Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) (25 page)

This was weird. Oliver was never confrontational, let alone outright rude. Farley caught Tess’ eye again, but the other girl looked away, studying something on the floor. Oliver’s antagonistic mood seemed to rile Anna up, making her already unbearably haughty smile razor blade sharp and just as cruel. “I agree with you one hundred percent, Olly. It’s about time someone stood up to the self-elected seats of power around here.”

“Don’t call me Olly. And who asked you, anyway? You’re too busy reapplying that inch-thick Halloween face paint to pay attention to what’s going on. I heard about what happened with Beatty. You did nothing but pout and scream your lungs out when those Immundus attacked.” He thrust a finger at Cassie. “At least
she
defended herself
and
the rest of you.”

Cassie rocked away from his finger like it was loaded gun. The bruises under her eyes hadn’t faded even slightly. If anything they looked worse- a violent combination of black and purple. “Hey, don’t drag me into this.”

“Why not?” Oliver barked. “Everyone else seems to know exactly what’s going on. What do
you
think we should do?”

She shot a troubled look at Daniel before shrugging her shoulders. “I don’t want to leave the cabin. It’s my home and I love it here, but the guys are right. It’s too dangerous, and Simeon will send more men. If he’s serious about capturing Farley, then he might even come himself. We need to be far, far away if there’s any chance that might happen.”

Daniel gave a short, hard nod in her direction then peeked at Farley. His hand found hers under the table where he squeezed it tight. “We
will
be far away. We should leave today.”

“And where are we going, Daniel?” Oliver asked. A shadow of something hard crossed his face, making him look worn- different. Tess reached out to place her hand over his but he snatched it away, banging his knuckles on the wooden arm of his chair. It had to have hurt but he just shoved his hands under the table, still staring at Daniel.

Daniel looked up at Oliver from under drawn brows, squaring off at him. “You can go wherever you want. I suggest we go back to LA. It’s the last-”

“
Back to LA?!
”

Daniel closed his eyes, breathing out long and hard. “It’s the last place they would ever suspect us to go.”

“That’s because the place is crawling with Reavers and their junkie servants. You were the one who wanted to come here in the first place, and now you’re saying we should run back, just because it
might
surprise the enemy. You’re insane.”

A muscle ticked at Daniel’s jaw. “Hiding in plain sight is one of the best ways to remain undetected.”

“I’ve heard that,” Anna jumped in. An ally in the let’s-all-oust-Daniel-as-our-dictator movement only three seconds ago, she was back on side. That Halloween face paint remark must have really stung. “You should calm down, Reaver,” she spat. “You’re going to give your girlfriend a…”

Anna continued talking, her face pulling into hard angles as she sneered and scowled, but her words got lost. Farley was too busy watching the cold, dead look of hate settle over Oliver. It was like witnessing some terrible event occurring in slow motion; like knowing full well you should be doing your best to run in the opposite direction, but remained trapped, dumbly gawping, because you’re too stunned to do anything else. He leaned forward so slowly, placing both hands palm down on the tabletop. His ears visibly pulled back. This was
not
going to be good.

“What did you call me?” His tone was low and aggressive.

Anna broke off from hurling abuse at him to pull up her lip in derision. “Are you still going on about that Olly thing? Get over it, princess. You think you’re-”

“No.” He narrowed his eyes into deadly grey slits. “What did you call me
just now
.”

She opened and closed her mouth a few times like a startled fish, and then looked around the room. “Well, I… it’s only what you are. I mean, don’t get all offended now. It’s just a title.”

“Say it. Say the word.
Say
what you just called me.”

A look passed from one person to the next, like a domino toppling around the table. Tess’ eyes shimmered. She looked ready to bolt from the room. The only person who seemed remotely unaffected by Oliver’s change in temperament was Kayden. A gentle frown line marked his head while he watched the scene develop, like it was on television and not a freakishly scary reality.

“Oliver,” he said quietly. “Can you calm down, please?”

“I
am
calm.”

“Well, can you stop looking at Anna like that, then? You’re scaring Tess.”

Oliver cut Kayden a disgusted look and then fixed Anna in his sights once more. “Not until she says it.”

Anna rolled her eyes again, doing her best to act unfazed. There was no hiding it, though: she was freaking out big time. “Wow, you’re a complete psychopath,” she laughed, not looking at him. “I called you a Reaver, okay? Because that’s what you are:
a Reaver
. You don’t catch me-”

Oliver’s chair flew out from behind him when he leapt up, and it fell to the floor with a crash. For an instant it looked like he was actually going to crawl up onto the table so he could scramble across it and try to strangle her. Anna cowered back, screeching. Her coffee cup toppled sideways, spilling its contents across the table and all over Grayson. Kayden vanished from his chair and appeared at Oliver’s side in a split second, where he slapped his hand down on his shoulder. Oliver went to rip it away but as soon as he touched Kayden’s hand the fight fell right out of him. He staggered back looking confused and disorientated.

“You shouldn’t call me that,” he whispered. “You didn’t call Aldan that.” The hurt in his voice was toxic. It saturated the air, made Farley’s very soul hurt. Oliver, the guy she barely knew, her brother, spun to look at Daniel. There were tears and panic in his eyes. “I can’t do it,” he rasped. “I can’t do what you want me to do. You can see why, right? You can see why?”

Daniel looked down at his clenched fist on the table, where his knuckles were blanched white. He nodded slowly, flexing out his fingers. “It’s okay, Oliver. I can see.”

