Page 40 of Fractured Loyalties
“There’s no clean version of this,” he says. “What happens tonight doesn’t get rewritten. It doesn’t soften in hindsight. You’ll see something you’ll want to forget, and you won’t be able to.”
I turn to him. “Then I’ll remember. That’s better than pretending.”
The car takes a corner too tight. I feel the tires bite gravel. He eases off the gas.
“You keep surprising me.”
“Good.”
“No. It’s dangerous.”
I fold my arms, press my back into the seat. “So is everything else I’ve survived.”
That gets him quiet.
We drive in silence for a while. The town recedes behind us, replaced by an emptier stretch of highway. The trees grow taller. The road narrows. We’re moving toward something inevitable. I feel it in my blood.
Eventually, he pulls off onto a narrow dirt path that disappears behind a thicket. He kills the headlights but doesn’t stop the engine.
“This is where I leave you,” he says.
I blink. “You said I could come.”
“You did. And now you’re here.” He nods toward the ridge. “There’s a blind spot just over that hill. You’ll be safe there. You’ll see everything. But you won’t be in the line.”
“The line?”
“Where it breaks. Where it ends.”
I stare at him. “You really think I’ll be safe?”
He looks over at me then. Full on. Eyes so dark they seem hollow.
“No. But I’ll try like hell to make sure of it.”
I should get out. I don’t.
He leans in slightly. Close enough for breath. “Stay low. Don’t run toward me. Don’t call my name. No matter what you hear.”
I nod. My mouth is too dry to speak.
He brushes a strand of hair behind my ear—light as fog—and steps out into the night.
I follow a moment later, slipping out into the cold. The air bites harder now, thick with tension. He’s already moving toward the trees, but I keep my distance, trailing him until the path veers and he disappears behind a rise.
The hill crests higher than it looked from the car. I keep low, my fingers gripping tufts of damp grass as I crawl the last few feet. When I settle behind the rise, the whole clearing stretches out before me.
There’s a small shack just beyond the treeline. Run-down. Unremarkable. The kind of place you pass on the side of a road and never look at twice. But something in my bones knows it’s where Caleb is. And where this ends.
Elias steps into the open from the opposite side—shadow made flesh. I suck in a breath without meaning to. He doesn’tlook like himself. Not the version I’ve seen. There’s no softness in his face. No trace of the man who handed me a mug of coffee this morning.
He moves like he’s done this a hundred times.
Because he has.
A black car pulls up slow, crunching gravel under the tires. Headlights cut through the growing dark. The vehicle stops twenty feet from the shack.
Two men step out.
