THIEF: Part 6 Read Online Free PDF Page B

devastated like I had, either.He was somewhere in between panic and euphoria: “crazed,” I'd decided.
                  Reaching him was easier than I’d thought it would be, and all it took, surprisingly, was the truth: a voicemail on his receptionist’s machine—“Hi, Dr. Ramirez.This is Erin St. James and since I have no other way to reach him, please let Silas Marlowe know I’m pregnant and it might be his.Here’s my number, in case he’s forgotten it.”—and a call from Mexico rang out just an hour later.By comparison, Fiona’s carefully thought-out plan sounded crazy, even though my way was actually the crazy method, when I really thought about it.But at least it had worked.
                  Silas doesn’t respond to my prison comment at first.I wonder where he is: an old RV in a campsite, an extended-stay hotel.I wonder if the hospital would let him slum it in the waiting room all these months, or if he never leaves Emma’s side during her recoveries.I picture him hunched over in a cot, eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, scruff all over his neck and chin.
                  “I know I said I’d turn myself in,” he says, “but I think I’ve got a shot to get everything dropped on Abby’s part.Once she sees Emma, she can’t be angry at me, Erin.”I can hear him smiling, almost ear-to-ear.“Wait ‘til you see her, she looks so beautiful.I mean, I thought she looked beautiful before, anyway.But she—she looks normal now.”His voice catches on “normal.”
                  “You still broke the law,” I remind him, despite the flare of happiness I have for Emma and, if I’m being honest with myself, him.Even Emma’s mom.Actually, especially Emma’s mom, in a weird way.I chalk it up to hormones.“It’s not just a matter of Abby dropping charges,” I add, “which I’m not so sure she’d do, surgery or not.”
                  “Then I’ll go on the road again.New identity.You can come with me.”
                  I laugh at this.“Right.”
                  “I’m serious.Think about it, Erin: you, me, and our baby, just us on the road, going wherever we want.I can keep in touch with Emma secretly—I've been doing it for years, already.”
                  He makes it sound so simple.His voice coats the words, the reality of what he’s saying, and turns it to gold.
                  But I’ve been fooled by that before.And no matter what his reasons were, I won’t let myself be fooled again.
                  “Silas,” I say, my tone sharp, “I’m not going on the road with you.What kind of life is that, always looking over your shoulder for the trouble you’re outrunning?That isn’t fair to the baby.”
                  “Kids grow up traveling all the time, babe, look at the military—”
                  “Don’t call me ‘babe,’ Silas,” I snap, “and this isn’t the military.It’s taking a child on the lam with you, and making them part of some…some terrible secret.I’ve been that child before, and I won’t turn mine into one.You want a normal kid, Silas?Normal kids don’t have to be law-dodgers from birth.”
                  The line falls silent, but I can hear the hum of an AC in the background.I picture him in the driver’s seat of a car, maybe sitting just outside the hospital, on a disposable cell phone.His hair would be longer, the way I’d liked, and his skin even tanner than the summer we met.
                  “So,” he says, “even if I am the dad…”
                  “…I wouldn’t want to travel with you.You’d have to go to prison and accept whatever happens,” I finish for him.My words, while realistic, still feel a little harsh, so I add, “But I’d make sure you got to be a part of the baby’s life, no matter what.”
                  Silas doesn’t