” I said.

  “And Griffin didn’t either.”

  “No. I thought I told you that before.”

  “It’s just hard for me to think about my big brother killing people. That’s all.”

  “Well, he was, like, in jail.”

  “Yeah, but that was all a big mistake. He robbed a store with a toy gun. He meant it as a joke, and it went badly,” she said. “He never would have actually hurt anyone.”

  Had I known that? Had I ever spent much time trying to find out anything about Griffin? He was probably my closest guy friend, and I’d never really gotten to know him. I felt a little ashamed of myself. If I go
t out of this—and I was going to do exactly that—then I vowed to myself I’d do better. I’d be a real friend.

  “Anyway,” said Christa, “I’m sorry. I got you off track. So, you were a server, and you didn’t screw up because you knew they’d kill you if you did.”

  “Right,” I said. “Well, French was an opportunist when it came to using us to make money. There weren’t any moral lines she was afraid of crossing. So, in addition to making us servers, she had another little side business going on. And she didn’t want me for it at first. Instead, she wanted Sloane. But I wasn’t about to let that happen. So, I said that I’d do it voluntarily as often as French wanted, with whoever she wanted, as long as we agreed that Sloane was off limits.”

  “What was this side business? It sounds bad, but what could be worse than killing people?”

  “It wasn’t worse than killing people,” I said. “I mean, it wasn’t worse for me, anyway. It would have been worse for Sloane. She couldn’t have handled it.”

  “Okay,” Christa said slowly. “So, what was it?”

  “She, uh…” How to put this? “French hired us out to, like, entertain people in very personal ways.”

  “What do you mean?” Christa sounded confused.

  She wasn’t getting it. I decided to just put it bluntly. “People paid French money to have sex with us.”

  A little sound of shock from Christa. “What?”

  “Yeah, she whored us out. And I knew that Sloane couldn’t have taken that. I mean, I don’t think she even really knew that French wanted to use her. I kind of kept it from her. And French didn’t go for my deal right away. She didn’t think I was much of a substitution. There was really less of an, um, demand for male… companions.” I sighed. “I guess I was lucky that most of the people that supported Dewhurst-McFarland, a company that made weapons, were, you know, straight. Otherwise, Griffin and I would have a lot in common.”

  “What do you mean by that?” she said.

  Shit. I guessed Griffin probably hadn’t advertised what had happened to him in jail. I figured he never would have told me if it weren’t for the fact that we were up against Marcel, the guy who did it to him. He’d figured that we needed to know why the guy was after him last year.

  “Nothing,” I said. “It was a bad joke.”