Page 2 of Ugly Truths (The Veiled Truths Trilogy #2)

Two Months After the Explosion

Elena

I n all the different lives I’ve been forced to live over the years, I’d never imagined spending a summer in the Colorado mountains.

Even as I step out of the old Toyota Tacoma Luis lent me a month ago, the mid-afternoon August heat feels like a light kiss against my skin, not the oppressive blaze I’ve known of other summers.

Luis’s secluded home sits on an upward slope nestled in a cluster of hills. Off the opposite edge of the gravel driveway, the hill drops off to a small river that offers a comforting, consistent hum of rushing water. On the elevated porch, the view is even better.

I stretch my arms over my head, feeling the pull in my shoulders and lower back. The thirty-minute drive to and from Breckenridge always leaves me stiff, especially after hours on my feet, but it’s hard to complain when I get to look at this.

I climb the incline to the porch with my shoulder bag in one hand, the wooden planks creaking faintly under the weight.

The key turns easily, and the cabin greets me with comforting silence.

To my left, the open living room is empty, and to my right, the door to Luis’s office is shut tight.

I tread lightly up the stairs directly in front of me to the second story, where two bedrooms and a shared bathroom sit.

The guest room is to the left, where I drop my bag onto the bed, turning to rummage for a clean pair of clothes in the dresser. The smell of Bluebird Brunch Co. clings to me like a second skin. No matter how good the food tastes, it always makes me nauseous after a shift.

When Luis brought me here, I barely lasted a week before asking him if he could help me find work.

The weight of doing nothing was unbearable, as was the idea of trying to do anything like I used to.

By the next day, he lined up a job for me at his friend Sarah’s popular breakfast and lunch spot in Breckenridge.

He told me to “dust off my apron” and handed me the keys to his old truck that he rarely used.

I cried and hugged him when Sarah said she was willing to keep me off the books.

It was the lifeline I didn’t know I was so desperate for after the few months I’d barely made it out of.

Clothes in hand, I head for the bathroom.

Once the door is locked behind me, I turn on the shower faucet, letting the water heat up as I start to strip.

My jeans come off first, then the staff t-shirt, which sticks awkwardly to my hair clip as I pull it over my head.

The motion makes me stumble, and when I regain my balance as it comes off my neck, I’m partially facing the mirror that hangs from the back of the door.

The scars on the edges of my hips and thighs are visible from this angle, disappearing around my backside. I look away just as quickly, but the cruel reminder makes the memories churn, dragging me back to that night.

“Elena, move! You have to move!”

A sharp gasp rips from my throat as I jolt back into consciousness, vision swimming.

For a moment, everything is disjointed–flashes of fire, the acidic bite of melting metal coats my lungs, the ringing in my ears still present but dull enough for Luis’s voice to slice through the haze.

By some miracle, the earbud remains lodged in my ear.

“Head for the fence behind you! There’s a gap–get up!”

The fire roars. Every movement sends a sharp, electric pain through my lower back and sides. As if the flames have seeped into my muscles and bones and now burn there instead.

I don’t even know if I can move, but Luis’s voice pulls back .

“Elena! Get up, damn it!” he screams, and this time, my body obeys.

I push myself to my knees. My palms scrape against the gravel, but it’s nothing compared to the pain searing through the rest of me. Stumbling forward, I try to catch myself and groan, trying to answer Luis, but whatever I say is barely coherent. Still, he lets out a shaky exhale when I respond.

“The gap is fifty feet behind you, past the stacked barrels,” he continues. My head pounds against the sides of my skull, making it even harder to see through the towering smoke. “Stay low. Don’t stop.”

Each step feels like it might be my last. My lungs burn. There’s only a little relief the further I move from the fire, and the smoke thins enough to no longer choke me.

The gap Luis mentioned is located at the base of the metal links, and barely wide enough for a person to squeeze through.

I unceremoniously drop to my knees, pressing myself against the ground, and wiggle through the opening.

The jagged edges of the metal catch on my arms, scraping against my already angry skin, but I grit my teeth and push forward.

When I’m nearly through, there’s a sharp tug somewhere in the middle of my body. I turn my head just enough to see the backpack snagging on the fence, the fabric wrapped tightly around a piece of twisted metal.

