Page 16 of The Oath We Give

“No,” I sigh. “They transmitted it with distributed relays. There are too many nodes, and it’s going to take me a minute to get back to the original sender. Whoever sent it either paid a lot of money for anonymity or is much better than me.”

For my ego, I’m going to say the former.

“I’m going to pretend I know what the fuck you just said,” Alistair grunts, dull buzzing in the background. Tattoo machines working overtime—that’s why he wanted to wait for this phone call. He didn’t want to be home, knowing Briar would be too nosey for her own good and found out about this before we had a plan in motion.

“I can’t trace their location yet,”I say plainly.

I’d tried sending malware in my response to the email, but it’s been left unopened, which is great for the sender, but it leaves me with a long list of trails to follow that going to take me a few weeks, if I can even find a back door.

Two fucking years.

That’s all we could get? That’s all the peace I got?

Fuck this town and its inability to let anyone make it out alive. I’m sure, now more than ever, it isn’t going to stop until it buries all four of us beneath it.

I run a frustrated hand down my face, more upset for Rook and Alistair than anything else. Thatcher and I still live here, him by choice and me out of obligation. But up to this point, we’d been able to just exist quietly.

We’d gotten too comfortable in our new lives, our roles. Tried to move on and forget, build lives for ourselves that weren’t tainted with darkness, desperately trying to erase the black mark this place imprinted on us.

But there are some things we can never let go of.

Things that refuse to let go of us.

“Rook is positive it’s the coked-out daddy’s boy out for revenge. His last name took quite a hit when Stephen was arrested.”

I snort. “Easton Sinclair may have majored in computer science, but he isn’t better than me. If a tree fell over in Japan, Rook would blame it on him.”

Alistair lets out a choked laugh, and it’s a nice sound to hear. His laughter. I don’t remember us ever being the type of kids who laughed, but Alistair never did, and now it feels like he does it more.

That familiar feeling of guilt begins to settle in me, digging into the pit of my stomach and burrowing there. They’ll never say it, but I’m the reason for this. The lives they’ve tried to start? Ruined because of me. Because of my unhinged, desperate need for revenge.

Vengeance for Rosemary started with the guilt of not being there when she needed me most, and now my friends’ futures are in danger, leaving me exactly where I once started.

“He could’ve hired someone—”

Two loud knocks echo in the walls of my office. I lean up in my chair a bit, trying to compartmentalize the pieces of my life. The part of me that has to deal with my past and the version that’s trying to work toward some semblance of a future.

“I have to go.”

“This is the last time, Silas,” Alistair says, conviction in his voice. “This is the last time I come back to that fucking place. Even if it kills me.”

He means it. Every word. If we don’t get this figured out and clear our slate this time around, he’ll die before this place keeps him here. I’m almost jealous that he has the ability to leave, that he can be whoever he wants in Seattle, a new Alistair that no one knows.

There are no rumors or whispers. Just him existing.

I have never once known what that feels like. To simply exist without someone having a preconceived idea of who I am.

I nod, even though he can’t see it. “Heard.”

When the line goes dead, I tell whoever is on the other side of the door to come in, silently praying that it isn’t fucking Ted from finance. That guy gives me fucking hives.

My prayers must be getting through to someone because my father opens the door, wearing his tailored suit, his head held impossibly high. In this light, it’s hard to even imagine him faltering, let alone going through something as debilitating as chemo.

His steps are measured as he walks across the room, dress shoes clicking across the floor, and I suddenly wish I could jump out of one of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows behind me.

Scott Hawthorne is sporting his infamous stone-wall face, the one he used to give Caleb and Levi when they skipped school or broke one of Mom’s vases. I’ve never been on the receiving end of one until this very moment.

“Son, we need to talk.”

---