Chapter 2

chapter

two

As the crowd exploded with protests and cries of panic, Pierce watched Rhiannon.

She held up her hands in a soothing gesture, her green-gold eyes radiating calm patience. "Please, everyone, remain calm!"

Rylan fucking Cross's little sister.

Of all the people in the world he could have been stuck with, it had to be her.

Not that he had anything against Rhiannon, not really. She was just… unexpected. And in his line of work, unexpected could be dangerous.

Add in the fact that she had lingered on the edge of his consciousness ever since Rylan first mentioned her, and his discomfort about the whole situation grew. He'd never met her, but he'd heard enough about her resilience, her compassion, and her patience to know that she was exactly the kind of woman he liked. And the type of woman he steadfastly avoided. She would see right through his stoic facade and stealthily, unintentionally sneak past the guards around his corroded heart, and nobody needed to be anywhere near that sad, shriveled organ.

Especially not Rhiannon Cross.

She was everything that was good and light and kind, and he didn't want to poison her with his darkness.

Even before he'd decided to leave Steam Valley, he'd planned to make himself scarce during her visit. With the way he'd clung to any scrap of information Rylan shared about her, he'd known that proximity would be dangerous.

Yet now, here they were.

Trapped together in this dusty hovel of a gift shop, surrounded by strangers who looked to them for comfort and direction– and he was unable to provide either.

His gaze drifted back to Rhiannon. She was still comforting the boy, Michael, making soothing noises as she rocked him in her arms. Her hair was dust-streaked, the normally rich color of her chocolate-brown locks dull under layers of dust, and dirt smeared her cheeks, but the gentle way she held the frightened boy, the calm reassurance in her eyes as she communicated with him... it was beautiful.

Jesus. She was just as perfect as Rylan had said.

The look in her green-gold eyes when she glanced his way caused something strange to twist in his gut—an uneasy mixture of dread and… longing?

Pierce quickly looked away and focused back on the crowd of frightened people.

"Are we going to suffocate?" The Japanese family's teenage daughter asked, her faintly accented voice shaking. Next to her, her younger brother was crying.

"What if there's another earthquake?" one of the younger gift shop workers asked, his face pale with fear.

Rhiannon held up a hand, pleading for calm. "We're not going to suffocate," she assured them but then looked at him again with a question in her gaze this time.

He nodded and signed, "The air is still circulating. We're not going to suffocate."

She exhaled in relief.

"Can we do anything to open the entrance? Dig out?" one of the trio of single men asked. He had wide shoulders, long hair slicked back into a low ponytail, and a chin covered in a thin layer of blond stubble.

Something about the guy set off Pierce's internal alarms. There were people after him—dangerous people who would stop at nothing to find him. He knew too much, had seen too much, and they'd already tried to kill him once. He was too big of a liability for them to leave him alive. And he knew they were closing in. It was the whole reason he'd decided to leave Steam Valley—to protect his friends.

Could Ponytail, here, be one of them?

He regarded the man with a measured gaze, quietly cataloging this new potential threat.

No, he decided. Ponytail wasn't the kind of man they'd send. He didn't have the predatory edge, that lingering aura of menace that came with a lifetime spent in the shadows. He was just an asshole.

Still, Pierce's internal alarm was blaring. Maybe Ponytail wasn't the trouble, but there was trouble here, so he signed to Rhiannon, "Pretend I'm deaf."

She narrowed her eyes at him and shifted Michael to her hip so she could sign. "Why?"

"People talk freely when they don't think you can hear them."

Now, a crease formed between those pretty, narrowed eyes. "You don't trust him."

"I don't trust anyone. Find out his name. And tell him we can't dig out without risking a total collapse."

"What's he saying?" Ponytail demanded.

After a beat of hesitation, she turned back to the man. "I asked him about digging out. He says it's too unstable, and we could risk a cave-in. Then he asked your name."

The man eyed Pierce with an unimpressed glare. He crossed his arms over his wide chest, his brows furrowing in suspicion. "Name's Dean. What makes the deaf guy an expert in landslides?"

