Sparrows & Sacrifice

by Nellie K Neves

  “We need Sky,” Ryder said to Iris as we changed out the steaming pots for the main cabin. “She’s trained as a nurse, and I could use another person with medical knowledge.”

  “She’s not a nurse,” Iris said. Her contempt showed for the woman her husband favored.

  “Ask her,” I said, “she’ll tell you.” It wasn’t a hard stretch. Tasha would see the long game and play along, I was sure of it. I frowned theatrically and took another route. “I mean, unless you prefer her to stay up in the house with Cyrus all day, instead of helping us at odd hours in the night. If whatever he needs her for is more important…” I let my point sink in and watched with amusement as she came to the same conclusion that I’d hoped.

  “No, you’re right,” Iris agreed. “It’s about time those house girls started pulling some weight around here. It may not be often, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  That was how Tasha delivered copies of Cyrus’ personal records. Harmony followed the same path, delivering notes between the house and our encampment like a spy. At night, Ryder slipped off into the woods to pass information to Uncle Shane through the phone. I swear I held my breath until he returned. With our patients spread across the compound, he had an easy alibi, but it didn’t stop my heart from pounding.

  Most nights, we never found a bed, either of us, but on occasion I’d slip into a corner and fall asleep. The relentless monster inside me released waves of fatigue to torment me. I slept at various hours for nondescript moments in time. Ryder stayed near, a hand on my head, fingers slipping over my cheek, and every now and then he’d pull me into his arms and hold me while we slept against a wall.

  By the third day, over half the children had recovered, but the main cabin still felt the effects. When Ryder pulled me away from Moonlight that morning, fishing poles in his hand, I shook my head.

  “This isn’t the time for—”

  “Trust me, it is.”

  I followed him, but not without my personal reservations. The little girl needed me, and I hated to be away from her. Still, Ryder’s insistence made me curious. We passed the pond he’d taken me to before, and still walked further. Just as I was starting to wonder if we were making a run for it, I saw him.

  “Uncle Shane?”

  His hair was grayer than I remembered, but it could have been my imagination. The wrinkles around his eyes deepened from worry to happiness as he embraced me. I sunk into his arms and breathed his scent. Memories of my childhood flooded my mind like balm. He spoke to Ryder over my head, neither of us willing to let go.

  “Was it a clean getaway? Do you have a minute?”

  Papers rustled and Ryder produced the copies Tasha had made. Uncle Shane released me to take the valuable evidence.

  “I’m not sure what’s there,” Ryder motioned to the stack, “but Tasha made it sound like it was important.”

  “Have you had any luck contacting her supervisor with the FBI?” I took a step back. Ryder’s arm slipped protectively around my waist. Uncle Shane caught the motion, and his eyebrows shot up in question. I wrote it all off. Ryder was more worried about me falling over than anything else. With no sleep to speak of and my symptoms in full swing, he kept me close out of necessity.

  “There’s been some trouble there,” Uncle Shane explained. “The FBI claims to have no record of her. Are you sure she’s not feeding you a line, Lindy?”

  My mouth went dry, and I was glad for Ryder’s support. “No, she may be in trouble with them, but she’s an agent.”

  He wasn’t willing to argue. “Look, either way, FBI and DEA have both been real interested in what you’ve been feeding us. Between all this and the local robberies, I think the case is pretty airtight. We need to get you out now. Are you prepared today?”

  “I told you we aren’t going yet.” The strength in Ryder’s voice surprised me. “There are people who need us here. I know the feds asked for us to stay. When it all goes down, I have to be there.”

  “My priority is you and Lindy, Ryder. Tasha, if we can get her to come, but—”

  “You’ve seen how these situations end, Shane.” Ryder placed himself between my uncle and me. “Too many people will die if there’s no warning and the police storm the property. You need us here on the ground. Tell us when and we’ll be ready.”

