Watercolour Smile by Jane Washington

eventually.” He finally brought up the incident again. “He doesn’t look like he’s going to slow down anytime soon.”
    “I think we read my painting wrong.”
    “You went to see your father?”
    “He was dead.”
    “ What the hell ? Shit… Seph. I—” his voice broke off in a soft curse and he switched the phone off speaker. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. What happened?”
    “There were these two guys there. They attacked us. One of them said something about his boss being interested in Tariq. It’s possible that those guys were the ones who would have hurt Tariq.”
    “That wouldn’t make Silas snap. I’m guessing one of them touched you?”
    “Yes.”
    “What did Silas do?”
    “He tied them together with a rope around their necks, closed all the doors and windows, turned on the gas and left matchboxes in their mouths.”
    The other end was silent for a long time, the crackling of static a warning sound in my ear, and then finally Quillan spluttered, “ Where did they touch you?”
    “He cut my neck…” I flicked my eyes up to the rear-view mirror, seeing that half of my neck was smeared with blood—much more than I had anticipated. I hunted down a pack of wipes in the glove box and started cleaning it away. “And… um… grabbed me.”
    “Grabbed you?”
    “Do I really need to tell you this?”
    He let out a few more curses.
    “Have I told you that you swear too much?”
    “Yes, you have. Wait… your father was still in the house?”
    “Yes.” My voice didn’t even wobble. “I opened as many windows as I could while Silas was upstairs. He didn’t notice.”
    “Good. I’ll see if I can send someone over to your house. We have some Zev’s we can rely on; they’ve helped with these situations in the past. We already have someone watching over the apartment building, if Tariq goes anywhere, they’ll tail him.”
    “Silas does this a lot?”
    “He used to… yes.”
    Quillan muffled the phone with something as Noah and Cabe started speaking in the background. He had done this many times over the last few hours, and I figured it was to spare me the details of Silas’s previous transgressions. After a few minutes Quillan came back.
    “Alright, Seph. He stopped.”
    “Where?”
    “At a hotel. Noah is arranging for someone to meet you there.”
    “Who?”
    “A friend. Her name is Hunter.”
    Her . The word reverberated with dogged intent, colliding painfully into me with each repetition.
    “Why?”
    He took a deep breath. I braced myself, knowing instinctively that this wouldn’t be something that I wanted to hear.
    “She’s the only one who can calm him down when he goes off the deep-end like this. We don’t want you going in alone. Do you understand?”
    “Sure.” My voice broke off, and I focussed on following Quillan’s directions to the hotel.
    I parked the car out the front of the right apartment and got out to stretch my legs. Quillan was muffling the phone again and I took it off speaker, pressing it to my ear to hear better.
    “She said Silas already called her,” Noah was saying. “He told her to meet him at a bar, so he must have left his cell in the hotel room. I’ve rerouted her to the hotel to pick up Seph…”
    I stopped trying to listen then. It hurt more than I was willing to admit, and I needed to hold the phone away while I calmed myself. I couldn’t have Silas feeling these emotions or he would know that I was near and would probably run again.
    “Miro?” I brought the phone back to my ear as a red Chevy pulled up right next to me. “I’ve got to go. Thanks for helping.”
    I hung up before he could say anything more and wrapped my arms around my torso as the woman got out of the car. She had fire engine red hair, sleek and straight, with porcelain skin and striking green eyes. A scattering of freckles fanned over her nose, but that was the extent of the innocence to be found in her appearance. She was wearing tiny shorts and a leather singlet