Chapter 7: I’ve Got You

Shelley stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at Shayne on the last step.

"Okay," she said quietly. Then she couldn't help adding, "When no one's watching out for Third Brother, I'll watch out for him too."

Shayne's lips twitched. "He doesn't need anyone watching out for him. What he needs is a tranquilizer and a locked door."

Shelley laughed, tucked the pen into her apron pocket, and pressed it close to her chest.

From that night on, the basement mat became Shelley's regular training spot.

Vera swapped her cashmere sweaters and lace aprons for a black sports tank and high-waisted workout pants. Her honey-colored curls were pulled back tight into a ponytail that made her features look sharper and more defined. She stood in the middle of the padded floor, looking down at the small, round figure in front of her.

"Shelley, I don't care that you're five years old. I won't take it easy on you. If you cry now, you'll cry even harder when it really counts. Got it?"

"Got it, Mama."

Shelley meant every word. Every muscle in her small body was filled with a determination that had nothing to do with pretending. She had died once before. She remembered the feeling of falling from three hundred and twelve feet, remembered her family watching her fall without lifting a finger to help. If Vera wanted to turn her into someone who could survive, Shelley would meet her more than halfway.

First exercise: endurance. A thirty-foot loop, ten rounds.

Shelley made it through six rounds before her face turned as red as a tomato and her short legs felt like they were filled with wet cement. Her lungs burned. Her sides cramped. She snuck a peek at Vera. Vera was holding a stopwatch with one eyebrow raised, and jerked her chin: keep going.

Shelley clenched her teeth.

Round seven. Round eight. By round nine, her vision started to blur, the basement walls seemed to tilt like she was on a boat, and she almost face-planted into the mat. Vera grabbed her by the collar, pulled her upright, and pointed back at the starting line.

"Again."

"...Yes, ma'am."

She finished the tenth round in a stumbling shuffle, barely staying on her feet, and collapsed against Vera's legs. Vera's hand came down on her shoulder—firm, warm, almost proud.

"Better than my first day," she said. "Don't tell anyone I said that."

Second exercise: reaction speed. Vera grabbed a mesh bag of tennis balls and threw them at Shelley from every direction. High, low, left, right, sometimes two at once. The rule: block or dodge before the ball hit the mat.

For ten solid minutes, Shelley's forehead, shoulders, and butt took hit after hit. The balls stung. They left pink marks on her skin. Her eyes watered until the basement turned into a blur of concrete and overhead lights. She didn't cry.

By the second session, she was catching one out of three. By the fourth session, two out of three. A week in, she dodged a low throw aimed at her knees and swatted away a high one in the same motion. Vera's hand on the stopwatch froze mid-click.

"Not bad," she said, trying to sound casual. But Shelley caught the way her eyes stayed on her a moment longer.

Third exercise: close combat survival.

"Your body is a weapon," Vera said, crouching down to eye level. "Every part of it. Teeth. Elbows. Knees. Heels. If he comes at you from the front."

She demonstrated. A heel stomp to the top of the foot that made Shelley wince just watching. A jab with a pen or key toward the eye, the throat. An elbow to the chest, delivered with her whole body weight behind it.

"From behind." Vera stepped around Shelley and loosely wrapped one arm around her neck to demonstrate. "Drop your chin right away. Protect your airway. Then bite—here." She tapped the inside of her own wrist. "As hard as you can. Human jaws can put out two hundred pounds of pressure per square inch. You break skin, you hit an artery. He'll let go."

Shelley practiced the motion, her small teeth snapping at air. Vera adjusted her chin position with two fingers, then nodded in approval.

"Remember, sweetheart." Vera crouched down to Shelley's level, her voice dropping low and intense. "Can't win? Run. Can't run? Bite. Can't bite? Play dead. Your life is worth more than their pride. Worth more than their ego. Worth more than anything else in that room, every single time."

Shelley held her mother's gaze. "I understand."

The corners of Vera's mouth softened slightly. "Upstairs. Ginger tea. Then bath."

Silas leaned against the stairwell railing during these sessions, an unlit cigar clamped between his teeth, watching without saying a word.

Shelley never knew when he'd shown up. He'd appear around the third lap and stay through the final drill, his eyes following Vera's demonstrations with a professional eye that had nothing to do with ranching and everything to do with a man who had killed people in forty countries.

When Shelley finally collapsed on the mat, gasping like a fish thrown onto a dock, he walked over. In one hand, a tin of German muscle balm. In the other, a glass of warm honey water.

"Come here, princess."

Shelley crawled over. He lifted her onto the old couch, face-down, and she gulped down the water while he warmed the balm between his palms. His hands were rough as sandpaper but gentle, working out the knots in her shoulders with a pressure that made her whimper and melt at the same time.

"Does it hurt?"

"Not really. Mama goes easy on me."

Silas snorted. "Easy? I'd like to see her go easy on someone my size. She'd turn my knee ligaments into decorative string."

From the mat area, a cold throat-clearing. "Silas. One more word about my teaching methods and you're sleeping in the guest room until Christmas."

Silas pressed his lips together and gave Shelley a sneaky wink.

She rested her chin on her folded arms, eyes narrowing with studied innocence. "Dad."