  Uncle Shane ran an open palm over his face and exhaled his frustration. “This is a real mess, you know that? Recon, this was supposed to be simple recon work.”

  “You know it never happens like that.” I tried to keep my voice light, but the weight of the situation made it impossible.

  “Fine. I’ll get you information as soon as I can.” He pulled a small red cooler from behind a bush. “I caught two, but it seems like a lot if you’re headed right back.”

  “What about the medication?” Ryder asked.

  “It’s there too.” He shoved the cooler with his foot. Ryder took it to begin lacing the fish.

  My uncle jammed his hand into his back pocket and pulled two envelopes free. I noted the ripped seal and cocked an eyebrow.

  “Call it a delivery fee,” He extended them to me. “You could have told me you’d contacted Jackie.”

  My heart sped so fast it hurt for a moment. “She wrote back?”

  “The other letter is from your parents. They’re worried. A lot has happened with them. Considering everything you’ve gone through,” he paused to consider his words, “keep an open mind when you read the letter, that’s all.”

  I shoved the letters into the waistband of my skirt. “I’ll try.”

  “We need to go, Huckleberry.” Ryder’s voice reminded me of our tenuous situation. I gave my uncle a quick hug.

  Before I could pull away, Uncle Shane said, “Looks like my meddling might not have been bad after all.”

  “It’s not over yet. If it comes down to it, tell them to get Ryder out. Don’t let them come after me.” Guilt pressed on my chest as I stared into his eyes and saw my mother reflected there. If she knew…

  “Promise me you’ll get him out alive, no matter the cost,” I said.

  My uncle studied me as if I were his newest case. He saw it; the hidden truth behind my eyes. He drew in a breath of surprise.

  “You fell in love with him.”

  I didn’t bother to admit it, but I didn’t deny it either. “Keep him alive, you promise?”

  “Lindy let’s go,” Ryder said from the trailhead.

  Time wouldn’t wait for Shane’s confirmation or one last hug. We had days left, if that. A clock ticked down the moments left before I made the biggest decisions of my life.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I had to wait to read my letters. Steam pots needed to be changed, homemade breathing treatments had to be administered, medication had to be dosed, and lies delivered to everyone but Harmony and Genesis. I couldn’t risk a guard stealing the letters away and learning too much. Around noon, I found a quiet corner in Willow’s cabin.

  I started with Jackie’s letter, written on light purple stationary, the same color she’d liked when we were kids. My disappointment pricked at first glance. Only a few sentences, but I adjusted quickly because it came from Jackie.

  “Dear Lindy, Thank you for the letter and especially for the pictures. Eleanor looks like trouble. I’m sure you’ve had your hands full being her older sister all these years. Your parents look like good people, but mine were good people as well, and yet if you’re right then it means they were party to a kidnapping. I don’t know how to deal with that, but your mother looks familiar. Maybe she has one of those faces. The handwriting sample intrigues me. Your grandmother loops her l’s in the exact way that I do. I’m still not ready to meet yet, but please write back again. I want to know more about you. Sincerely, Jocelyn”

  Again, she’d written Jackie in parenthesis, but this time she’d tagged a question mark at the end. She might believe me on some level, and I could hang my hope on that.

  Pulling the second letter free, I immediately recognized my fathe
r’s messy scrawl, masculine and embarrassingly close to my own handwriting.

  “Lindy, I hope you’re well. Shane told us you’re in the back country working on a case. From the way he’s staying tight-lipped about it, I’d wager there’s a fair amount of peril involved. Please don’t do anything reckless. I have season tickets and I was planning on spending at least a couple games with you next to me. It’d be rather awkward if you died. People frown on urns in the ballpark.”

  I smirked at his dry humor. I’d learned to make jokes at the wrong time from him, and I still appreciated the darkness of it all.

