Page 3 of Silent as Sin
“I know,” I said, softer. “Out there is just another kind of unknown. But this one’s got air that doesn’t hurt to breathe. Andwater. And people who’ll stand in the door and tell the dark to fuck off.”
Her eyes lifted, slow, like the sun dragging itself up. She watched my face as if she was deciding what kind of liar I was. I let her look. She’d see the truth.
She reached to her side and looked over the birds and took just one. The last she’d made. She held it in her palm like a weightless thing, stared at it a long breath, and then set it on the concrete beside her knee. Like leaving a marker. Like telling the space it could keep a piece of her.
Then she moved.
It wasn’t graceful. It was stiff and careful, the way you move after staying in one shape too long. She slid onto the blanket, paused with her toes on the steel lip, breathed shallow until the air hit her lungs clean, and then she kept going. I didn’t touch her. I didn’t crowd. I kept my hands open on my knees and my light angled down so she wouldn’t have to squint.
When she stood, her legs trembled a little. I resisted the urge to reach for her and keep her steady.
She looked at my leather cut, at the stitching, at the Ashen over my heart. Her mouth didn’t move, but something in her eyes did, curiosity or warning or both.
“What do we call you?” Warden tried again, kind, unthreatening as he could be in a body built for putting men through tables.
She didn’t answer. She picked up the bolt cutters instead, studied the bright-broken lock on the floor, then set the cutters down with care. Like the thing that had kept her in deserved to be seen before it got thrown away.
“Okay,” I murmured. “No rush.”
We got her into the hall. The heat felt different there, moving, not trapped. She blinked at the change and reached up without thinking to push her hair out of her face. That’s when Isaw it clean, the scar at her temple running thin as a thread, the soft hollow under her cheekbones where hunger lived.
“Easy,” Warden said as she wavered. He didn’t touch her either, just stood close enough to be a wall if she needed one.
“Kitchen,” I said. “Then out.”
The kitchen had a window with half the glass gone. Wind brought in desert and the dying sun. A lizard did push-ups on the sill like it was proving something. Warden found a cracked plastic cup and we rinsed it. He filled it from the bottle. She took it with both hands and studied the water like it might argue. When it didn’t, she drank, careful, not greedy. When she was done, she set the cup down exactly where it had been. Like the world made a little more sense if things went back where they came from.
We got her out to the yard. The late afternoon sun hit her hard, and she flinched, hand rising like the light itself burned. Warden shifted to block it, and I pulled my spare shades from my cut. Too big for her face, but she slid them on, and the line of her shoulders eased a fraction.
I stopped, studying her in the fading light. “You okay with going back to our clubhouse?” My voice came out low, careful. “We only want to help you.”
What I didn’t say, what I couldn’t, was that there was no fucking way we could go to the cops. Not with who we were, not with what we’d done here.
She didn’t hesitate. Just gave the smallest nod, eyes steady on mine. In them, I saw it clearly:she understood. There weren’t other options.
Two bikes waited under the lean shadow of a mesquite tree, black steel and chrome catching the last burn of the sun. My helmet sat on the saddle. I dug through my saddlebags until I found the spare jacket and an extra helmet, then held them out.
“You’ll ride with me,” I said. “Put these on.”
Her gaze flicked from my hands to my face, hesitation ghosting over her features. Then her fingers twitched once before curling around the jacket and helmet. She slipped into the jacket, too big on her, swallowing her frame, and settled the helmet on her head.
She fumbled with the strap, and I crouched in front of her. My hands brushed hers away, steady, sure, clipping the buckle into place. Her breath touched my knuckles—quick, warm—and for a second, I had to remind myself to move.
“Good,” I murmured.
I swung onto the seat and held out my hand. “Climb on. Feet on the pegs. Hold on tight.”
For a second, she stood frozen, paper-bird stillness in the desert heat. Then she moved. Careful. Determined. She placed her small hand in mine, light as a feather, and I pulled her up. She slid onto the saddle behind me, knees brushing the backs of my thighs. Her hands hovered, unsure, until Warden cleared his throat.
“Arms ‘round his waist, sweetheart,” he said, his tone gruff but kind. “Or the road will take you.”
Her arms came around me, tentative at first, then firmer as I nudged the bike upright. The weight of her pressed close, the silence of her breath matching the thrum of the engine when it kicked to life.
Warden mounted his ride and rolled out first, scouting the road. I followed, dust rising behind us in a long, ragged trail.
The desert wind hit us, dry and searing, tugging at her hair, at my cut. She tucked closer instinctively, forehead brushing between my shoulders, grip tightening as the bike surged forward. She still hadn’t said a word, but she was listening, following every unspoken order, learning the rhythm of the ride like she’d been waiting her whole life to feel the world move this fast.
And that was enough to hollow me out.
