Free Silencing Joy by Amy Rachiele Page A

quickly looked away from his gaze. He was
right...I did have trouble looking him in the eye.
    Will put his hand under my chin, and I
shivered from his touch. He tilted my head towards him and, with my
face to him, my eyes wandered away in mortification.
    Will smiled knowingly and changed to special-agent swim teacher .
    “Let’s do some strokes right here. Move your
arms like this.” He showed me and encouraged me to copy him.
    I did, feeling stupid.
    “Now hold on to the dock and kick your
feet.”
    I leaned back and grasped behind me. I kicked
out and moved my legs. Will reached for me, and I flinched, and
automatically drop my legs.
    “Keep going,” he said. “Legs stiffer.”
    I kicked out again and focused on keeping my
legs horizontal. Will touched my legs, but I kept going, swishing
and kicking in the water. He gently repositioned my legs.
    “Like this,” he said watching me. “Better,”
he encouraged.
    I felt completely stupid. Here I was, an
adult learning to swim with a gorgeous guy standing over me giving
me directions. I analyzed the situation and gathered that I didn’t
like the focus of attention on me. That was really the crux of it,
if you were going to boil it down to its root.
    I kept kicking as Will took me out into the
deeper water. He towed me while I tried to put together everything
he had taught me.
    “Good. You are doing really well,” Will
praised.
    I concentrated on my movements and on the
water. Without me even realizing it, Will had let go. I watch the
water with its small ripples and cool sloshing. My feet and arms
moved succinctly. I was swimming!
    “I’m doing it,” I commented softly.
    “Yes. You are.”
    Will swam back to me and scooped me into his
arms. His skin was chilly, but that was not what made me tremble.
It was his closeness, the way he looked at me with dark eyes. He
ran his wet fingers along my arm, up my shoulder, and across my
neck. I closed my eyes, savoring his touches. It stopped. I opened
my eyes to see he had backed away.
    “Let’s head back in. I think you definitely
have the gist of swimming,” Will said, and he helped me back to the
dock.
    “Thank you,” I told him quietly.
    “No problem. You’re a natural,” he
responded.
*****
    At the cabin, I showered again. Will waited
for me to finish, then went to shower, too. I left my hair damp and
headed down to the computer by the kitchen.
    I took my camera and cords over to it,
pressing the power button to boot it up. A government message
popped up. A text box requiring a code floated in the middle of the
screen.
    “Will!” I yelled. “I need the password for
this computer.”
    He called down to me from upstairs,
“ABC123.”
    Was he kidding? Wow, that’s really high
tech. I typed in the code and got onto Windows. I plugged my
camera in to load, then went into the kitchen to get some crackers.
It was getting close to suppertime; I was getting hungry.
    When I walked back to the computer, all of my
pictures had loaded into a neat grid of thumbnails. I scanned them
quickly and practically choked on a cracker, coughing and gagging.
Will came downstairs.
    “What’s the matter?”
    I pointed at the screen while coughing
through cracker crumbs. I clicked a picture to full size. Will
leaned in over my shoulder.
    “Holy shit!” he cursed.
    The picture was of a play that I had really
zoomed in on. So much so, that you could see straight through to
under the bleachers on the other side of the stadium. You could
just make out through people’s sneakered feet...a face!
    A girl with long hair. She appeared to have
something over her mouth. I clicked to zoom in on the picture until
we could see only a gagged, shadowed face. The image reminded me of
a horror movie. The way her eyes screamed with terror, but no
sound. Her head tilted in a struggling motion.
    Will strode purposefully to the kitchen
counter to get his cell phone, and immediately made a call. I heard
only his end of the conversation.
    “Sir,”