Harpersteps through.
For a moment I think I’m hallucinating because this is the last place I expected to see her, but then she does a double-take when she sees me and I know she’s real.
I launch out of my chair, moving toward her before I can think it through because every cell in my body needs to be closer to her.
And also because something’s wrong.
I can see it in the way she’s moving and in the hollowness of her face, which has nothing to do with the harsh fluorescentlighting. Her eyes are too big and there are shadows under them that weren’t there two days ago. Her hair is pulled back in a way that looks like it was done in a hurry and she didn’t care how it looked.
Something’s happened to her in the last forty-eight hours. I thought she wasn’t texting me back out of respect while she got things settled with Z and her life in Austin. But looking at her now, I realize I was catastrophically wrong.
I start to call out to her, but she gives me a death glare that could strip paint and then averts her gaze like she means to walk past me as if we don’t even know each other.
What the hell is going on? Damn it, I just have to trust her and follow her lead. I redirect my steps toward the desk because if she’s pretending we don’t know each other, then I need to pretend she wasn’t the reason I got up from my chair.
But at the last moment, she drops her purse.
The contents spill across the concrete floor in a scatter of lipstick tubes, receipts, and pens. I lean down automatically to help her pick everything up because it’s what you do when someone drops something.
That’s when she leans in close enough that I can smell her shampoo, and her voice comes out in a hiss so quiet I almost miss it.
“Don’t say anything, they’re watching!” The words are fast and desperate. “Look, Z got me mixed up with some bad guys. Silas just told me to grab Bruiser and run. You hear me?” She grabs my wrist hard enough that it hurts. “You need to do the same.Run!”
My hands freeze over a lipstick tube, and I can feel my brain trying to process what she just said while simultaneously trying to count the coins scattered on the floor because that’s what my broken brain does in moments of stress.
Z got her mixed up with bad guys?
Silas told her torun?
What the actual fuck is going on?
But before I can ask any questions or even finish picking up her things, Harper has already shoved the items back in her bag and she’s walking away from me.
She saidtheywere watching, so I force myself not to turn my head to follow her progress. I just stay crouched there for a moment longer than necessary, pretending to check if I missed anything while my brain spins uselessly through prime numbers like that’s going to help.
The woman I love, the woman I’ve always loved, just told me she’s in danger. And now she’s walking away from me toward that heavy door that will take her out of this building and back into whatever danger that fucker Z caught her up in.
The whole reason I’m here is to make amends with Silas, but how can I do that if I just let his daughter walk away into clear and present danger?
I force myself to stop counting and proceed calmly toward the desk, keeping my voice as monotonous as possible when I ask, “Much longer, do you think?”
My question finishes right as the woman behind the desk puts a phone receiver down, and she looks at me with the same bored expression she had before.
“Sorry,” she says in a tone that suggests she’s not sorry at all. “The inmate has declined your visit.”
The words should devastate me. Ten minutes ago, they would have sent me into a shame spiral about everything I’ve done wrong. But her eyes aren’t on me when she says it. They’re on the door closing on the other side of the room where Harper just exited, and something about that small detail tells me everything I need to know.
Silas didn’t refuse to see me because he hates me.
He refused to see me as a way to send me a message, and that message is crystal clear even if he couldn’t tell me himself:
Follow Harper, protect Harper.
Be the man I taught you to be.
Take care of the ones you love by any means necessary.
“Thanks,” I manage to say to the corrections officer, trying to look appropriately disappointed as I turn and walk out of the facility.