Rhiannon visibly stiffened, her arms tightening around the child. The man's tone was hostile, derisive, and Pierce could see how it gnawed at her patience. The softness in her eyes hardened ever so slightly. "Pierce has more experience with these situations than any of us here. He works with a search and rescue team."

Dean grunted and walked over to the front door. He gave it a testing shove and then a swift kick, but the pile of earth and rubble on the other side didn't budge.

Pierce watched Dean's futile attempts without expression, but inside, he seethed at the man's arrogance. He would have liked nothing more than to school Dean in the lethal dangers of triggering another landslide, but that would require a voice. Nobody ever listened when you yelled in sign language.

Dean kicked the door again, and something shifted overhead, sending a shower of dust and bits of ceiling plaster raining down on the panicked crowd. Several people shrieked as they scrambled away from the falling debris.

"Stop!" Rhiannon's voice sliced through the hushed quiet, her tone devoid of its earlier gentleness. "You could bring the whole place down on top of us."

Dean sneered at her, but he stepped back from the door. His gaze roved to Pierce, a smug challenge in his eyes. But Pierce just returned his stare evenly, unflinching. He didn't have to make noise to be heard.

Dean's face flushed red under the layer of grime. "Bunch of babies," he muttered under his breath but backed off.

Pierce didn't particularly care what the man thought of him, only that he obeyed the necessary decisions to keep everyone safe. He had far too many potential threats to manage already; an unruly civilian was just another unwelcome complication.

He watched as Dean retreated to a distant corner of the gift shop, his disgruntled slouch signaling his capitulation. He was still something to watch out for, but for now, he'd been dealt with.

His gaze shifted back to Rhiannon. She had turned her attention back to Michael, whispering to him and soothingly stroking his hair. The boy was visibly trembling, his wide eyes flickering nervously between Pierce and Dean.

She looked up and caught Pierce's eyes on her. Her gaze held so much trust — trust that he was capable of handling whatever came their way. It made his gut clench with a strange mix of fear and… warmth. As if her faith in him sparked a little flame in the ice-cold pit of his heart.

She wouldn't look at him like that if she knew all the things he'd done. His past was a minefield of morally grey decisions, of necessary evils committed for the greater good. Rhiannon wouldn't look at him like this if she knew about the lives he'd taken or the sacrifices he'd made on unnamed battlefields under moonlit skies painted red with blood.

His gaze dropped to his hands. They were coated in dirt now, but under it, he could see the blood stains. Always there. He could never wash them away, never forget. The stains were a part of him, forever etched into his soul, branding him as the monster he knew himself to be. If she knew, would those trusting eyes turn cold? Would she recoil from him, as she should?

"He's really freaked out," Rhiannon interrupted his thoughts, gesturing with her head toward Michael, who clung to her like a lifeline, his small body shaking like a leaf in a storm. "I can keep him calm, but... I think it would help if he heard from you that we're going to be okay."

Something akin to panic tightened in Pierce's chest—interacting with adults was one thing, but children? They deserved a gentleness he wasn't sure he was capable of.

"Rhia," he signed, his brows furrowed, "I'm not good with kids."

His entire experience with kids boiled down to studiously avoiding Zak and Anna Hendricks' precocious adopted daughter, Poppy, as she ran and played on the grounds of Redwood Coast Rescue. Poppy was beautiful and sweet and so happy, a bright light, and he'd always been afraid he'd taint her with his darkness if he got too close. He was an entity of shadows and secrets, not fit for an innocent world that smelled of fresh crayons and gummy bears.

Rhiannon studied him for a moment, her expression unreadable, before she offered him a soft smile. "You don't have to be good with kids. You just need to be genuine. You saved him, and you speak his language. He needs to hear from someone other than me that he's safe. He needs to hear it from the person who fought for him."

Pierce glanced at the boy, his heart clenching at the tears pooling in the child's eyes and the way Michael clung to Rhiannon as if she was his anchor in this storm. He hesitated for a moment longer, and Razzy bumped a nose to his hand as if to say, "What's the problem?"

Right. He'd done harder things than this.

Taking a deep breath, Pierce knelt to Michael's level, his movements slow and deliberate.

"Hey." His hands felt too heavy, too clumsy to carry the delicate weight of a child's hope, but he had to try.

