Page 42 of Beautiful Chaos
Grabbing the knife from my vest, I throw it as hard as I can. It whizzes past Oakley’s shoulder and into the man’s eye.
God, I love the sound a body makes when it hits the ground.
Oakley turns, surprisingly calm as he takes in the knife sticking out of the guy’s eye socket.
“Clear!” Uncle Anders calls out.
“Clear!” Uncle Odd follows. After everything that went down on our last big op, I don’t think he plans to sit another one out. From what I can tell, he hasn’t lost a step.
I double-check the SUV. “Clear!”
Honoré and Holmes come up, double-ashing the bodies with their rifles. Oakley’s staring at me like I’m an alien and Hedy’s off to the side looking guilty. Like maybe she knows she made a bad judgment call, dragging Oak into a field operation.
“Well,” she says, making her way over to us. “That was…not how I thought this was going to go.” She turns to Oakley. “Are you okay?”
Oakley ignores her question. “Look. I know this is why we were never allowed to play with Silas as kids,” he says, gesturingat my face. “But he’s clearly in control of himself now, and while I know I can’t share that with my fathers, why can’t you?”
My heart, which hasn’t gone above eighty beats per minute this entire mission, trips into overdrive.
Oakley sees me. He really sees me.
Hedy doesn’t answer and instead takes in the scene around us. We’re in the middle of a country road surrounded by fields and trees, the Texas sky sparkling with stars above us. There’s one SUV in a ditch, another smoldering off to the side, the piles of ash adding up. She turns, gesturing the length of me.
“Why are you covered in blood?”
I’m tempted to lie, but she’ll see it on the playback.
“I, uh…” I shrug. “The guy broke my pistol, so I had to resort to hand-to-hand combat.”
“Okay…”
“And he pissed me off, so I tore out his throat.”
Not quite ripping off the heads of my enemies, but I’m getting closer.
Hedy’s eyes ping between Oakley and me. She rubs her forehead. “Welp. This just got complicated.”
Oakley steps up next to me. “Don’t be mad at Silas for saving my life.” He puts a large hand on his chest. “My heart’s still revving like an F1 race car, but don’t think I didn’t notice that you haven’t answered my question. Why can’t you tell my fathers that Silas is well controlled and not, you know, a threat?”
She gestures at the blood splatter. “Because he just ripped out a man’s throat with his bare hands.”
“Which was the most appropriate weapon in the circumstance,” Oakley insists, putting a protective arm around me.
Don’t get hard. Don’t get hard. Don’t get hard.
Hedy looks at me and grimaces. “It’s not that I can’t share this information with your fathers. They already have clearance. They could actually look it up for themselves.”
“Then why?—”
I sink into his side embrace, placing my head on his meaty shoulder as I answer his question. “It’s because your dad has already decided that I’ll never be trustworthy. There’s nothing anyone can say, no proof that he’ll accept. No matter how small the chance that I’d ever harm a single hair on a Wildling’s head, in his mind, I’ll always be a danger.”
Hedy’s listening as she scans me, the dead piles of ash, and the scene again. After a moment, she nods.
“Given what went down between Sy’s father and Ronan, plus the obvious signs of genetic manipulation…your dad is stuck in a trauma loop.”
Oakley is already shaking his head before she can finish her sentence. He tightens his grip on me. “Bullshit. Dad isn’t stuck. Hedecided, and none of you were willing to argue with him.”
Hedy’s expression shifts like she’s just now noticed that he’s holding me. Protecting me. She thins her lips, a tacit acknowledgment. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions, which I’ll answer—to the extent that I can—once we’re back at the office.” She gestures at the bloodied man on the ground. “And we’ll definitely be debriefing all of…this.”