Panic flares in my chest, and I try to rip it free by continuing my crawl.

Once, twice, but it doesn’t budge.

I must say something out loud because Luis tells me to leave it. The metal ends bite against my fingertips when I try to reach around my back to work it loose, making it almost impossible to focus.

“Elena!” Luis’s voice is a sharp command. “Leave it. Move! Now!”

Tears sting my eyes, but I know he’s right. The equipment can't be traced. Trembling, I work my arms free of the straps and finish pushing myself through the gap, refusing to look back at the bag.

“Keep going,” Luis urges, his typing becoming more audible the longer I’m awake.

“I have Ben keeping tabs on Peter. He’s gone, but I don’t know if he’ll circle back.

” There’s a pause while I sway on my feet.

“I’m tracking your phone now and cutting the cameras like we planned.

Go straight and then right at the end of the first warehouse. ”

I don’t know how long I’m moving. Minutes? Hours? Time feels warped, stretched thin by the pulsing of my tight skin against the summer air and my singed clothes. The fire eventually fades into the distance and the streets become more residential.

With each step, my legs shake. Every inch of me screams in protest. It only worsens when I stop to wait in a dark corner for Luis’s next instruction or potential witnesses to pass. At one point, I hold myself against a brick wall and silently cry while a slew of fire trucks cruise by.

“Left,” Luis breathes. “Keep going straight after that.”

There’s no room for thought. My skin feels like it’s seconds from peeling away from the rest of me. The only other thing I’m aware of is the slow, steady melting of night into dawn, the sky turning the softest shades of blue, then purple, and then pink.

“There,” Luis exhales, his voice quieter after sending me through a series of turns. “You’re almost there. The house is coming up on your right. Two hundred feet.”

A small South Side craftsman comes into view. The porch light is a faint glow in the early morning light.

A beacon calling me home.

It takes every ounce of my remaining strength not to release the most pathetic sob at the sight.

My feet drag against the cement stairs to the front porch. My hand slaps once against the door in a knock. It sounds so weak and hollow against the wood. The door swings open almost instantly, as if he’d been waiting for my arrival.

Jeff’s broad frame fills the doorway. He takes me in–my destroyed clothes, my blistering skin, the dried blood that seeped out of the shallow cuts on my arms–before taking a step forward, arms outstretched.

“Scarlett,” he rasps, horror painted across every inch of his stern face.

I don’t even have the strength to respond. My knees buckle, the world tilting as I collapse into him. The last thing I feel is the searing sting of his steady grip as he pulls me inside. He murmurs something I can’t quite make out.

And then everything goes dark.

Jeff once told me that when it was the end of the line, he’d help me in any way he could.

I just never imagined I’d actually take him up on that offer.

It feels surreal now, thinking about the last time I saw him at the gym.

I’d been desperate when I arrived with the duffle bag I bought online, stuffed with my personal laptop, IDs, and whatever clothes I could fit.

I passed it off as a gym bag, hoping it wouldn’t draw Cillian’s attention.

He was more concerned with keeping guard over me and not the details of what I was doing, anyway.

Between drills, I quietly asked Jeff if he could take the bag home and hold onto it for me until early Saturday morning when I'd come to retrieve it. His brows furrowed and, in true Jeff fashion, the only question he asked is if I knew his address.

Even with our scheming, neither of us anticipated I’d show up at his door looking like that .

I stayed with Jeff and his wife, Lauren, for three weeks. They kept the televisions off and didn’t address the fires they could see the smoke from—the ones that happened the same night I stumbled into their home looking like a burnt mess.

Lauren, sweet but sharp-tongued, is a nurse.

She works in cardiology, but has extensive experience in emergency care.

She took one look at my injuries and declared it was a miracle I wasn’t dead or more badly burned, though she never expanded on why she believed that to be true when I refused to tell them where they came from.

The backpack I wore that night absorbed most of the blast’s heat, shielding me from far worse damage, but many areas it didn’t cover hadn’t been spared, especially my lower half.

Second-degree burns, Lauren told me, while carefully cleaning and dressing each wound across my ass, thighs, and the curves of my hips.

I was lucky to have ducked my head and tucked my arms in time to prevent damage there, but the ends of my hair and the back of my neck were a different story .