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)
I chuckle and salute back.
Then Cross is rushing out the door and stands on the step next to me. He holds up a finger to the bus driver. “One sec, OK, Fanny? I’m coming. Do not honk that horn at me, I’m standin’ right here.”
She rolls her eyes and cracks her gum, then starts checking her phone.
Cross turns his attention to me. “Here. This is for you, Shep. I designed it and everything. This is just the prototype. I got two. So there’s one for me and one for you.”
He hands me an embroidered patch in the shape of a shield with a German shepherd on it. At the top of the shield are the words ‘Edge K9s’ and at the bottom is printed ‘Handler.’ I look down at the patch, then over to Cross. “This is for me?”
He smiles and nods. “Yeah. You don’t have any patches on your uniform yet, so I figured you needed one. And I had one extra. Everyone will get them when the order comes in next week, but you can have yours now.”
A horn honk makes us both jump in surprise. Cross turns his attention to the bus again. “Fanny! I told you not to honk at me! I’m standin’ right here.”
She smirks at him, her voice old and croaky. “Then get your skinny-ass butt on the bus right now or I’ll honk at you again and then your mama’s gonna yell. You’re makin’ us late, kid!”
Cross sighs, glaring at her. But he softens when he looks at me. “See you this afternoon, Shep. Take good care of Jagger!”
I wave and he hops from the bottom step of the porch to the bottom step of the bus. The door closes and the bus slowly pulls away.
I look down at the patch in my hand, feeling the threads with my fingertips. It’s a nice patch. Lots of colors. The dog is black and brown—just a head in profile—but it’s against a background of wooded hills with several shades of green. Behind the hills is a sunset, or maybe a sunrise, and that’s in red and orange. The letters are in black and they’re set against army-green banners.
Patches. Kinda dumb, but also kind of genius. Morale patches, they call them. Because they make us feel good. And I have to admit, this one does make me feel good. I’m gonna go hunt down a needle and thread and sew this fucker on first thing.
I look up, ready to hop down the stairs and do that, when I stop in my tracks.
I squint, looking down the driveway, because Olive is walking towards me with Collin.
For a moment, I can’t move. I don’t know what to do.
What is she doing here? Is she here to out me?
She sees me, but doesn’t wave or pause the conversation she is clearly having with a delighted Collin. He’s looking down at her with bright eyes and a wide smile.
Like a brother.
She was telling the truth. She’s Collin Creed’s sister.
And there are only two reasons why she’s here.
One, to fuck with me. Maybe even get me fired, since she knows more about me than I ever told her.
Or two, she’s a spy.
14 - Olive
Never again will I take the Cardinal Line from Union Station to Charleston, West Virginia. Nearly ten hours. Ten. Hours. Even though I slept most of the way, by the time I arrived, I was even more exhausted than when the journey started. Because I spent all ten of those hours trying to figure out what was happening, or what I did that was so bad, or what the fuck Brose is trying to prove.
He can’t leave me.
You can’t just promise to be partners with someone and then leave them because of two conversations while I was working. Doing my job to lure one of Collin’s men into a state of vulnerability.
My emotions pendulate wildly from one extreme to the other. First, I’m scared. Someone from CORE is gonna come get me. They’re gonna lock me up, send me to a reeducation camp—hell, they might even kill me, I don’t know.
But then I’m angry because I don’t feel like I did anything that bad. Yes, I did spill a few details to Shep, but he’s CORE! He’s one of us! Since he’s clearly older than me, he knows more than I do about pretty much everything, probably. They can’t just cut ties with me because I took a certain direction on a mission. They can’t just undermine my efforts like that.
Except they did.
And they did it in a very extreme way.
How do you remove houses from an estate? All the rest of it I can understand. Brose emptied his closet. They moved everyone out. They bricked up the secret subway. But the houses outside?
It just makes no sense.
But it has to. There has to be a logical explanation.