Fragile Sanctuary (Sparrow Falls Book 1)

I blinked so quickly that the image in front of me blurred. The smudged version was better because this one couldn’t be right.

Silas.

The boy who’d always been funny. A little crass but in a harmless sort of way—or so I’d thought. He’d been a year older but blended into the larger group of friends I’d been a part of since moving to Sparrow Falls. But like with everyone other than Fallon, I’d drifted away from him after the fire.

The fire.

A fire that had killed my family. Almost killed me. A fire that Anson and Trace now thought had been set intentionally. We thought it had been Felix, but it wasn’t Felix standing before me now. It wasn’t Felix who had taken me. Who killed Deputy Rolston.

Bile surged up my throat at the memory of Rolston slumped against the wheel. All the blood. And Silas had killed him. The same Silas who had brought me kittens to take care of. Who had sat at my picnic table and complimented me on my food. Who had been on the outskirts of my life for as long as I’d lived in Sparrow Falls.

I swallowed hard, trying to force down the sickness. “What’s happening, Silas?”

The corners of his mouth kicked up into a smile. “Don’t play dumb, Rho. It’s beneath you.”

My heart rate kicked up, the organ feeling like a Ping-Pong ball in one of those lotto wheels. “Okay. Where are we?”

“That’s better.” He began walking around the demolished house. He moved without looking where he was going, seeming to have memorized every crumbling floorboard and unsteady wall. “This is where I grew up.”

I frowned. I knew Silas had a mother and sister—a mom who had struggled to make ends meet working at one of our gas stations. They’d moved to Florida when he was in his early twenties, but I didn’t remember hearing anything about the house burning down. “When was the fire?”

Silas raised and lowered a shoulder casually. “I don’t know. Years ago. Time really is fluid.”

I took one step backward, trying to feel for the edge of the entryway. I would have to make a run for it and hope for the best. But there was a significant drop-off from the entry to the ground. And running for it would be easier if I didn’t break my neck first. “I just don’t remember hearing anything about it.”

He picked up one of the photos that had been plastered around what remained of the house. It was one of me at a dance in middle school. My hair was piled on the top of my head in ridiculous curlicue ringlets, and I wore a dress that shimmered beneath a mirror ball. “Why would you? No one cares if a falling-apart cabin burns.”

My toe caught the edge of the drop-off, and I halted, trying to feel if anything was below it, like crumbling steps. “I’m sure the fire department would’ve.”

Silas scoffed. “People would’ve thought it was simply a large trash burn if they saw the smoke in the distance. And this town didn’t care about me or my family. We were invisible to them.” His gaze snapped to me. “But I wasn’t invisible to you, was I?”

Something about the question had ice sliding through my veins. I had a feeling how I answered it would dictate important next steps. “Of course, you weren’t. We were friends. We⁠—”

“We were a hell of a lot more than friends, Rhodes. You saw me.” Silas’s expression softened. But something about the gentleness terrified me way more than his anger. “Without you, I would’ve failed Spanish. Maybe would’ve had to drop out. But you studied with me every day in the library.”

I thought back to that seventh-grade year. He’d been a year older but had been held back in Spanish. I’d known he was struggling and easily frustrated. I remembered helping him during our free periods, bent over books in the library.

It had seemed like nothing. Spanish had always come easily to me. And spending some time helping someone who needed it was…nothing.

“You shared your lunch with me,” Silas said, his voice taking on a dreamy quality. “You took care of me.”

That came flooding back, too. The memory of seeing that Silas only ate chips and candy bars from the vending machine. I’d asked my mom to pack him a lunch, too.

“So kind. So gentle. We shared a bond. Even if people kept interfering in our relationship, trying to keep us apart.”

My stomach roiled at the transformation. Gone was the gentleness. In its place was fury and more than a little instability. I struggled to keep my breathing even and my expression neutral, but I had no idea what to say that wouldn’t infuriate him. “Who tried to keep us apart?”

Silas’s hands clenched and flexed over and over again, almost as if he were sending some sort of silent message with the long and short punctuated movements. “You know.”

I shook my head, the action making pain flare in my skull. “I don’t. Everyone I know liked you.”

“Felix fucking didn’t,” he spat, tearing the dance photo from a half-demolished wall. He shook the paper at me. “He was drooling over you this night. Told his friends he was going to ask you out the next day. Should’ve gutted him then. Tried to set him up, get him riled up that you were in danger and sent him poking around your house. Thought maybe the profiler would kill him the other night. But he can’t do anything right, can he?”

My pulse thrummed—in my neck, my head, traveling down my arm. He said profiler with such familiarity. “How did you know Anson was a profiler?”

Silas sent me a smarmy smile. “Come on, Rho. Small towns are gossip mills. I’ve had at least half a dozen people ask me if I knew. So sad that boy couldn’t cut it.”

I bit the inside of my cheek.

He made a tsking sound. “Now, now. Your temper’s giving you away. Don’t pretend you care about him.” Anger flared in Silas’s eyes. “You were trying to make me jealous, weren’t you?”

Nausea swept through me again, but this time, my head injury had nothing to do with it. I couldn’t tell Silas the truth. It would only mean rage and possibly violence. What I had to do was buy myself some more time. Find a moment when he was distracted and run.

I swallowed down the bile surging into my throat and lied. “Yes,” I said, my voice barely audible. “I’m sorry.”

Silas’s eyes narrowed on me. “You should be. The kindness is always a lie. I keep trying to find a woman who isn’t a dirty liar, but they all are. They pretend to like you, pretend to be nice. But it’s all fake. A deception until they have you in their clutches and break you.”

