Page 19 of Collateral Damage
“Because he’s watching you,” he says.
“I know that. That's the point.”
“No,” Silas counters, his voice low and steady. “Right now, he’s watching you unchanged.”
I frown, the logic slipping through my fingers like sand. “I don’t?—”
“If I put visible protection on you,” he continues, “you start moving differently. You change your gait. Your routine breaks. You’re escorted, you’re guarded, and you begin to hesitate before you open a door.”
“Isn't that what's supposed to happen?” I ask, my frustration surfacing. “Isn't that what being safe feels like?”
“No.” He doesn't snap; he just speaks with a terrifying, clinical certainty. “That’s the reward.”
I stare at him, the mountain shadows stretching across the hood of the car. “I don't understand.”
“He’s obsessed with you, Ava. And obsessed people don’t scare easily. They look for confirmation. They look for proof that they matter—proof that their presence is being felt in every breath you take.”
I shake my head, winding my arms tight across my chest. “So I’m just supposed to pretend none of this is happening?”
“No,” he says. “You’re supposed to stop giving him a front-row seat to your fear.”
The anger and the terror tangle together in my throat, making it hard to swallow. “And moving me to the middle of nowhere doesn't count as a reaction?”
“Moving you once,” he says, “quietly, without witnesses or a pattern change he can track—no. To him, that looks like weather. Or timing. An old friend visiting from out of town. It’s a gap in his data, not a win.”
“And the security?”
“Security in your world tells him exactly what he wants to know.” His voice remains level, cutting through my panic. “It tells him he finally got your attention.”
I swallow hard, the reality of it sinking in like lead. “And my mother? Why is she different?”
“She’s already in a controlled environment,” he explains. “Limited access. Staff. Cameras. There’s no routine for him to disrupt there. I can protect her without her ever needing to know.”
Silence stretches between us, filled only by the rhythmic thrum of the climbing road.
“So the cabin,” I say quietly, watching the trees thicken into a wall of black. “That’s what this is. A gap in the data.”
He nods once. “It buys us time. It keeps him guessing.”
I look away, my chest tightening until it aches. “I don’t like leaving her. I feel like a coward for hiding.”
“This isn’t about hiding you, Ava.” He glances at me, and for a split second, the tactical mask shifts. “It’s about not letting him see what he’s done to you.”
I don’t answer. I have no energy to plead my case.
The road narrows as we climb, the last of the town lights thinning behind us. Snow begins to fall more heavily, the world outside the windshield dissolving into white and shadow. Mile by mile, the familiar gives way to forest, the sense of distance growing sharper with every curve.
By the time we reach our destination, the argument in my chest has gone quiet—not because it’s resolved, but because there’s nowhere left for it to go.
Silas downshifts, his knuckles relaxed on the wheel while the tires find purchase on what's left of the drive.
The cabin hunches between the pines, a hundred yards back from where the county road disappears under white. Flakes drift past the headlights, erasing the sharp corners of branches, blurring the porch rail into a pale smudge.
Snow gathers on my sleeves as I follow Silas up the porch steps. The only sound is the crunch of snow beneath my boots, each step echoing in the stillness, a reminder of how isolated we are.
Inside, a stone fireplace dominates one wall, blackened with soot, the hearth worn smooth where boots and knees have rested. There’s a single couch upholstered in a faded plaid. A rough wooden table sits near the window, scarred with burn rings, evidence of meals eaten without ceremony.
From behind me, Silas’s phone chimes, and it’s so out of place, I start as he answers.