Oliver ran out of the kitchen without another word, leaving the back door flung wide open. The outside air was still heavy with the promise of rain and unrest, charged and ready to ignite. The turbulent energy infiltrated the kitchen in waves, like the house was inhaling and exhaling out of the open door. Anna got to her feet, her heels clattering across the bare floorboards as she skittered across the room. Oliver was nowhere to be seen, which apparently helped steel her nerves. She thrust her head out into the Montanan mountains and, at the top of her insanely grating voice screamed, “
PSYCHO!
”

Tess started to sob.

“Are you going to tell me what Oliver was talking about before?” Farley asked, buzzing her window up and down distractedly. By some miracle she’d agreed to head back to LA and had come quietly without a peep when he’d said it was time to leave. The others were following them later. Oliver hadn’t returned by the time darkness fell, and Daniel didn’t want to hang around waiting any longer. The quicker Farley was moved, the better. He buzzed up her window with the master control and looked askance at her; those wide, silver eyes were fixed on him, annoyed. He locked the windows closed.

“I can’t tell you right now.”

“Why not?”

“Because.” He peered out of the window up ahead. The road signs whipped by the car at an increasing rate of knots, making a dull
thum
ing
noise as they passed.

“Because?”

Because he was too cowardly to tell her what she’d asked Oliver to do. What Oliver had been terrified to do. It didn’t matter now, anyway. There was no way he’d be able to go through with his plans if things kept falling apart the way they were. “I asked you to trust me the other day. Can you file this under the same heading as that conversation and know that I’ll tell you when I can?”

She pursed her lips and stabbed at the window control, apparently not bothered by the fact that nothing happened when she pushed it. “And what about you and Kayden? You feel like finally spilling the beans on that one yet? Why are you guys still fighting after fifty odd years?”

He gave her a dry look.

“Didn’t think so.” She pressed her forehead against the glass. Her skin lit up, cast in orange and white and red, falling into darkness as cars flitted by them on the highway. He wanted to reach over and brush the hair out of her eyes so he could see her, but there was an awkward set to her shoulders that made him think twice. It was unfair not to tell her things, yet her life was complicated enough. Oliver was her brother, even if she hadn’t really had the chance to get to know him yet. He was her blood. And despite what she had said, she did love Kayden. Not the way she loved
him
, maybe, but still… she loved him.

If she knew what he’d asked Oliver to do, if she knew what happened with Kayden all those years ago, things would change for her. And for him. The risk was too great. The time for her to know about Kayden would arise soon enough, but for the moment why not let Farley have her friendship with him? It was a kindness. For both her and Kayden.

Daniel bit back the urge to laugh bitterly and focused on the road. When he’d started caring about kindnesses for Kayden he didn’t know, but it made him feel uncomfortable. There were too many other things he should be worrying about.

Farley rolled out her shoulders and twisted in her chair so that she lay on her side. “I’m going to sleep for the next eight hours. Wake me up when you cross state lines into California?”

He nodded.

******

“What are you doing here?”

Farley sat up and blinked but it was dark and she couldn’t make out a thing. The tang of salt and something familiar teased her senses. She finally got it: it smelled like home. It smelled like LA. “Hello?”

“I think we’re beyond hellos, don’t you?”

Her eyes finally began to function, picking apart the shades of darkness around her and separating them into different categories- charcoal, ebony, grey, silver, all lead and ash. She was sprawled out on a beach, the sand gritty and coarse. Simeon sat by her side, staring out at the ocean. The waves made no sound as they rushed at the shore. In fact there was no sound at all- just her breathing and the sound of her heart in her ears. She sat upright, scanning the beach for signs of danger.
Aside
from Simeon, of course. A lone figure painted in black stood at the water’s edge a few hundred feet away.

“There’s no one here,” Simeon muttered, collecting a handful of sand to let it sift through his fingers. The grains fell at an angle, caught on a non-existent wind that neither ruffled her hair nor stirred against her skin. “We’re all alone.”

“What about him?” She pointed to the figure in the distance.

Simeon gave her a disapproving look, as though he was surprised Farley could see the other person loitering on her peripherals. “That’s Saxon. Leave him alone.”

Farley curled forward, burying her face into her knees. There hadn’t been any indicators that she was going to have a vision. Nothing. She’d just fallen asleep, and…
She’d just fallen asleep.

Her shoulders sagged as she realized that was how she’d first met her father. The last time this had happened was with Tobin when he pulled her to the Great Room in the Tower and plucked the location of the silo right out of her mind. Aldan had opened her mind up to every Reaver in the world, and any one of them could come traipsing into her dreams if they knew which door to look for. She swallowed down a self-pitying sob. So Simeon knew he could come in now.

“What do you want?” she hissed, peeking out from behind her limb-constructed barrier.

Simeon turned sharply, narrowing his eyes at her. They were still a warm chocolate brown even when everything else was so very black. His dark hair was slicked back, catching shards of silver moonlight that lanced down in between the impressions of the ominous clouds overhead.

“I don’t want anything from you. Why are you here?” His voice echoed strangely, like they were in a very small room instead of sitting side by side on a sweeping, curved beach. Farley looked down, realizing both their feet were bare.

“I’m here because you invaded my dream.”

“I did not.” He crushed another handful of sand in his palm. “
Trust me
.”

There was something so sad about the way he said it that made Farley believe him for a second, before she remembered he was a complete lunatic. “Well, explain how I’m here, then.”

Simeon exhaled and focused on the white caps that pitched and swelled off out towards the faint line of the horizon, burying his toes into the white powder beneath them. He said nothing.