Page 71 of Collateral Damage
I can’t breathe.
He’s watching me process it the way someone watches a movie they've already seen. Unhurried. Certain of every scene.
My hands are trembling. I press them flat against my thighs so he can't see. My fear is the thing he came here for, and I will not give him every piece of it.
He settles back into the chair like a man who has just sat down to his favorite meal.
"Do you have any idea," he says, "how long I've been waiting for you to just stop?"
He says it almost tenderly.
"Always somewhere to be. Always someone who needs you." He tilts his head. "Did you ever once stop and think about what I needed, Ava?"
"I've watched you run yourself into the ground for people who don't deserve five minutes of you." His eyes move over me slowly, proprietorially, the way you look at something you already consider yours. "And now look. No phone. No signal. Nowhere to be. No way out."
He smiles.
"Just us."
I grind the words out past my parched mouth. "Where. Is. Silas."
I don't know why I ask. Clinical reflex. The same part of me that keeps requesting observations when the answer is already written in the scan.
Emotion moves across his face. There and gone in a second.
"You know," he says pleasantly, "I don’t like to be the one to tell you this."
He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and looks at me the way you look at something you own and are very patient with.
"But Silas doesn’t know what’s best for you.”
The fire pops, and I don't flinch, and I count that as the only victory available to me right now.
"But now he’s gone," he says. "I can tell you the truth about him."
“What truth?”
His face brightens, almost manically. “That he brought you up here for all the wrong reasons, Doc.”
He claims the kitchen with a casual ease that makes my skin crawl. Cupboards open; a mug clinks; a match flares. He moves through the shadows of the cabin like he’s lived here for years, turning my sanctuary into his territory.
Moments later, he comes back with two cups and sets one in front of me.
"You should drink something. You're in shock. He’s hurt you. He trapped you up here. But everything is going to be okay. I’m here now."
I stare at the steaming mug.
"Doc." Gentle. Reproachful. The voice you'd use with someone being unnecessarily difficult. "I made it the way you like it."
The way you like it.
He was in my house. He knows how I take my tea. He knows things about me I've never told anyone, things I didn't even know I'd revealed.
I look at the steaming cup of tea.
He could have put anything in it.
He could have put nothing in it.
