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“Just traveling. I was drinking a beer when it all went down.”
“I was shopping for the school.” Her eyes went wide. “Oh my God, the kids.” She tried to run but fell before she’d gone five steps. Her knee buckled beneath her.
It took him all of ten seconds to make up his mind and then even fewer to reach her side and offer his hand. “Show me. I’ll help you.”
Nodding, she let him pull her up, left her hand in his, and shook his in a formal greeting. The woman studied the ink etching his wrists and the backs of his hands. Black and red, the pattern continued up his arms and onto his shoulders, not that she could see it all. The tatts combined with the rest to render him pretty fucking scary, which was a good thing, traveling as he did. He expected a comment or recoil. Instead, she smiled up at him, her face grimy and blood smeared.
He slid an arm around her shoulders to support her. “How far?”
“Four blocks that way.” She pointed behind them.
The light brown of her hair showed even through the dust, worn loose, but with random braids and trinkets, streaks of blue and pink that didn’t look likely to wash out. Girls did such styles on the beach. But it was more practical to plait all of it in this climate. Her refusal showed a hint of vanity and a refusal to conform, echoed in the unusual colors.
“It would be faster if I carried you,” he said.
For a moment, he thought she would protest. To make it easier for her, less passive,
he knelt, so she could climb onto his back. It gave her a role to play; if she didn’t hang on, she’d fall, and it took some of the control away from him. He understood the importance of such distinctions.
Without further comment, she got on and he straightened. The damage, as they walked, proved incalculable. People staggered in the streets, bloody and disoriented. Others stood outside wrecked buildings, weeping. No structure had gone untouched, and the rubble spilled into the road, making passage difficult. In a town this size, nobody cared about safety codes.
“That’s quality work,” she said, surprising him with a touch to the patterns curling up his biceps.
An unexpected compliment, under the circumstances, and then he realized she wanted a distraction from the mess surrounding them. “Thanks.”
“I have one on my shoulder.” She leaned forward, so he could see the stylized star by glancing back. “I’m Juneau, by the way. Juneau Bright. I should’ve thanked you before now. You saved my life.”
“Silas.”
That’s a first, he thought. He was all too experienced at causing pain and doing harm. The role of savior was entirely new. Silas found he rather liked it. But he couldn’t think of anything to say to keep the conversation going, and she fell silent, her anxiety kicking in anew.
The school lay at the heart of town. Total devastation. As they approached, Juneau sobbed, just once, and then swallowed her grief. He felt the tension in her arms as she did.
“It’s no use, is it?” But he could tell she already knew the answer. The damage was so profound that there was no way the two of them could perform search and rescue safely. This required a crew, medical supplies, and equipment, unlike the small store where she had been buried.
Still, he answered, “I don’t think so.”
“What should we do?”
Silas arched his brows. She was asking him? “Other countries will send help in time. Ecuador will mobilize as soon as it can.”
Really, he knew shit about such situations, only what he’d seen on TV. But somehow he didn’t think she would be content to sit around and be grateful for her survival, even with that bad leg.
“That’s not enough,” she said. “There has to be something we can do.”
“Do you speak Spanish? Because I have just enough to get by.”
“I’m fluent.”
He thought for a moment. “Then we should head for the medical center. See if any first aid supplies survived the quake. You can organize other survivors. Get them to round up the available food and water before opportunists start hoarding.”
“The medical center is this way.” She tapped his right shoulder, giving him directions, and he didn’t even mind that she took it for granted he’d help.
Apparently she didn’t look at him and see a freak, someone she should fear. God knew it had been long enough for him to shed that skin, but he’d been playing that persona so long, it had come to feel real. He had been traveling ever since the escape, his destinations random in case anyone was hunting for him, and he never stayed in one place very long.
These days, it didn’t take much to make him start feeling trapped. Five years was too much of your life to lose, but the consequences would’ve been dire and far-reaching, had he chosen otherwise. Regardless, he had a lot in common with men who’d done time. They often drank at the same bars, and they accepted him as one of them, even if he’d spent his sentence in a different kind of prison. They didn’t need to know that—and it was the closest he came to friendship, those silent moments with an upturned beer.
But maybe he could play hero with her for a little while. Maybe. She didn’t need to know the truth, if she couldn’t see it inked into his skin.
