Chapter 6 - The Confession in the Deep"Nora!"
Silas reacted with inhuman speed. Ignoring his bleeding wounds and frozen muscles, he dove forward, catching Nora by her wrist just seconds before she plunged into the thirty-degree water.
His heavy grip locked around her arm like a vise. With a roar of agony, he hauled her back onto the icy timber of the pier.
Meanwhile, Mayor Vance scrambled frantically toward the safety of the nearest boat shed, screaming for help. But he didn't see the two dark figures charging up from behind the docks.
Silas's two mastiffs—Thor and Shadow—had tracked them through the storm. With deep, terrifying growls, the massive dogs launched themselves through the air, tackling Mayor Vance into the snow. The Mayor’s screams were swallowed by the howling wind.
Silas pulled Nora to her feet. "You alright?"
Nora, shaking violently from terror and cold, looked at the man who had just saved her life twice. "Why did you save me? You sold my father out! You're a crook!"
Silas grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to look him straight in his icy gray eyes.
"I took the money three years ago because if I didn't play along, Vance and Miller would have killed you too!" Silas revealed, his voice breaking with rare emotion. "Caleb came to me the night before he died. He knew they were coming for him. He asked me for one thing—he said, 'Silas, whatever happens to me, protect my girl.' I took Vance's money and used it to quietly clear your family's debt! Every month your diner rent was miraculously paid? That was me! The car repairs you couldn't afford? That was me!"
Nora’s mind reeled. The anonymous checks. The mysterious paid invoices. The stranger who had watched over her from the shadows of Ironwood Bay for three long years.
"You... you were protecting me?" she whispered.
"I owed Caleb my life from twenty years ago when we were young boys on the water," Silas said quietly. "I couldn't save him from his own stubbornness. But I swore no one in this town would touch his daughter."
Before Nora could process the revelation, a bright floodlight snapped on from the deck of a heavy police cruiser moored at the main pier.
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Standing at the helm, holding a high-powered rifle, was Police Chief Miller.
"That's enough talk, Silas!" Miller’s voice boomed over the vessel’s loudspeaker. "Step away from the girl and throw down your weapon!"
