Sovereign Hope (3 page)

 
The worry was exhausting. And after the
events of today, looking at those photos was enough to tip the
scales between coping and crashing. All my fears came rushing down
in an unexpected wave of alarm that made my head spin.

Where was my
mom?

Was she
safe?

Was she
hurt?

Had someone
taken her?

But the most
terrifying of all, the one question I was usually too scared to
even form in my mind:

Was she
dead?

The sound of the back door
snick
ing closed brought the hallway
back into focus, a little too sharp and too bright. I clenched my
jaw and dug deep into my reserves, putting my
I’m okay 
face back on like a
tired, worn coat.

Back in the
kitchen, Tess had returned to her chair and was beaming from ear to
ear. She took the glass out of my hand and drained it in one.

“
Whew! Thanks. How did you know I needed that?”

“
Just considerate, I guess. What’s up with your face? It’s
doing something weird.”

Tess shot me a
look that would curdle milk and poked her tongue out. “I’m just
happy, that’s all.”

“
You’re happy?” That meant trouble. That meant a guy. It
always did. I gave her The Look. “Who is he?”

“
His name’s Oliver. We’ve been on four dates. He’s perfect.” A
dreamy look settled on her face, and she stared off into the
distance as though imagining the rest of her life arranged around
the perfection that was this new Oliver. I elbowed
her. 

“
Four dates and you haven’t mentioned him once?”

“
I just wanted to make sure he was really interested. He’s
from Whiteacre.”

“
Oh.” That explained a lot. Guys from Whiteacre were always
‘slumming it’ with girls from St. Jude’s on the school breaks. They
thought they were so much better than everyone else just because
their annual fees alone were enough to purchase an above average
home in Monterey Hills. Usually they got bored of their holiday
conquests just before school picked up again. You didn’t see them
for dust once the primped and preened girls at their own school
returned from seasoning in Europe or wherever else Daddy’s yacht
was anchored that year.

“
Are you sure—”

The sentence
remained unfinished. The phone on the kitchen counter began to
trill. Tess picked up the handset and thrust it at me before I
could object. “Tell the truth.”

“
Okay, fine,” I hissed. The phone reached its eighth ring
before I answered it, holding it gingerly to the side of my head
like it might explode. “Hello?”

“
Farley.” Any hope that the person on the other end of
the line might be a telemarketer disappeared at the sound of that
voice—sandpaper on rough stone. “You haven’t returned my
calls.”

“
I’m sorry, Detective Miller, I just got home.”

“
That’s not what officers Mayhew and Angelis tell me. They
tell me you’ve been home for a while now, and you’ve got Miss
Kennedy with you.”

“
You’ve got cops watching the house?” Why the hell hadn’t I
seen them? If they were out there, then who knew who else was too.
I screwed my face up at the phone. “Yeah, okay. I just got home.
I’ve been sitting here trying to calm down. I think I might be in
shock.”

It was worth a
shot. Detective Miller was a spare man with even sparer feelings,
but maybe there was some part of him, some deep, buried part, that
might be capable of sympathy.

“
Don’t pull that crap, kid.”

Or maybe
not.

He cleared his
throat, his twenty-a-day smoking habit making itself known. “Start
from the beginning. Don’t spare the details.”

My account of
the afternoon took seven whole minutes to explain, and Miller sat
so silent at the other end of the line I thought he might have hung
up on me. The low rasp of his breathing confirmed his presence,
however, and I pushed on, wondering if his uncharacteristic lack of
questions meant that he was beyond words.

“
And so I ran off, and that’s when I found Tess. She drove me
home.”

Silence.

I paused,
waiting for Miller to start shouting. When he didn’t say anything,
I asked, “You want me to come down to the station and give a
statement?” It definitely seemed like something he would say. In
fact, on any other day Miller would have said that approximately
seven and a half minutes ago. After another long pause, the
detective broke the silence.

“
No. You should stay home. Don’t leave your house.”

“
What?”

“
They’ll be coming for you. Just stay home.”

“
I don’t understand,” I said, but the line had gone dead. I
was left with the staccato dial tone in my ear and the creeping
sensation that something very strange had just happened.

“
Well? What did he say?” Tess was perched on the very edge of
her stool, kicking at the footrest and tapping her
fingernails.

“
He said I should stay home. He said, ‘
They’ll be coming for you.’
”

Tess lost a
little of the color from her face. “The men in the big coats with
the knives?”

“
I don’t know.”

“
Why would he tell you to stay home if he thinks they might
come here?”

“
I don’t know
.”

“
Wow. If he does mean the guys with the big knives, then he’s
definitely throwing you to the wolves,” she said. “Maybe you should
have told him you weren’t there.”

My eyebrow
kinked to form a perfect black arch. “What happened to telling the
truth?!”

CHAPTER THREE

Citrus and smoke

Waking up
about an hour ago had been a challenge, and opening my eyes
entirely out of the question. The whole eye-opening plan had been
set aside after my first attempt, when the weak lighting in the
room had threatened to crack open my skull and liquefy my brain.
That was something that usually only happened after a
hallucination.

Everything was fragmented and jumbled, making it hard to
recall why I felt so disconnected in the first place. It eventually
came creeping back: being followed, the fire, that black-haired
guy, Miller’s weird attitude. Not to mention the very unnerving
night spent alone in my house, waiting for the mysterious
‘
they’
 to
finally swoop down out of the ether and finish me off for
good.

I shifted my body, testing to see if it would move properly.
My limbs responded, if a little begrudgingly. I probed further,
cautiously seeing if I could sit up. Once that was accomplished, I
rested for a few moments, preparing to finally open my eyelids. I
braced for the skull-cracking pain. A dull
thump…thump
greeted me instead,
throbbing behind my eyes.

