Page 53 of Collateral Damage
His gaze drops, just for a moment, and the silence that follows is deafening—broken only by the hiss and pop of the wood dying in the hearth.
“I wish I could protect you from all of it,” he says, his voice dropping so low I have to lean in to hear it. “But I can’t.”
"Silas, what's happened?" My pulse picks up, a frantic drumming in my ears.
He looks at me, and for the first time since this nightmare started, I see the exhaustion finally win. It’s written in the slump of his shoulders and the way his eyes lose their edge.
"Sit down," he says quietly, gesturing to a chair. "There's something you need to know."
Thirteen
Silas
I swallow back the last of my uncertainty; the words feel like a piece of glass in my throat. "Delilah and Caleb found someone that fits the description and skillset," I say, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears—flat and hollow. "Reagan Mitchell."
She doesn't react to the confirmation that he was using a false ID. She just sits patiently waiting for me to explain, the name hanging in the frozen air between us like a physical weight.
I’m used to reading targets, reading threats, reading my team—but I can’t read her now. Her eyes are fixed on a point somewhere past my shoulder, and for the first time, I have no idea what’s happening behind that silence.
Finally, she speaks. “What else do you know about him?"
"Enough to take him seriously."
"That's not what I asked."
I move to the window, standing to one side in a pointless exercise to get a visual on anything but snow. "He's former military. Special forces.”
"But you're better than him."
It’s not quite a question. It’s more like a verdict she’s reached, a piece of herself she’s holding out to see if I’ll take it.
I turn back toward her, the floorboards creaking under my weight.
She deserves more than the sanitized, tactical briefing I’d give a client. Not the version where I filter the data to keep her manageable so I don’t have to deal with the fallout. She’s earned more than my protection; she’s earned the reality of the threat.
“I don’t know.”
She takes a breath and holds it, the sharp morning light catching the tension in the corners of her mouth. "Can he find us?"
The simplicity of the question is like crawling over barbed wire.
It would be too easy to feed her the standard line—that the storm makes the terrain impassable, that the service road is just a ghost of a path buried under feet of snow.
I don’t even consider it. I can’t filter out reality. The weight of what I’m keeping back feels like it’s crushing my ribs.
I brought her here on inaccurate intel. I promised her these walls offered sanctuary and respite.
Telling her means admitting my judgment was eroded by the exhaustion I’ve been trying to bury for days.
Telling her destroys her confidence in me, but keeping it hidden leaves her blind to the reality of what’s coming.
No matter which way I look at it.
She needs to know the truth.
I take a breath. Release it. And pray the Lord will give us courage to face whatever comes next.
"Yes," I say. "He can."
