Page 15 of The Oath We Give

My phone tumbles out of my hands, smashing onto the concrete beneath me. Cars pass by, people are moving, but I’m stuck as my mind begins to scream, turning into a deadly roar.

Unknown: Did you miss me?

Book made for [email protected]

FOUR

BLACKMAIL

SILAS

People constantly battletwo versions of themselves.

The individual they give to the world, the person that exists in public for eyes to view and the versions they hide, the person they are when no one is watching.

This isn’t a bad thing, just a fact. We all have it.

My eyes follow the head of pin-straight brown hair across the busy Ponderosa Springs main street, the security camera’s resolution dulling the paint splatters across her white T-shirt.

Several men make an effort to look at her, either glancing over their shoulder or stopping in their tracks completely.

I wonder if she notices.

The attention men give her.

How they can’t seem to help themselves when she’s around. Compelled to stare. Admire. It’s not beauty that keeps their attention—a lot of women are beautiful. There is something else, something unexplainable about her allure.

I wonder if that’s where her nickname came from. Far before Stephen Sinclair shouted them at me. It was a question I’d wanted to know since she flew out of that house of horrors with shredded wings.

Like clockwork, she heads into the studio at noon, just as she always does, and soon, she fades from my view. Twenty minutes—I see her nearly every day for twenty minutes across my screen, and every time, I ask myself the same two questions.

What version of her did I see the night she called me? And what makes Coraline Whittaker cursed?

Spying on people through public traffic cameras is both illegal and morally ambiguous. I’m not saying what I do is right. I am saying I could be much worse if I wanted to. I mean, technically? I could hack just about every camera she passes by on a regular basis, but that feels too far, even for someone like me.

I’m a killer, but I was also raised to respect women’s boundaries.

We aren’t friends, Coraline and I. I don’t owe her my concern. However, I know what she sounds like when she is scared. I felt her fear through that phone, and no one deserves to be afraid like that.

So although the girl on the screen is practically a stranger to me and I’m simply a voice she heard long ago, I just want to make sure she’s alright. It’s sort of a comfort to watch those twenty minutes of her day, background noise to fill the void for a little while.

“Silas! You still there?”

I blink, pulling my eyes from my computer and picking up my phone from the desk, taking it off speakerphone and holding it to my ear.

“Yeah,” I mutter, clearing my throat.

“What did you get from the email?”

My jaw twitches with annoyance. Not at Alistair, just at the situation. I’m not sure what irritates me more, the fact we’re being blackmailed or that the person doing it is good. A black hat and fucking code jockey.

Yesterday, I’d received another email, this time no video, just another ominous sentence.

Don’t make me bring home to you.

No signature or name. Just that fucking video, evidence that could send all of us to prison if it’s released. All we’ve worked for, what we’ve escaped? It would be ruined with one press leak.

I can feel my headache returning, or maybe it never left.