Michael buried his face in Rhiannon's shoulder.

He waved his hand in front of the boy's face to get his attention, then signed, "Look at me."

Michael hesitated for a second before lifting his head. "I want my mom," he signed, big tears leaving trails in the dirt on his cheeks.

Yeah, that hit like a solid punch straight to the gut, knocking all the air from Pierce's lungs. He swallowed hard, his scars pulling tight across his throat. "I know, kid. I promise you, I will get you back to your family." He purposely used the sign for family rather than mom because he doubted the kid's parents were still alive. They wouldn't have heard the landslide coming, wouldn't have been able to get out of the way in time. But there had to be grandparents or aunts and uncles somewhere. "But until then, you're not alone. You've got Rhia and me. We're going to keep you safe, okay?"

Michael took a shaky breath and then nodded, his blue eyes shimmering with trust. He let go of Rhiannon and hesitantly reached out to touch the scar on Pierce's neck. "You got a hurt."

Pierce's throat tightened at the innocent observation, the simple statement pulling him back to a past he fought every day to leave behind. He nodded. "Yes, I got hurt once a long time ago. But I'm okay now. And I won't let you get hurt, okay?"

Michael managed a brave nod, his small chin trembling as he signed, "Okay."

Pierce felt a surge of protectiveness swell in his chest as he brushed away the fresh tears on the boy's cheeks with the back of his sleeve. His gaze met Rhiannon's, and he could see the questions in her eyes, questions about his past and scars. Questions he was not about to answer for her.

He straightened and turned his attention back to the crowd, keeping an eye on Dean and the others as he started mentally working through their situation. He needed to come up with a plan— an escape route was out of the question for now. They had supplies in the form of gift shop snacks and water bottles, but those would not last indefinitely. The other issue was keeping everyone calm and maintaining order. Panic could easily lead to disaster in such a tense environment.

A sudden tremor had them all frozen in place, eyes wide, breaths held. Pierce watched as a thin trickle of dust drifted down from the ceiling, and dread tightened in his chest.

Aftershock.

Just an aftershock.

He steadied himself against a nearby shelf, the tremor subsiding as quickly as it had arrived, leaving a residue of fear. He scanned the faces around him and saw the panic that danced in their eyes. His instincts were screaming at him, nagging that something was wrong, something beyond just the landslide trapping them. The hair on the back of his neck prickled.

Rhiannon moved closer to him. He noticed she'd handed the boy off to Brooke.

"Do you think there'll be more?" she asked, signing as she spoke.

He looked up at the small cracks spider-webbing across the plaster.

"Likely," he signed. "We need to prepare for the possibility. Keep everyone away from areas where the ceiling looks weakest."

She followed his gaze, her expression darkening with concern. "How do we keep them calm if this keeps up?"

H glanced over at the huddled group again before turning to her. "Unity calms nerves. Show them we're not panicking, and they'll stay calmer."

She drew a sharp breath and let it out in a rush. "And if I am panicking, too?"

He looked at her in surprise. She didn't look like she was panicking. She looked as composed as ever, but her eyes… yeah, her eyes betrayed the fear simmering just beneath the surface. Pierce knew that look—it was the same one he saw in the mirror on his tougher days. He'd lived in a constant state of fear since he lost his voice.

"Just like you're doing with Michael," he signed. "Show confidence, even if you're not feeling it. They need to see us strong."

"I don't feel strong," she whispered.

He knew better than to touch her, knew better than to bridge the space between them, but still, he couldn't stop himself from reaching out. He took her hands in his. Her fingers were cold, and a slight tremor of apprehension vibrated through them.

Jesus, why was he touching her like this? He should be keeping his distance, maintaining that boundary he had so carefully constructed around himself, but the instinct to reassure her overpowered everything else.

He'd intended to give her hands a light, reassuring squeeze, but instead, he held the connection a moment longer than necessary. When he finally released her, Pierce felt the loss of contact more acutely than he expected. He quickly stepped back, re-establishing the space between them. His heart thumped painfully against his ribs—a warning sign that he was letting his guard down. He couldn't afford that. Not now. Not ever.