“No abandone,” he said, knowing his accent was terrible. “Casi soy terminado.”
To his surprise, she responded in English. “You’re American?”
“Yeah. I’m doing what I can for you. Nobody official’s on scene yet.”
She responded, her voice tight with pain, “Thank you.”
Silas spoke of inconsequential things as he dug. He told her how he’d traveled from California to Mexico and meandered south on hot, dirty buses. Sometimes there were boats, but he didn’t like them. Everything he owned had been in the duffel he’d left at his hostel, but it was probably long gone.
At last he uncovered her legs. Blood spattered her dusty skin, but he couldn’t tell how badly she was injured. He might be able to pull her out this way, but he needed more information first.
“Where are you hurt? Upper body or spine? Are your arms or shoulders trapped?”
“No,” she said. “Please, just get me out.”
Brave. All right, then. He curled his hands around her calves and towed her out in increments. Each movement made the wreckage teeter, and he was afraid she’d be crushed before he saved her. It was a hot day, overcast, and dust in the air lingered on his dry lips, coating his tongue. Finally, he dragged her shoulders clear, and then it was quick work. As he lifted her into his arms, the whole pile caved, plaster and cement slamming down to fill the space she’d vacated.
Despite the heat, she trembled in his arms, her taut silence revealing a fear he shared and that she’d kept locked down until now. Though they were strangers, he would’ve hated hearing her die. And if he hadn’t intervened, she would have. That was an odd feeling. For once, he’d done something right. While the world wailed around them, she let him hold her for long moments, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so close to a woman. His tough exterior usually terrified them.
Dark, wild hair spilled to his shoulders, uncut for months. They’d demanded he shave it, so they could monitor the hardware in his head. Back then, he’d also cut his eyelashes off because it made him look strange and stupid, easier to maintain the necessary pretense. Since the escape, his hair had grown back, and he had a scar behind his ear where he’d dug out their chip in a shitty gas station bathroom and prayed against infection. So yeah, he knew how he looked—and most of the time, he didn’t care. Better if people kept their distance.
But she still hadn’t glanced up from his shoulder. He might scare her yet. Cradled against his chest, she seemed small, but then, almost everyone did. Few men could look him in the eyes. He was always conscious of taking up space, pulling his arms and legs in so he didn’t intimidate other people. Not that it worked—most practiced snap judgments.
“I’m better,” she said at last.
He took it as his cue to set her down. “Are you vacationing here?”
“No, I’m with an educational coalition, teaching English. You?”
“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 whi
le. Maybe. She didn’t need to know the truth, if she couldn’t see it inked into his skin.
TWO
He was strong, and he spoke English. That was all Juneau knew about her new partner. Under the circumstances, that was already more than she could’ve hoped for. He was doing most of the heavy lifting. She’d tried to help, but he gave her a dark look and invited her to “take a seat,” though she suspected he’d enforce his will if she balked. And honestly, the flaring pain persuaded her more than his authority.
So she watched him work. The medical center had held up better than most of the buildings in town. Only one wall and part of the ceiling had collapsed. Now Silas labored to clear the place out while she used a sheet to paint a banner that read, Refugio aquí. When she finished, she limped toward the broken wall to hang it street side, and as soon as he saw her move, Silas dropped the heavy chunk of plaster in his hands. He hurried toward her as if she were permanently crippled.
I might be, if it wasn’t for him. Hell, I’d probably be dead. She’d never known a bona fide hero before. So far she’d managed to be normal around him, but it was hard not to let gratitude color her responses. And the fact that he hadn’t left her to fend for herself in the wake of the disaster—it reiterated what she’d known when he pulled her from the wreckage. He was something special.
“I’ll do that,” he said.
“So, what, you’re going to have me sitting around, waiting for guests?”
Her leg wasn’t broken. She’d taken a look earlier, and it appeared to her that she’d sustained deep bruising around her knee. Nothing would cure that but time. Until then, she’d swallow some painkillers, once they cleared this place a bit, and do the best she could.
He thought about that a moment. “Help me, then.”
When he approached to take the sheet from her, she realized all over again just how enormous he was. He had to be close to seven feet tall, because at five foot nine, she wasn’t petite, and he made her feel tiny and feminine. That was new. As she watched him, Silas gathered makeshift tools, a couple of metal shards, and a wedge of cement. From the gentle crow’s feet and brackets at his mouth, he looked to be in his late thirties or early forties. He had an interesting face. In fact, most women would probably consider him ugly with his crooked nose and overly strong jaw.
She followed him outside, curious about his methods, and while she held one end, he used brute strength to spike the sign into place. It wasn’t straight, but the message was clear. They could expect survivors to start filing in, which meant they needed to finish clearing the medical center, lay hands on any usable supplies, and locate food and water.
“One of us needs to stay here,” he said as he finished the task. “Since you’re fluent in Spanish, it should be you.”
“You just don’t want me walking around on this leg.”
To her surprise, he acknowledged that. “True. But my point stands. I can also bring back more supplies in a single run, and I’m better suited to deal with trouble.”
Juneau nodded. “Go on, then. I’ll finish up here.”
Each step hurt as she completed what he’d started. But her determined hope faltered when she finished clearing all the way to the stairs. She found the doctor, still and lifeless. How the hell was she supposed to deal with this? Intellectually, she knew the dead had to be moved. Otherwise they risked disease and infection among the survivors. But the phone lines were down, and there was no one to call.
With a murmured apology, she rolled him onto a sheet and towed him out through the broken wall. Stray dogs might get at him out here. But she couldn’t leave him inside with the living. A quick look around revealed a storage shed so flimsy that it must’ve swayed with the quake instead of collapsing. It was a little further than she wanted to go, dragging such a burden, but she couldn’t leave him in the street. Juneau opened the latch and shoved the body inside.
