Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 83040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
My eyes are sweeping over tables the moment I step inside, desperately looking for Brose. But he’s not here.
I get a table anyway. It doesn’t mean anything. He has no idea when I’ll arrive. So I’m gonna wait.
I order coffee, consider breakfast but decide against it—my stomach is not in the mood—and wait.
At ten-thirty I can tell that the waitress is frustrated with me, but I ignore her. Instead, I open my go-bag and start searching through the front compartment for the burner phone I know is here. I don’t want to use it because the moment I do, I have to throw it out and I only have two in total. But I need to know what’s going on. I could be waiting around DC all day. Days, even.
I grab the SIM card, shove the phone charger into the battery pack that, even after two years, has two faint red bars of charge left in it, and slip the card in. Then I key in the number and wait.
It rings once, making my hopes soar, but then I get the three shrill special information tones followed by, “The number you have dialed is no longer in service—”
I end the call, blowing out a long breath.
Because that was my worst fear. I was hoping that this was some sort of test, maybe? While this particular scenario never came up exactly like this during my years of training with Brose, we certainly prepared for it.
But it’s not a test. It’s real. I’ve been abandoned. He’s not going to meet me here, everyone around me probably is a spy, and I’ve got nothing but a two-year-old go-bag to my name. Which is far better than having no go-bag, but still. My life consists of the clothes I’m wearing and survival gear.
What do I do? Call my parents? I don’t even have their numbers. I haven’t talked to them in twelve years. The first thing CORE did was take me away. I didn’t belong to them, anyway. They’re not my real parents. And at this point in my life, those first years I spent with them feel almost like they never happened.
I don’t have a family anymore. Brose was my family.
So I have nowhere to go.
I have nowhere to run to.
But as these words roll around in my head, I realize they’re not actually true.
I know where one member of my family is. I know where Collin is. He’s home, in Disciple, West Virginia.
I scoff out loud, shaking my head. I can’t run to him.
Could I?
Before I change my mind—because this is the first bit of hope I’ve felt all morning—I do a search on my phone and pull up the train schedule for Union Station. I scan the routes and then I smile.
The Cardinal Line will drop me off in Charleston. But my hope dies when I realize that it only runs on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and this is Monday.
Well… wait. Is it Monday?
I check the date and gasp. Not just because of my luck, but because I lost two days. It’s not Monday, it’s Wednesday. I was up in our room for two days.
This both frightens me and makes me feel slightly saner, because two days would be enough time to clear things out of the estate. They could even brick up a tunnel in two days. I can’t really explain the missing houses, but logic points to me just… misinterpreting that. Mirrors, maybe? Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility, perhaps? I mean, it’s all just tech. And the tech inside CORE is quite advanced these days. Decades ahead of what the general public knows about.
But why would they want to make me think I’m crazy? (Because that’s what I’m starting to think.)
Why would they abandon you, Olive?
Because I fucked up.
Well, not technically.
But I was about to.
I was, too. Even I know this. I was latching on to Shep for some reason. I can’t explain it. I was going to tell him things I shouldn’t. I was going to get involved with him.
I was going to sleep with him.
Not as an assignment, either.
I… like him.
And Brose saw it. He saw everything. That’s why he walked away, both times. He knew. He knew and he reported me to CORE. So he drugged me with that champagne left me in the room. And while I was out, CORE sent in a clean-up team.
It makes perfect sense now.
I look back down at the train schedule on my phone, then notice that I have time. The Cardinal Line won’t depart Union Station until eleven thirty-one and it’s only ten forty-five.
It’s doable.
I can run to Collin.
And, by extension, Shep.
So that’s what I do.
I run to Shep.
The very man who got me here in the first place.
13 - Shep
The wake-up call at Edge changes every week, I’m told. Last week it was a simple tone that went off at five am for PT training. Not awesome, but I’ve heard worse.