  “We were going to surprise you, but when we called to tell you the news, you were gone. Shane says he can deliver this, so I’ll break it this way. We’ve moved. Not far, still in the central valley, but onto a larger piece of property. Your mother loves animals and plans to raise a menagerie of sorts. I imagine many rescued canine and felines in my future with weeping wounds and expensive medications. But beyond that, we bought the property for another selling point. Apart from the house, with its own driveway, there’s a guest house. I know you’ll object, but we want to invite you to move home again. You can still work as a P.I., but this way, should you happen to relapse again, you’ll be closer to help.”

  I didn’t bother to read the rest. I crumbled the letter into a ball and smashed it beneath my heel. The door to the cabin popped open as I stomped the ball of paper a second time. Ryder’s eyebrow jutted upward.

  “Bad news?”

  “Overbearing parents.”

  He scoffed. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  I kicked the paper wad and let it bounce off the wall. “They bought a new house, and it has a convenient little place out back for me to convalesce in my weakness.”

  Ryder acknowledged me with a nod, but turned his attention to the jars on the wall. “They’re worried. It was scary watching you in the hospital.”

  My shoulders slumped forward, and I rolled my eyes. “I get that, but most of it was because I’d been chopped to bits, not because of my disease.”

  “There was plenty of both,” Ryder said. “Out of the two of us, I’m sure I remember more since you were unconscious.”

  The shelf jutted into my back, but I wanted to face him. “I can’t go back there. I can’t move back in with my parents.” My fingers skipped over his arms, tracing the muscles and their chiseled curves with detached fascination. “They think I’m worse than I am. They think I can’t take care of myself.”

  Ryder stopped searching the shelf and instead watched my hand as it ran over the curve of his bicep.

  “I’m not helpless,” I whispered as I tightened my grip.

  “I never said you were.” Though he kept his voice soft like mine, the words didn’t matter. A gentle distraction, debris to fill the space and the time that expanded between us. They acted as nothing more than an alibi to keep me close to him.

  “For the record,” he pushed the loose strands of hair from my face, “I don’t want you to go, but I think I’m part of the reason they want you to leave.”

  He shifted closer, and some of his weight leaned on me. Instinct told me not to let on that his warmth sped my heart, but why not? Why not give into him and let go?

  “You’re not a bad guy,” I whispered. His arm twitched beneath my grip. “It wasn’t your fault that I got hurt.”

  “Isn’t it though?” The memories broke the spell. Ryder reversed and drove space between us. “Can you check on Moonlight? She asked for you.”

  Before he walked out the door, I tried one last time. “I don’t blame you for what happened to me, Ryder.”

  The door hung wide open to showcase the afternoon rain falling beyond his still shoulders. He didn’t turn to face me, but I heard him anyway.

  “I know you don’t, but you’ll never love me because of it.”

  The door closed before I found the courage to whisper, “But, I do.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I knew one truth. I loved Ryder Billings. That wasn’t the problem anymore, but how to deal with it plagued me. Because of my career, my life went helter skelter at a moment’s notice on a semi-regular basis. Even before my more dangerous cases, I still faced disgruntled cheaters chasing me down with baseball bats. Much of my work ruffled the wrong feathers and put those closest to me at risk. Did loving him mean I had to quit my job? What would I do instead?

  Add to that the reality of my future—wheelchairs, hospitals, and worse—was it fair to hitch him to that life with three little words? Most couples know that one day they’ll grow old together, and they’ll take care of each other. In my reality, geriatrics might only be ten to fifteen years away. Take that same scenario of growing old together, but instead one half of the relationship is still young and vibrant and the other is needing her drool wiped from her chin. I doubted an optimist like Ryder had considered the ramifications of our future. But leaving him, having a life away from him—that felt even more impossible.

