Page 24 of Take a Hike
“Chuck left me this business—”
“On a technicality,” Silas said.
“Sure, but it’s still the reality, and you’ve gotta come to terms with it.”
“And if I don’t?”
“What?” she asked, not expecting his question.
“You gonna fire me if I don’t act like you want me to?”
Until that moment, Raven hadn’t conceptualized that she even had that kind of authority. She knew she was the “boss,” but not with actual, literal power. It tempered some of the adrenaline coursing through her body.
“I’d never,” she said emphatically.
The harsh slant of Silas’s brows softened slightly, like he, too, was recalibrating what all of this meant. What were their roles? How the hell were they supposed to work together when they wanted the same job?
With all this thinking going on, a hush briefly fell between them, and she was now aware of how close they’d drawn. She could feel every exhale from his nose. He smelled like menthol and something else she couldn’t immediately identify.
Silas spoke, but she missed what he said, still inexplicably taking inventory of his person. But he was now looking at her intently, the way one does when waiting for a reply. Raven was not interested in admitting she’d been distracted, so she responded with the vaguest retort she could think of: “Whatever.”
He didn’t have a chance to react before the door to the storage room opened with Halo on the other side. The short woman looked at them both and said, “You know this shit’s not soundproof, right?”
Raven winced. She’d definitely broken one of the rules for women in the workplace.
* * *
Silas had been too smug. Too goading.
He watched Raven leave the storage closet, and he regretted not keeping his thoughts to himself. Not because they were untrue, but because he’d learned in his three decades on earth to lead with tact.
Telling Raven he found her annoying wasnottactful.
Halo gave him a questioning look because arguing in closets was unlike him. He was the careful one, the steady one. The one Chuck had enlisted to communicate with contractors and local media because of his deft approach. Raven operated differently. She was a destabilizer—she liked to make changes just for the sake of it.
He and Halo left the closet for the break room and found only Bodie and Doc.
“Everything good?” Doc asked, his lips stiff and his brow furrowed.
“Perfect,” Silas replied, retrieving his food from the refrigerator before finding a spot at the table.
The others followed suit, but the conversation that usually ensued did not. In its place was the sound of moving furniture from the other room. Raven had seemingly chosen to forgo lunch to restore the cabin’s original setup.
Good.
Toward the end of their meals, the sounds in the cabin changed once again with the inflow of afternoon tourists and students. Silas grabbed his archery equipment he stored on a shelving unit between classes and searched for his next client among the throng in the front area. He fleetingly wished for the part of Raven’s arrangement that solved this problem.
“Hey, what’s up, man,” Silas said to his student, Christian, when he finally found him.
“Excited for practice,” Christian said, picking up his gear. “Been doing those drills you showed me last time.”
Christian was a local who’d been taking private lessons from Silas for about a year. It was a welcomed variety in Silas’s weekly schedule that mostly consisted of beginners.
“Let’s head out,” Silas said, taking a step forward, but Christian stopped his progress with a hand to his chest.
“Hold on, who’s that?” Christian asked, nodding to Raven, who was now working the reception.
“Raven. She’s here for the summer,” Silas said vaguely.
