Page 126 of Billionaire Lumberjack's Bride

“This is good news.”

“I know. I just…I’m afraid that the other shoe is going to drop, that something else is going to interfere or go wrong.”

Because nothing has seemed easy since that night.

God knows living with Silas and breaking down his walls hasn’t been.

“There are no guarantees when it comes to cases like this, Lyla. I’d be lying and a real shitty lawyer if I did guarantee you something, but we’re doing everything we can. My investigator is continuing to look for other witnesses who might be willing to testify. And like I explained when we spoke last week, I have an expert who is examining the crime scene photos and will meet with Joey to piece together exactly what happened. He will testify about self-defense and defense of others cases and how people react in these situations to ensure the evidence makes sense to the jury—if we get that far. All these things are good for us. Good for Joey.”

I fight a sob, swallowing it down as I picture him locked away in that awful place. “Is he doing okay?”

It’s been a few days since I’ve spoken with him, and even though he said he was all right, I could hear the lie in his voice. In my head, he became that little six-year-old boy crying and scared at Mom’s funeral again. The way I will always see him—someone I need to protect. Not the other way around.

“I met with him earlier this morning to give him the same update I just gave you. He’s okay.”

I release a heavy breath, and Silas kisses my temple, rubbing my arm with his work-hardened hand. “Thank you again, for everything.”

“We’ll need both you and Silas here for the bail hearing next week. The other stuff could take a bit longer to get scheduled for hearing. We have to be patient.”

Patience.

I’ve struggled with it since I arrived on the mountain, growing easily frustrated with the enigmatic man now holding me against him. I pushed and pushed and pushed him, almost to the breaking point.

It worked, in the end, but this situation with Joey is completely out of my hands. No amount of pushing Attorney Fields will get anything done faster because we’re at the mercy of the courts, and potentially, a jury. Which means I’ll be practicing patience for the foreseeable future.

I end the call, and Silas pulls the phone from my hand and slips it into his back pocket.

He lifts my chin. “I told you it was good news.”

Tears well in my eyes, and I press my hands against his chest, running my fingers over the scar near his heart. “Is it too much to hope that we’ve won two battles?”

The corners of his lips curl. “No. Hope is a good thing.”

Words I never thought I’d hear from this man.

“Since when?”

He brushes his thumbs across my cheeks, swiping away the tears that fall. “Since you brought it into my life. I also spoke with the FBI this morning. They’re going to issue an arrest warrant for Marty.”

“You’re kidding?”

Silas shakes his head. “It turns out they’ve had him on their radar for a long time. Years. They’ve just never been able to pin anything on him before. They think with my father’s journal, they’ll be able to track down victims who might be willing to cooperate.”

“Jesus…so, he might actually go to prison?”

He nods slowly. “He might.”

The slight hesitation in his voice tightens my gut. “But if he doesn’t?”

Silas’s eyes darken from their usual warm blue to arctic ice. “There are other ways he can be dealt with.”

A frigid chill floods my veins, and I press my hand to his chest harder, directly over the scar. “You don’t mean that. That would make you just as bad as him.”

One of his brows rises. “Would it?”

In all the time I’ve spent with Silas, I never once considered killing Marty as an option, and I never thought Silas would have, either. He had his chance when he held him at gunpoint only a few yards from here, but he let him go rather than take his life.

To hear he’s considering that as a legitimate option pains me more than what Marty did to me that day.

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