  At the very edge of my thoughts, teetering on the horizon, I whispered a desperate wish that despite everything, my career, my disease, my own expansive list of personal faults, we could actually make it work. What if Ryder could handle it? What if we could have a future together? None of it mattered unless we managed to get out of Eden’s Haven alive.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  By the fourth day, all but five children were healthy. Even Moonlight sat up and ate on her own. The children adored Ryder. Because Raife refused to share the same air, Ryder became the main guard for the female half of the compound. Though he was forced to carry an automatic weapon, it never sat at the ready, typically slung behind his back. I had serious doubts as to whether it was even loaded.

  I noticed early on that the children rushed him after every meal, until they surrounded him three or four children deep. After a while, I realized he gave them food—bread he’d saved or a boiled egg to share. Like all good barterers, they gave him something in return, but I never saw his bounty. A couple days in, I noticed a sucker stick hanging out of his mouth like a cigarette.

  Candy.

  They traded candy for his food.

  Ryder pulled the sucker from his mouth and winked. My stomach erupted in an explosion of nerves and excitement. Oh, I loved him, but admitting it to him left me paralyzed. Every time I thought about telling him those three words, they tangled up in my throat and threatened to strangle me. But I couldn’t help but stand near him every time we gathered. He couldn’t help but let his fingers trace over my bare arms if I stood close enough. Our pinkies would link, hidden by the folds of my skirt. Close enough to touch, but easy to separate to avoid punishment.

  Beneath the watchful glare of the women who revered Cyrus’ rules, we had nothing but stolen moments. In those moments though, the times when he’d let his palm graze my lower back as he passed or grip the fabric of my skirt as we checked a patient, I knew leaving him would be nearly impossible.

  Chapter 33

  I couldn’t shake the fact that the FBI wouldn’t vouch for Tasha. Hoping for a chance to talk, I took Harmony’s place on dinner delivery to the main house. Tasha faltered the second I stepped through the door. Breaking away from Cyrus, she moved to my side, careful to keep her voice business as usual.

  “Sparrow, that looks heavy for a weakling like you. Should I take it?”

  Nick stepped in and pulled the basket from my hands. “Careful, she’ll start begging again.”

  I stammered for an excuse to speak with Tasha alone, but nothing came to mind.

  Tasha removed the roasted chicken from the top of the basket and set it on the kitchen counter. “Sparrow, make yourself useful, hold this steady while I carve it for Cyrus.”

  Obediently, head bowed and drooling over the feast they’d been allotted, I gripped the platter. Juices pooled on the skin of the bird, glistening, hypnotic for a starving creature like me. Tasha set the blade to the flesh and made a motion to carve down. At the last second, she let the blade slip free
and slice across the back of my hand.

  Recoiling, I reeled back and slapped my opposite hand over the wound. I found no remorse in her expression, nothing but cold unyielding steel.

  “Oops, it slipped.”

  Nick and a few other men laughed. “What’s one more scar among hundreds?”

  “Come on, you clumsy little bird, let’s bandage you up.”

  I allowed Tasha to escort me from the room to a nearby bathroom. Anger boiled inside of me. Blood and knives riddled my mind with trapdoors for rage. As soon as the door clicked shut, I slammed Tasha against the wall with both hands. I reveled in the sound of her head cracking against the wall.

  “What was that?” I demanded through clenched teeth.

  In my weakened state, I couldn’t hope for a fair fight. Her palms collided with my shoulders. I rocked back against the pedestal sink and cried out. Reaching around me, Tasha turned on the sink full blast to muffle our sound.

  “Why are you here? You’re going to blow my cover.”

  “I talked with my uncle. There’s no trace of you at the FBI. I have issues with people lying about their identity.”

  I braced myself in case she hit me to blow off steam, but her open palm slapped the wall instead. “Because I’m technically not an FBI agent right now. When I wouldn’t drop this case and my performance became, well lacking, they let me go.” Tasha looked away from me before she sighed. “This is my ticket back in. Please, help me.”

  I left the house with a rag tied around my hand. Blood saturated the rag by the time I made it to Willow’s cabin. As Ryder wrapped the wound, I still hadn’t decided if Tasha was a friend or foe.