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)
“Get a hold of yourself, Olive,” I whisper. “Snap the fuck out of it.”
Behind me the kennel door slams and I turn around real quick to find Shep leaving the building leading a young dog.
Seeing me, he shakes his head and accusingly points his finger in my direction. “Stay away from me.” Then he leads the dog down the driveway where all the activity is.
I’m just letting out a breath when the kennel door slams closed again. This time, when I look around, I see Amon.
I don’t know Amon. Of course, I remember him. Everyone in Disciple—even when I was only eight years old—knew who Amon Parrish was. He was the bad kid. I’m like a hundred percent sure my father actually used those exact words to describe him. “Stay away from him, Olive. He’s a bad kid.”
Amon and Collin were never friends growing up. But they joined the Marines together and I was told that Jim Bob Baptist made sure they were pulled aside for the black-ops shit the moment they got off the bus for basic.
Amon did dogs, which obviously bit him pretty hard because this compound is crawling with them. And Collin learned to run spies. But that’s not what he’s known for now. He’s known, in my world, for killing people. And his team—he always had a team—is there to make sure the kill shot happens.
He’s an assassin. I doubt he planned it. In fact, I know he didn’t. Collin was all about rock and roll and football when I was little. That ancient piece-of-shit Jeep of his with the big tires and Jim Morrison. That’s what I remember about Collin. We’d go to his games on Friday nights and watch. And Lowyn would be there cheering him on in her cute uniform and pompoms.
He was… quintessentially all-American.
Until New Year’s Eve of his senior year when my biological father came down from Blackberry Hill and tried to steal me out of my bed.
That’s when Assassin Collin showed up. It literally happened before my eyes.
In fact, I’m the only person alive who saw his face that night because the person he was aiming at got his brains splattered all over me.
Collin was angry. I don’t think I’d ever seen him so angry. But there was something else about his eyes that night too. Something off. It was… an emptiness. They were void of things like mercy and compassion. But emptiness doesn’t stay that way long, so I was looking right at him when that space filled back up with ruthless abandon.
When I was sixteen, the CORE OPS people took me into an interrogation room and they showed me pictures of him. He was… I dunno. Twenty-four or twenty-five, maybe? And the first thing I thought was, my God, my brother is handsome. But a moment later they were sliding more across that table at me. Only this time, they wanted to show me what he had been up to over the years.
OPS stands for Operative Preparation Services. That’s who raised me after my father went crazy over Collin leaving and we had to leave Disciple. They were faceless people. Nameless people. Like, literally. They wore veils. They were all women and none of them were nice. We had to call them by their departmental number. OPS-94 was the one I saw the most. She was my official caseworker. She was the one pushing photos of dead men across the table at me.
Wow. That seems like a very long time ago. And I guess when you’re twenty, four years is a long time ago. One-fifth of my life.
I blink and the memories fade along with the dizziness and disorientation. Amon is texting someone. Probably Collin. He finishes up, looks at me, and nods his head.
When I look over my shoulder, Collin is coming down the driveway at a pretty good clip, his eyes lit up like a New Year’s Eve sparkler.
He starts making hand signals or something, and the next thing I know, Amon is running past me. I watch as he approaches Shep and point to a building across the driveway. Shep looks at it, then shifts his gaze to me. And even from here, which has to be fifty yards away, I can see his anger.
Which makes me sigh. Because while it wasn’t my intention to get him in trouble, what else was gonna happen when I showed up here?
Of course Collin was gonna find out. So I don’t even bother glaring back.
“Olive,” Collin yells, still pretty far down the driveway, so everyone looks, of course. “Let’s go.” He points to the same building, which I now realize is a church, of all things.
I consider what kind of scene I would make if I ignored him and just walked back to his house and went inside, but I don’t bother. Whatever is coming next is inevitable.