Page 138 of Fragile Sanctuary

I blinked so quicklythat the image in front of me blurred. The smudged version was better because this one couldn’t be right.

Silas.

The boy who’d always been funny. A little crass but in a harmless sort of way—or so I’d thought. He’d been a year older but blended into the larger group of friends I’d been a part of since moving to Sparrow Falls. But like with everyone other than Fallon, I’d drifted away from him after the fire.

The fire.

A fire that had killed my family. Almost killed me. A fire that Anson and Trace now thought had been set intentionally. We thought it had been Felix, but it wasn’t Felix standing before me now. It wasn’t Felix who had taken me. Who killed Deputy Rolston.

Bile surged up my throat at the memory of Rolston slumped against the wheel. All the blood. And Silas had killed him. The same Silas who had brought me kittens to take careof. Who had sat at my picnic table and complimented me on my food. Who had been on the outskirts of my life for as long as I’d lived in Sparrow Falls.

I swallowed hard, trying to force down the sickness. “What’s happening, Silas?”

The corners of his mouth kicked up into a smile. “Don’t play dumb, Rho. It’s beneath you.”

My heart rate kicked up, the organ feeling like a Ping-Pong ball in one of those lotto wheels. “Okay.Whereare we?”

“That’s better.” He began walking around the demolished house. He moved without looking where he was going, seeming to have memorized every crumbling floorboard and unsteady wall. “This is where I grew up.”

I frowned. I knew Silas had a mother and sister—a mom who had struggled to make ends meet working at one of our gas stations. They’d moved to Florida when he was in his early twenties, but I didn’t remember hearing anything about the house burning down. “When was the fire?”

Silas raised and lowered a shoulder casually. “I don’t know. Years ago. Time really is fluid.”

I took one step backward, trying to feel for the edge of the entryway. I would have to make a run for it and hope for the best. But there was a significant drop-off from the entry to the ground. And running for it would be easier if I didn’t break my neck first. “I just don’t remember hearing anything about it.”

He picked up one of the photos that had been plastered around what remained of the house. It was one of me at a dance in middle school. My hair was piled on the top of my head in ridiculous curlicue ringlets, and I wore a dress that shimmered beneath a mirror ball. “Why would you? No one cares if a falling-apart cabin burns.”

My toe caught the edge of the drop-off, and I halted, trying to feel if anything was below it, like crumbling steps. “I’m sure the fire department would’ve.”

Silas scoffed. “People would’ve thought it was simply a large trash burn if they saw the smoke in the distance. And this town didn’tcare about me or my family. We were invisible to them.” His gaze snapped to me. “But I wasn’t invisible to you, was I?”

Something about the question had ice sliding through my veins. I had a feeling how I answered it would dictate important next steps. “Of course, you weren’t. We were friends. We?—”

“We were a hell of a lot more than friends, Rhodes. You saw me.” Silas’s expression softened. But something about the gentleness terrified me way more than his anger. “Without you, I would’ve failed Spanish. Maybe would’ve had to drop out. But you studied with me every day in the library.”

I thought back to that seventh-grade year. He’d been a year older but had been held back in Spanish. I’d known he was struggling and easily frustrated. I remembered helping him during our free periods, bent over books in the library.

It had seemed like nothing. Spanish had always come easily to me. And spending some time helping someone who needed it was…nothing.

“You shared your lunch with me,” Silas said, his voice taking on a dreamy quality. “You took care of me.”

That came flooding back, too. The memory of seeing that Silas only ate chips and candy bars from the vending machine. I’d asked my mom to pack him a lunch, too.

“So kind. So gentle. We shared a bond. Even if people kept interfering in our relationship, trying to keep us apart.”

My stomach roiled at the transformation. Gone was the gentleness. In its place was fury and more than a little instability. I struggled to keep my breathing even and my expression neutral, but I had no idea what to say that wouldn’t infuriate him. “Who tried to keep us apart?”

Silas’s hands clenched and flexed over and over again, almost as if he were sending some sort of silent message with the long and short punctuated movements. “You know.”

I shook my head, the action making pain flare in my skull. “I don’t. Everyone I know liked you.”

“Felix fucking didn’t,” he spat, tearing the dance photo from ahalf-demolished wall. He shook the paper at me. “He was drooling over you this night. Told his friends he was going to ask you out the next day. Should’ve gutted him then. Tried to set him up, get him riled up that you were in danger and sent him poking around your house. Thought maybe the profiler would kill him the other night. But he can’t do anything right, can he?”

My pulse thrummed—in my neck, my head, traveling down my arm. He saidprofilerwith such familiarity. “How did you know Anson was a profiler?”

Silas sent me a smarmy smile. “Come on, Rho. Small towns are gossip mills. I’ve had at least half a dozen people ask me if I knew. So sad that boy couldn’t cut it.”

I bit the inside of my cheek.

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