Page 88 of Sharing Silence

This is new. Too fucking new. I’ve never been in a position where I had to take care of someone. My brothers are different—they can fend for themselves. Silence might have had some training, but she’s relying on me.

No one ever fucking relies on me and it’s terrifying.

Silence squeezes my hand and I look back at her. Her eyes are wide, shining, and the blood from the cut on her eye is drying. She’s terrified, which means I can’t be. I lift her hand, kiss her knuckles, and allow myself three breaths.

And open the panic room door.

The high-pitched frequency is nothing compared to what the others will be hearing, but nothing can block out the sound entirely. Silence squeezes her eyes closed and tries to pull me back, but I tug on her hand. We stride through the bedroom and out into the hall. A man is on his knees, hands over his ears, mouth agape, drool dripping down his chin. He isn’t worth the few bullets I have, so we move past him.

The stairs are gone, and on the bottom floor are more men covering their ears. I release Silence’s hand, trying to calculate the drop from here to the foyer, but it’s not like we have a choice. I sit, gripping the stone as best I can, lowering myself and dropping onto the marble floor.

I look up and hold my arms out, gesturing for Silence to follow. Her brows bunch together, and she whispers something to herself as she mimics what I did.

She catches my eye, fear in her expression.

“I’ll catch you,” I mouth.

She lets go, and I grip her waist before her feet reach the floor. I take her hand, and we sprint for the back of the house, finally stepping into the now fast-falling snow.

Silence clings to my hand, her palm sweating, mine covered in blood, as we run toward the trees. I tear off the headphones, and shouts echo behind us. As the terrain changes, I slow so Silence can keep up. Trees whip by us, and we’re escaping into almost total darkness. The moonlight is hidden by the canopy, the blue-black dark pressing in on us. The snow is still falling, and our breath fogs as we slow and come to a stop.

We crouch, and I take off Silence’s headphones. Her face is slick with sweat and blood, her eyes wide.

“You okay?”

“No,” she whispers. “Not even close.”

“I mean, are you hurt?”

She swallows and shakes her head. “I don’t think so. Where’s Zayden? Yale? Bullet?”

I glance into the forest. “I saw Yale and Bullet on the cameras, but not Zayden.”

“But …” She glances the way we came. “He could still be in there. We have to go back. We can’t leave him!”

“Zayden can take care of himself.” She opens her mouth to argue, but I kiss her, tasting the tanginess of her blood. It seems sweeter than mine, and I press my forehead to hers. “He would never forgive me if I left you alone to go back for him. This is not a discussion, Q. We have protocols for this.” She nods tearfully, and I lift my head to look back toward the house.

Zayden is tough. He’ll have gotten out, and he’ll meet us. There’s no way something like this has taken his life, and wouldn’t I know? Isn’t there some kind of triplet connection that would tell me if one of us was gone?

I have to believe that as I taken Silence’s hand and lead us deeper into the forest.

We walk for hours. The snow falls in thick, heavy flurries, but Silence holds my hand and doesn’t complain once. Even when she stumbles and I catch her, she whispers a thank you, clings tighter to me, and keeps going.

When we finally come across a vehicle parked at the end of a long, dirt driveway, we hotwire it and use it for the rest of our journey. I crank the heat up, and Silence cradles my free hand between hers, rubbing it to warm me, kissing my knuckles.

All the while, I think about my brothers. Yale got out, but there’s no telling what happened to him along the way. He could have been caught, or killed, and Zayden could have faced the same fate. It might just be us now.

I bite the inside of my lip, fighting the lump in my throat. I can’t afford to break. I have to look after Silence, and if she thinks I’m doubting Yale and Zayden’s safety, she’ll crumble, too.

We swap cars twice more, and by the time we reach our first destination, it’s almost morning. We park outside the railway station, and I search through the glove compartment, finding a cloth and a half-empty bottle of water. Dampening the cloth, I wipe my face of as much blood and dirt as I can.

“What are we doing?” Silence asks quietly. I wet the cloth with the last of the water and clean her face, too, taking care around the cut on her eye.

“We need to go into the station.”

“We’re leaving?”

“No, there are storage lockers here.”