Her return to the medical center went a lot slower. She was afraid of what else she’d find. But fortunately, the doctor seemed to have been alone at the time of the quake. Thankfully, he’d run a small practice.
By the time Silas got back, she’d managed to set up a couple of tables and had covered one of them with bandages, tape, and other medical odds and ends. The painkillers, apart from OTC ones, she left locked up. Since she wasn’t a doctor, that stuff shouldn’t be in circulation anyway. Silas came in pushing a wheelbarrow full of bottled water and canned goods, his face red and sweaty from working in the afternoon heat.
“Did you dig out a whole store?”
His smile came and went, fleeting as a bird gliding over the ocean. “Pretty much.”
Silas went back almost immediately, leaving her to do the setup. Good thing she stayed, too. People began to arrive with dusty faces and bloody hands. Some, she could tell by their injures, had dug themselves out of the wreckage. She gave out water and aspirin while trying not to panic.
How the hell did I think I could manage an aid effort like this? I’ve never even owned a cat.
“Are you a nurse?” a woman asked in Spanish.
“No. I teach English.” Or I did. Before this. “But I’ve had basic first aid training. I can tend wounds.”
That galvanized three or four people to queue up around her. “Me duele.”
“Ayude a mi hijo, por favor.”
And she tried. At least, everyone seemed grateful for the water, more shell-shocked than anything else. The survivors asked relatively few questions. Doubtless they knew she had no answers.
A couple of families huddled together. Juneau prowled through the supplies, looking for ready-to-eat food. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Silas had managed to save a few boxes of granola bars. They would be crushed inside the envelopes, but the packages could be slit open and the contents eaten anyway. Those she doled out, feeling helpless.
When Silas returned the second time, she was still bandaging wounds. As she helped people, more arrived. He had another load of food and water. Two men attempted to intercept him to take what they wanted, but he stilled them with a single look. Yeah, she was incredibly glad to see him. The mood could easily turn in situations like this, and as people became more desperate, they’d do things they would never otherwise consider.
Her knee felt better, thanks to a couple of ibuprofen and some water. He, on the other hand, looked exhausted. But he didn’t speak, merely went to work beside her, wrapping wounds with a competence that made her think he had experience.
To her vast relief, the Red Cross arrived by nightfall. They had their own supplies to add to what had been gathered, trained personnel, and emergency lanterns. Those gave the shell of the medical center an almost festive air, if you could overlook the weariness and worry.
The brunette woman smiled and spoke in accented English. “You did a great job. Gave us a fantastic start. You’d be surprised how often we arrive and there’s nothing done at all.”
“Thanks. We tried.”
Silas didn’t acknowledge his part in the endeavor. He merely continued what he was doing: wrapping a bandage around a little girl’s head. She’d wanted to help, but God, she was so done. It was such a relief to have professionals on scene now. If things went badly from this point, she could be absolved of responsibility.
In exhaustion, she propped herself against the wall and considered what came next. Clearly her time in Ecuador was done. Everyone she knew had been in that building. Huh. Maybe it had been better when she didn’t have time to think. Despite her best efforts at self-control, tears slid down her cheeks. So much loss.
Silas settled beside her. He smelled of sweat and dust, subtly underscored with hints of blood. It should have been alarming, just like his size, but it wasn’t.
“They’ll start digging first thing in the morning.” She guessed he knew she was thinking about the school from her expression. His voice came low and soothing. “Sometimes they recover people alive up to eleven days after a quake, maybe more in some cases, under ideal circumstances
. Try not to give up hope.”
Exactly what I needed to hear. Juneau let out a slow breath, gradually regaining her composure. “Thanks. You didn’t have to do all this, you know. You’re a lot kinder than I deserve.”
“You make it easy.”
“Do I?”
Odd, she’d never heard that before. In general, men complained about her odd fashion sense, her wanderlust, and the fact that she often dumped them after sex. A few times, she’d been accused of using them for their bodies. She seldom took things seriously, so when a guy took offense to her breaking up with him after they slept together, she always imagined him clutching a sheet to his bare chest in maidenly modesty. But the fact was, she always wondered if something better waited just over the next horizon.
Sure, she could settle down, but … why? Which was why she was now thirty-three and completely unattached. She’d never owned a home or a pet. Never formed any lasting ties, apart from her family, and even they had a hard time understanding her. In fact, her brother had made a website for her called JUNEAU IS NOT IN ALASKA, which she updated sporadically with pictures of her travels.
He nodded, his gaze gone far away. She had never seen eyes that color before. Generally they were lit by some other hue, or ringed in a softer shade, but his were all shadow, apart from the whites. In the half-light, she couldn’t tell the difference between pupil and iris; they were just black, fringed in sooty lashes. At least two days of beard bristled from his jaw, giving him a wild look. Combined with the untamed fall of his dark hair, he radiated savage, certain strength, and it was a relief to have him beside her, though she didn’t make a habit of leaning on men.
“Most people fear me,” he said, low.
“Because of the tatts?”
“Because of … so many things.”
“You’ll always be a hero in my eyes,” she told him.
Silas laughed softly, but the sound lacked all amusement. “You’re alone in that. To most, I’m a monster.”
He probably thought she’d pry. Well, that wasn’t her style. She respected other people’s privacy. If he wanted to talk, she was here. Sometimes it was good to unburden yourself to a person you’d never see again—and sometimes that made you the woman at the bus stop everyone wanted to get away from.
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