I flung back
the covers and swung my legs out of bed, the room spinning
dramatically as I rose to stand. Too fast. For a few seconds, the
danger of throwing up threatened to become a horrible reality. The
moment passed, but a few deep breaths were required all the same.
These were the worst after-effects I’d ever had, and yesterday
hadn’t even been a hallucination, as far as I could tell.

I hobbled
across my room and slowly pulled on a hoodie, feeling the cold sink
deep into my bones. I headed downstairs to the kitchen to get a
glass of water. The clock on the kitchen wall showed three
twenty-five p.m. as I opened the refrigerator door. I didn’t
usually sleep in. How I’d managed to pass out for fifteen hours was
a mystery.

The water
glugged loudly out of the cooler, taking forever to fill my glass.
I gave up halfway and let the fridge door swing shut. Spinning
around, I raised the tumbler to take a sip, only for it to slip
from my hand. It shattered on the floor. I froze, trapped by the
discovery of a stranger in my kitchen.

A knife.

I needed a
knife.

I ducked back
and grabbed hold of a handle from the wooden block on the counter.
I held it out, recovering from the surprise, and took in my
assailant.

My assailant didn’t look very much like an assailant,
however. It was
him
, the driver of the Dodge Charger, wearing a slightly torn
black t-shirt and a pair of grey boxer shorts. Still smolderingly
angry, still pale and intense. By my guess, he couldn’t have been
any more than eighteen or nineteen. And he was chewing. Not gum,
either, but properly chewing, like he was eating
something.

It was then that I spotted the huge half-eaten sandwich he
brandished in his right hand. 
Okay
. He’d broken into my house to
slit my throat in my sleep, but had found time to fix up a snack
first. And taken off his pants. The nerve! 

I eyed him up
and down again. He swallowed and took another bite without saying a
word, meeting my gaze with a shadowed look of amusement on his
face.

“
Who the hell are you? What are you doing in my
house?”

He continued
chewing with raised eyebrows, obviously enjoying my irritation. Of
course he was enjoying it. That’s what happened when a trembling
girl threatened a big, strong guy with the tiniest knife in the
world. Crap! I gasped and threw down the vegetable knife in order
to snatch up the meat cleaver. Much better.

It seemed to
entertain him greatly when I juggled to get a firm grip on the
handle. He lapsed into a coughing fit as he choked on his food,
alternating between trying to catch a breath and laughing at
me.

“
I mean it!” I yelled.  “Who are you?” I took a step
towards him, still grasping hold of the meat cleaver. He cleared
his throat one last time, and then glanced down at the knife before
holding his hands up in mock surrender, sandwich still in
hand.

“
I am wet.”

“
What?”

“
I’m wet. 
Again
.” He went to take another bite
from his sandwich. I growled and stepped forward. “Whoa! I’m wet
because you smashed a glass of water all over my feet. And now
you’re about to cut yours open.” He nodded to the debris of broken
glass strewn on the floor between us.

I stopped in my tracks and scowled. 
Smartass.
“Look. I’ve had
a 
really
 bad night. I’ve been waiting for those creepy guys to
show up here and kidnap me. So please,” I begged, “tell me who you
are and what you’re doing in my house.”

He sighed and
dropped his smile, straightening up to look at me seriously for the
first time. “I’m Daniel, the guy that saved your ass yesterday. But
don’t worry—you’re welcome.” He turned his back on me and walked
over to the kitchen sink, putting down his food and dusting off his
hands. “And for the record, those guys aren’t coming. I wouldn’t
get your panties in such a twist.”

I shook my
head. “Detective Miller said—”

“
Miller’s one of us. I told him I’d be coming
over.”

My hand shook
as I studied him, looking for any signs that he was lying. There
were none. Okay, so he knew Miller. That meant he was a good guy,
right? It was wrong to stab a good guy with a meat cleaver, even if
he was incredibly obnoxious. I placed the meat cleaver down on the
sideboard but kept it within arm’s reach just in case. “Why did you
help me?” I asked.

Daniel blew
out his cheeks. “I wouldn’t lose sleep over it.” He leaned back on
the counter and crossed his arms.  “I had no choice but
to intervene. They would have killed you.”

 “
Well, I really am glad you felt compelled
to stop them,” I told him, as his gaze leveled with
mine.  “But if you wouldn’t mind just shedding a little
light here, why would it be necessary for you to come to my rescue?
Why did those guys wanna kill me in the first place?”

“
Look, all you need to understand is that you have to stay
away from people like that, okay?”

“
Well I didn’t exactly go looking for them! They found me! I
was in my truck, remember? The one you’re probably responsible for
blowing up? You hardly expect to run into crazed killers when
you’re stuck in lunch hour traffic. If you know
 
why they attacked me, then you
should tell me. I might not be safe. And what’s your role in the
whole thing? Are you and those guys buddies or something? They
didn’t seem to need an introduction.”

He rolled his
eyes and pulled his arms tighter across his chest, huffing. The
corded muscles in his arms flexed and contracted. He would have
been able to take that meat cleaver off me, no problem.

“
Trust me, I’m not friends with people like that. And they
won’t be bothering you again.” His eyes flashed with
resolve.

I wanted to
ask him how he could be so sure, but my head had started to pound
again. I groaned as a wave of nausea twisted in my stomach. This
was much, much worse than usual. I reached out to the counter to
steady myself and felt the room swim as I took a deep breath,
waiting for the unpleasant sensation to end.

“
You should be in bed, anyway,” Daniel scolded, like I should
have known better. “I know the light hit you. Most people would be
really sick by now. I’m surprised you’re even standing.”

“
All this is from that light? I thought…” I shook my head,
staring at the faded zigzag linoleum on the kitchen floor. That
explained why I was feeling so terrible, at least.