His jaw clenched. “Arden has it, too. I almost fell for it, was this close. That fake kindness. She pretended to care about those kittens, but she just wanted to trap me. Maybe I’ll visit her after this. Show her what happens to liars.”

Panic sliced through me as my breaths tripped over each other. Arden. My sister. I’d seen the way he looked at her. I thought he’d had a crush, but it was so much more. A twisted narrative taking over his mind.

“I didn’t lie,” I whispered.

Silas surged forward. “You did! You made me think you loved me. But you didn’t. You were using me to feel good about yourself. Playing games,” he spat. “Making me burn things to keep us together.”

My mind swirled. It didn’t make sense. Burn things to keep us together? “I-I don’t understand.”

He scoffed. “You kept spending time with them. Paying them attention when it should’ve been me. I had to warn them to stay away.”

“Oh, God,” I whispered.

A smile spread across Silas’s face. “You missed it all, didn’t you? Right in front of your face, but you were too selfish to realize. Felix’s family’s restaurant after he started walking you to lunch. Outside Fallon’s locker when you went with her family to the coast instead of to the lake with the rest of us. The trailhead when you ignored me to hang out with your sister at the river.”

Tears filled my eyes, acid tracking down my cheeks. “My house. My family.”

Silas stormed toward me, moving so fast I didn’t have a prayer. His hand wrapped around my neck, squeezing. “Don’t you cry for them! They didn’t love you. Your parents let you go to that party where Felix felt you up in the closet. They let you be a dirty whore.”

The tears only came faster; I didn’t have a prayer of stopping them. Mom. Dad. Emilia. They were dead because some sicko had been obsessed with me. Dead because of me.

“And you needed to pay. To be punished,” he snarled. “I thought the flames would get you, too. Take you down so I could finally be free of your lies. But you made it out.”

Silas pulled something from his waistband, and then cold metal traced my tears. “My little phoenix, rising from the ashes. I knew then that you were meant to live. It was so much better. I got to see you suffer.”

His face pushed close to mine, and I shuddered. “I watched you in the hospital. So much pain. Watched from the doorway as the nurses changed your bandages. Saw the way you cried.” The tip of the blade traced my tears again. “So pretty when she cries.”

I tried to stop the tears, but I couldn’t stanch the flow.

“I realized then. Watching the living in the aftermath was so much better. The way you sobbed at the memorial. How you couldn’t stand to go back to the house. The way you never found love again. My phoenix was too scared.”

Silas’s hand on my throat tightened, his jaw clenching. “But something changed.”

I’d gotten brave enough to go back to my home. I’d met Anson. Through it all, I’d taken the final steps to my healing, and Silas had seen me happy.

He shook me, making dark spots dance in front of my vision. “You needed to remember. To go back to the pain. The photo I left on your porch sent you there for a minute. Shep said you were upset, had a panic attack. But then you were happy again.”

Silas spat the words like a vicious accusation. “So, I brought back the fire.” He grinned against my cheek. “That was good. I saw the shadows in your eyes. Too scared to stay alone. I bet you remembered that night. I bet it took you back to the fire and the pain.”

It had. I’d remembered just how terrified I’d been. Remembered losing my family as if it was yesterday.

“But then you betrayed me all over again,” Silas snarled, jerking back. “You let him touch you. I saw it. It was all I could do not to kill you both. Driving you off the road was rash, too much too fast.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “But sometimes I can’t control myself. And you make me so mad.”

A tremble took root in my muscles. Every single thing had been him all along.

“I try to beat it back, but sometimes I can’t. Like that fucking pissant Davis. He hurt you.”

My eyes jerked to Silas’s face, confusion filling my expression, but dread came fast on its heels.

His thumb stroked my neck as his grip on my throat loosened for a moment. “I’m the only one who gets to hurt you, Little Phoenix. Your pain is mine alone.”

With his words came a fresh flood of fury. So much better than the fear. “Anson’s going to find you,” I growled. “He’s smarter than you’ll ever be.”

Silas laughed then, but it was a sickening sound. “Oh, Rho. I’ve already beaten him more times than I can count. Every woman that reminded me of you. Every bitch who lied with her kind eyes. I made them scream before I slit their throats. The sweetest sound.”

“Every woman that reminded me of you.” The words echoed in my head as they landed over and over again. My stomach roiled as true terror set in. What had Anson said about The Hangman? He cut their carotid arteries. My mind spun as a million pieces tried to come together.

“But poor ol’ Anson could never get there quite quick enough. He was close with his sister, but I dallied. I liked her screams a little too much.”

Blood roared in my ears as a fresh wave of bile surged. “No.”

He only grinned wider, his mouth twisting with the movement. “Yes. What are the chances that everything would come back to where it all started? Poetic, don’t you think? The perfect piece of art. The final clue in a master game.”

Silas’s tongue swept across his bottom lip. “I’ve been making him suffer for years. His pain was the best. So deep, so feral.” Silas’s expression went hard as his hand tightened around my throat again. “But you tried to steal that, too. You won’t succeed.”

“Y-you’re The Hangman.” Nothing in the words sounded like my voice. It was completely foreign.

He leaned in close. “Nice to meet you, Rho.” Then he licked the tears from my cheek.

My knee came up on instinct, catching him in the balls. But it wasn’t enough. Silas’s hand tightened on my throat, completely cutting off my air supply. “Listen here, you little bitch. I’ve had enough of your games. I’m the chess master, and it’s time I took control of the board.”

He breathed ragged pants through his nose as he struggled for control. “It’s just too bad you have to die for my perfect end game.”