"Mm?"

"Was Mama really just a professional combat instructor in Europe?"

Silas's jaw tightened. The slightest flex at the hinge, there and gone. "Absolutely. European Women's Mixed Martial Arts, lightweight division. The gold belt's in the attic storage, next to the old Christmas decorations. I'll dig it out for you sometime."

"Then how come she can press one spot under a man's collarbone and his whole arm goes dead? Do combat instructors learn that?"

Silas's hands paused for half a second, then kept going in slow circles. "That's a human body thing. Your mother studied anatomy as a hobby."

"Anatomy hobby?"

"Amateur anatomy," Silas said, his face the picture of fatherly sincerity. "Main job: baking you cinnamon rolls."

Shelley buried her face in the couch cushion to muffle her laugh. Behind her, Silas's hands kept moving, but she felt the tension in his fingertips, the slight, careful shift of a man who'd just realized his daughter was sharper than he'd thought.

"Speaking of jobs," she said, her voice muffled by the cushion, "you're really leaving next week?"

Silas went quiet. Then: "Listen, princess. I need to tell you something for real."

She turned her head to look at him.

"Business has been tough. Feed prices are up, beef prices are getting squeezed by the big companies, workers still need to get paid. And your mama has expensive taste when it comes to little girl clothes."

Shelley blinked, playing along with the story. Inside, she translated: the syndicate had pending contracts, rival networks moving in, the kind of turf war that ended with body bags. She'd pieced together the shape of it from Silas's phone calls in the garage, the ones with the door shut.

"So this trip down south next week. It's not optional. Big contract. Gets us through next year. If it doesn't get signed?"

"What happens?"

"Your mother has to pawn that little gold necklace she likes."

A towel snapped across the room and hit the weight rack with a crack. "Honey, you are a dead man."

Silas flinched, then grinned at Shelley. She shook with silent laughter. When it died down, she looked up at him with serious eyes.

"Dad. Are people saying bad things about Mama?"

His hands stopped moving.

"Yesterday, when we went to get chocolates, that lady in the plaid coat pointed at us from behind her fence. Mama pretended not to see, but she squeezed my hand really tight."

Silas was quiet for two seconds. The humor drained from his face, replaced by something harder and older. Then he reached out and ruffled her bun, gently this time.

"Your mother's faced down bullets without blinking. A few gossipy women in cheap sweaters don't even register. She just doesn't like wasting energy on stupid people."

"What about you?"

"Me?" He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I don't care what people say. People who care about that kind of thing don't live long."

Shelley nodded, filing the information away, and let it go.

Silas hoisted her up, gave her a little bounce that made her stomach flip. "Bath time. Dinner. Your mama made oxtail soup tonight. Two bowls minimum, then back at it tomorrow."

Tuesday evening, Silas packed.

A beat-up old duffel bag. Two spare shirts. A pair of backup work boots. A folding safety razor with something hidden in the handle. Shelley didn't look too closely.

She sat on the hallway carpet outside the master bedroom, the pen heavy in her lap, watching Vera adjust Silas's collar with quick, efficient movements.

"The southern crew's still running the same routes," Vera said quietly, her voice pitched too low for normal ears. "Don't go head-to-head with Old John. He hasn't changed."

"I know."

"I called your brother downtown. He's got eyes on the station. If anything goes wrong, his hospital's your first stop."

"Mm."

"And Liam," Vera paused. Her fingers stopped on Silas's lapel. "He's coming back in the next day or two. Did you talk to her?"

"I did." Silas turned and waved to the small figure in the doorway. "Come here, princess."

Shelley shuffled over, pen clutched to her chest.

Silas dropped to one knee. For once the lazy drawl and casual slouch were gone. What was underneath was something hard and real. Something that reminded Shelley this man had survived things she couldn't imagine and had killed people she didn't want to think about.

"Listen to Dad, okay?"

"Okay."

"Your third brother." He measured each word like he was stacking blocks on shaky ground. "He's not a bad person. But the way his brain works doesn't match normal people. When he's happy, he's charming. When he's not—"

"Things blow up," Shayne said from the doorway, not looking up from the carpet.

Silas shot him a look. "When he's not happy, he says mean things. He breaks things. What I told you before about going the other way when you see him in the hallway—you remember that?"

"I remember."

"Change of plans." Silas took her small hands in his rough ones. His grip was warm and solid. "Going the other way? That's still option one. But if he comes at you, if he yells or throws something or tries to make you feel small—you don't have to take it. You don't have to be nice just because he's family."

Shelley went very still.

"Run if you can. Yell for Mama if she's nearby. And if you need to," he tapped the pen in her hands, the motion deliberate, "you use this. Nobody gets to make you feel small while I'm gone. Nobody. Not your brother, not a teacher, not some kid at school. You hear me?"

"I hear you."

Silas let out a breath, his shoulders dropping. "Good girl."

He stood and looked at Shayne, still standing in the doorway with his hands shoved in his pockets and his face turned toward the floor. "You. Keep an eye on her. Nobody gets within three feet, especially not your brother. Understand?"

Shayne didn't speak.

He dipped his chin once, a short sharp nod.

And that was that.