No One But You (Silver Springs #2)(65)

“What has he found that would lead him to believe it wasn’t Sly?”

“Nothing, yet. But he had a few things to say that made sense to me.”

“Let me guess. He said that Sly would never do anything to hurt his own son.”

“He did, but you already know I’m skeptical of that.”

He stretched his back. “So what’s causing you to second-guess yourself?”

She lowered her voice, in case any part of what she said carried over to Jayden. “He wouldn’t want to do something that could possibly ruin his image or get him kicked off the force, let alone sent to prison. He loves his badge. It makes him a big shot, gives him power in this town. And power is what he loves most.”

Dawson shook his head as he went back to work.

“You don’t agree?”

“It’s none of my business,” he said.

“I’m asking your opinion.”

He stopped again. “Honestly? I think he did it. Maybe what Chief Thomas mentioned—his badge and his ego—would stop him if he believed there was any chance he could get caught. But he thinks he’s too smart for that.”

“People blamed you for something terrible because you seemed like the logical choice, and they were wrong. I’m tempted to believe he did it, too—you know that. But I’d hate to make the same mistake with Jayden’s father.”

“I wouldn’t wish what’s happened to me on anyone, even Sly,” he said. “But I was blamed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, essentially. I didn’t mistreat them beforehand, wasn’t bullying, threatening or abusing them, the way Sly has bullied and threatened you. There was no pattern of aggression, not that anyone cared to cut me any slack for that. I was adopted, had a rough past and found them. That was all it took.” He jammed his shovel even deeper into the ground. “If I have my guess, Sly didn’t like that you suddenly had an ally, some other way to make money and survive. He felt he was losing his grip on you and needed to do something to shore it up, something that would force you back under his control once and for all.”

He was echoing her own thoughts—the thoughts she’d had before Chief Thomas got in her head, anyway. “Yeah. You’re right,” she agreed. “It’s just hard to believe that...that he would do such a thing. Because if he would go that far—what might he do next?”

“Good question,” he said. “Regardless of what Chief Thomas had to say, you have to stay on your guard. We both do.”





17


Someone was skulking around her house, a dark shadow that Sadie could see from her window but couldn’t completely make out. He was wearing a dark hoodie, pulled over his face. He’s back, she thought. Only, suddenly, she wasn’t at her house peering through the window at all—she was at the farm, gazing out at the fields, and she could smell smoke again. She was trying to scream, to warn Dawson to get out of the house, when she opened her eyes and, heart pumping, blinked at the semidarkness.

There was no smoke. Everything smelled like it usually did—a little musty, since the house was so old. Those sights, sounds and images were all a dream.

It felt late, yet the light was still on in the hallway, the TV blaring downstairs. She’d left it that way when she came up to lie down with Jayden because she’d been planning to go back and wait for Dawson to finish up outside. She’d wanted to feel secure in the fact that they were both in for the night before retiring but had fallen asleep as fast as Jayden had.

So where was Dawson? After she’d served him the leftover Stroganoff, he’d said he’d work for only another hour or two. Had he ever come in? Was he in his bed? If so, why’d he leave the TV and lights on?

Maybe he’d been too tired to bother with that sort of thing, she thought, but she knew, instinctively, that would be odd for him. He was a man who took care of things. He took care of people, too; she was an obvious example. He would’ve locked up and turned everything off before going to bed.

Still struggling to overcome the last vestiges of sleep—and the effects of that nightmare—she leaned up on one elbow and squinted to see the clock. It wasn’t as late as she’d thought—only eleven. Dawson could easily be watching the TV she heard.

Jayden was snuggled close to her. After kissing his forehead, she slid him over so she could get out of bed. She was wearing Dawson’s clothes again; she’d put her own sweats in the washer after working outside.

Although she was plenty warm, the hardwood floor proved cold enough that she wished for her slippers. It was so easy to take the little things for granted—until they were gone.

Thoughts of how she was going to recover from the fire threatened to commandeer her mind yet again. Before she’d gone to sleep, she’d decided that, with the way things were going, she had only one option: she had to save every dime she could and leave Silver Springs as soon as possible. Dawson was right. That Sly would set her house on fire was a warning sign, and she’d be stupid not to heed it. He’d finally gone too far, so far she felt justified in escaping any way she could, and in taking their son with her.

But she knew it would be some time before she had the money to leave, and she didn’t have many options in the meantime except to watch her back, so she pushed away those worries. Chief Thomas had called just before she put Jayden to bed to say that he had someone going through the house at that very moment, and he’d bring the items on her list—what they could salvage—tomorrow. The officer he’d sent said he couldn’t find the pictures of Jayden or her parents, which concerned her, but that didn’t mean they weren’t safe. The officer didn’t say they’d been destroyed, only that the plastic storage container she kept them in wasn’t in the bedroom closet where she’d told him to look, which was potentially good news. If the container wasn’t there, the pictures weren’t, either, so she must’ve moved them.