Page 75 of Yours on the Canvas

You can hide in the dark all you want, Jackie. But you can’t outrun us.

A heavy, suffocating weight settles over my chest. I stare out into the blackness, realising the terrible, inescapable truth of it all.

As long as I am here, as long as Silas and the guys from PalMerc keep fighting my battles, my family is going to keep tightening the noose. They aren’t going to stop until I break. The only way to keep Silas from putting a bullet in my uncle and ending up in a jail, the only way to keep Hale from being beaten into a bloody tool; is for me to walk back into the cage myself.

I will have to run. I know I’ll have to leave before they tear this whole life down around us.

* * *

A while later I leave Silas in snoozing in bed and go to check if Hale is up, but the sight greeting me makes my stomach drop into a bottomless pit. Empty bed. Perfectly neat sheets. A single piece of paper resting on the pillow.

I lift it, reading it, and I turn running straight to Silas. Jumping on the bed, he wakes, sitting bolt upright.

“What’s wrong?” He asks, his voice groggy.

“He’s gone.” Handing Silas the piece of paper.

Silas reads it, his face twisted with fierce agony.

I have to go.

Keep you safe.

Thank you Silas for taking me in.

I’ll never forget you.

Love, Hale.

Silas jumps from the bed, pulling his phone off the charger, his fingers hitting the screen as he stands.

“CJ. Need your help. Hale’s gone.”

My heart sinks, broken for the little boy who left thinking he still has to protect me.

Within half an hour CJ, Eli, Deck and Finn are the kitchen table planning a grid search of the city and within an hour, we have half of Campbell River out looking for Hale.

Silas is on the phone with Callan, and he and Mack are already searching.

“Find him now,” Silas snarled, ending the call with Callan.

Panic didn’t just rise in my chest; it has exploded. Hale. Just a kid who had finally started to heal, who had started laughing at school, who had let his guard down. Ray got to him. I know he did.

“Jack, stay here,” Silas ordered, already shrugging his heavy jacket over his good shoulder, wincing as the motion pulled at his healing stitches.

“Like hell I am,” I snapped, my voice shaking as I stand from the couch. “That’s our boy out there, Silas! They took him because of me!”

Silas stopped, his dark eyes locking onto mine with a fierce, terrifying intensity. For a second I think he’s going to argue, lock me in the room and throw away the key. But he sees the absolute, shattering terror in my face, and instead, he crosses the room, grabbing my face in his large, calloused hand.

“Okay, we go together,” he said, his voice hard as iron. “We find him. Nobody touches him.”

* * *

It took two hours of driving through relentless, gray coastal rain before Eli’s call came through.

The rain was coming down in sheets, blurring the windshield as the wipers fought to keep up, as we search. My phone rings, and I answer it, putting it on speaker, my hands trembling so hard I almost drop it.

“Jack? Silas?” Eli’s voice was breathless, shouting slightly over the sound of wind and crashing waves.