Free Layers Deep by Lacey Silks Page B

fraction by the scar. The curve on my mouth slowly faded
as I concentrated on his face. The pulse on his neck thickened his
jugular. My nerves picked up as I wondered whether we were on one
of his job assignments and he was testing me today. I suspected I
wouldn’t see anything pleasant, not from the way his fists
tightened around the black plastic. After a long exhale, he handed
me the binoculars, wrapped his right arm around me, and directed my
gaze where he wanted me to look.
    “One o’clock.
There’s a house in the forest. The patch-of-grass driveway is
greener than the rest around it,” he whispered.
    I focused
through the lens, seeking the wooden structure he described
slightly to the right. There it was! A log cabin, not more than
twenty by twenty, windows covered with cardboard box. A simple home
turned sideways, both front and back yard visible.
    “I got it.” I
matched his predatory voice. We were on a hunt, looking for a
suspect, I imagined.
    “Look in the
back.”
    I felt a
tighter squeeze of support on my arm. Tristan had his entire arm
around me now, holding on, smoothing his palm on the back of my
bicep.
    “And breathe,
Allie. Please breathe,” he said.
    At that moment
I understood the concern that had coated every single word Tristan
had said to me.
    “Oh, my God,”
I whispered. My jaw tightened. If I ground my teeth any harder,
it’d snap.
    “He lives
closer than you thought, doesn’t he?” Tristan asked.
    I nodded,
feeling the lump form in my throat. It had been a few years since
I’d seen the creep, and the feelings of betrayal and guilt rushed
back to me. The bastard had changed: a little older now, with gray
hair covering most of his head. A new hump stuck out at the top of
his back. For a moment, he looked my way and I held my breath. My
heart raced. Wright narrowed his brows before he resumed sharpening
a blade on a whetstone. The scrunched clothing appeared old, but
the mean streak I remembered on his face was still there.
    My hands
trembled as my memory searched that day. The blood on my mother’s
clothes, its iron tang on the tip of my tongue, the smell of raw
dough from waffle batter, the scent of hospital antiseptic and
fresh daisies from Emma’s wreath all blended into one.
    “My mother
told you?” I asked, looking at the man who ruined our lives. I
couldn’t pull away. Both my resolve and anger boiled inside me.
    “Yes.”
    I blamed
myself for that. I should have known the day she downed a bottle of
tequila on her own and told me she knew I was under the staircase
that she’d eventually spill it to someone else. When the time was
right, she had to tell someone about what had happened; but why did
it have to be Cross? My body shook and I couldn’t take the
binoculars away. The ovals of the optics stuck around my eyes. I
pressed them harder. Something was wrong. Wright was in his
preparation mode. I’d seen this before when I was a child. I
remembered the way his sleeves were rolled up before he went out
hunting with Daddy; then that day; and again when he almost found
my mother two years ago.
    “I have to go,
Tristan. She’s not safe anymore.” The swell in my eyes had been
controlled too well, but my pulse was another story.
    “Stay.”
Tristan’s firm grip around me pinned my body in place. “Your
mother’s safe with Julian. I drove them to the airport myself this
morning.”
    “What are you
talking about? She went with Julian?” I turned on my side.
    “It didn’t
take much persuasion once I told her Wright was in the area.”
    “So you knew
before she told you? How? No one knew.”
    “People talk.
They suspect things. And someone like Wright has a big enough mouth
to have bragged about your mother to the wrong person.”
    “Is that why
you came with me?”
    “Yes.”
    “You should
have told me.”
    “You would
have run. You would have gone to your mother, taken her out, and
left the city. You would have worried about her and about Wright
being too