First Light (16 page)

Some light returned to his eyes. ‘You’re worried about my motives for seeing you?’

‘
I guess I need some time to absorb it all.’

‘Of course.’

He stood up and held out his hand to me. I looked at it. A large hand, slightly worn for someone so young – it was an instrument of death. I almost shuddered at the thought, but I took it quickly, hoping he hadn’t noticed my hesitation.

‘Oh, hang on. So tonight, who were you stealing from?’

‘No, now it is your turn,’ he said firmly.

‘Oh, right.’

‘Ronnie, I must know who told you where I’d be. I won’t be angry with you.’

‘You will be angry with him though.’

‘That’s not your concern. We had a deal.’

 ‘
Promise me you won’t do anything drastic.’

He looked irritated, but I held on, anxious for Laith. Though I had no reason to care about his welfare, I still felt responsible. ‘Promise me!’

‘Fine,’ he relented with obvious impatience. Leading me to the front door, he said the words I needed to hear. ‘I promise you, nothing
drastic
.’

The light of a full moon danced through the window on the door, casting spooky shapes across his face. He looked at me intently, awaiting my answer. I sighed. I could think of no reason to protect someone who’d been vile to me since the day we met.

‘Laith,’ I said.

‘I see,’ his brow furrowed.

‘Kalen you promised, don’t do anything you’ll regret.’

‘Ronnie, do you want to see me again?’

The question was unexpected, but I answered instantly, nodding yes. In my heart, there was no other answer.

‘Good. Tomorrow then? We can talk some more then if you have any more questions for me. For now, you need to sleep. Before you do, make sure you drink a pint of water and maybe have a slice or two of toast. I don’t want you to become ill after our little stint in the river.’

‘What about that car?’ I asked, as fear of repercussions flooded my mind. I’d never been involved in something illegal before. It was a terrifying prospect.

‘You don’t need to worry about that, Red. I’ll return it, I promise. Don’t worry about anything, okay? Just do as I’ve asked.’

I agreed, surprising myself at just how exhausted I was. I wanted to ask what was in the bag on his shoulder, and why Laith hated me so much, but I already had more information than I could cope with. Shimmering flakes of snow began to fall as he walked onto the porch and jogged through the front garden to the stolen car. I watched him leave. It was like seeing him though new eyes. Every movement, every step, was considered and perfect. I’d always been impressed by him. Now, with this new information, I was in awe. I probably should have been scared of who he was, of what we had just been through, but when my mind tried to think logically, my heart overruled it.

16 – Who Am I?

After a surprisingly dreamless sleep, my body ached and my mind raced
. I hadn’t properly absorbed what Kalen had told me about his life but, strangely, I was more anxious about what I’d told him about Laith. Now I knew who they all were and what they were capable of, I was scared something horrible might have happened between them. Added to which, my job interview was in two hours.

Rolling out of bed, I glanced out the window and groaned. Everything was covered in a thin layer of sugar-white snow. I like snow. In all its white glory, it made familiar things look shiny and new, but the thought of getting to the Travel Shop when the roads were crusted with ice didn’t fill me with joy.

After a shower, I began to feel more like myself again and tried to focus on the interview rather than my new secret. It was almost impossible. Mainly, I couldn’t get my head round the fact that the five boys were deadly assassins. They were just kids – kids like me.

I dressed in my one-and-only suit, pulled my hair back into a neat ponytail and hurried downstairs.

The ice in the air blasted me as soon as I opened the door, but a warm sensation quickly replaced it – Kal’s Audi was waiting in the driveway.

The car door swung open, his tall frame following smoothly after. He walked towards me with his head down and his hands in his pockets.

‘Thought you might need a ride to your interview,’ he explained hesitantly, his eyes not quite meeting mine.

I tried to place my feelings. The truth was, seeing him standing there, his nose slightly pink from the chill of the weather, his American accent different yet mesmerising, I couldn’t find one part of me that was unhappy to see him. I wasn’t sure what that said about me.

He held out a hand to me, so putting any logic or reason to the back of my mind, I took it and we walked across the immaculate sheet of snow to the car. As my feet crunched on the gravel, I realised what a thin layer of snow it was and glanced upwards. The white sky was rimmed with a dark ominous grey. I wrinkled my nose.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, when by some miracle we reached the passenger door without slipping.

‘It’s just that I know it’s going to rain later, and wash away all the snow.’

‘You like the snow?’ His eyebrows arched.

‘Well, it’s not as good as sunshine, but it's better than the rain.’

‘A happy medium, what more could one want? Here we go, Miss.’ He held the door open for me and I slipped inside, contemplating the notion of
a happy medium
. Once, I would have been happy with medium anything. Average, normal, ordinary – that was me. But I didn’t want the snow any more, I suddenly realised just how much I wanted the sun.

‘Thanks for this,’ I said, when he got in the driver’s side. ‘You really didn’t have to.’

‘The least I could do, seeing as you spent half of last night battling hypothermia because of me.’ He shifted the car into gear and we pulled out of the driveway. I can’t say he drove slowly in the snow, but the journey was calmer and more thoughtful than normal. Whether it was because of the weather or our conversation the night before, I wasn’t sure.

‘So,’ I ventured, when I’d gone over it ten times in my head, ‘did you talk with Laith?’

‘I did.’

‘Um,’ I gulped, ‘is he okay?’

A small smile formed on his lips. ‘Laith’s fine, you don’t need to worry about him.’

‘I was worried about you.’

‘Well, you definitely don’t need to do that.’

I sank into my seat. Not wanting to pry any further, I left the subject. Just glad to know no one had been hurt. It wasn’t that I believed he’d harm Laith. Something about Kal told me he’d never hurt his friends, but my head was spinning. All I had wanted to know was how he knew my dad. I thought everything would become clear once I found out the truth, but if there was one thing I was learning it’s that truth is complicated. I’d never been able to predict his reaction to things and now I knew who he was, I was even less sure. I thought about the way he’d dealt with Jared, when he’d clearly lost his temper but managed to control himself. I didn’t think I had anything to worry about. Perhaps they were more disciplined than the rest of us. I wondered for the journey’s entirety, not realising how silent and lost in my thoughts I’d become until the touch of his hand on my shoulder jolted me back to reality.

‘Red, we’re here,’ he said gently.

I pressed the palms of my hands to my eyes. I needed to concentrate on the interview; this was what I needed to do to save my family home.

‘You’ll be fine,’ his calm voiced soothed. I nodded, trying to drum up some confidence and opened the car door. Frozen air flooded in.

‘I’ll wait for you. Afterwards you can come to ours if you want? Ace is keen to see you,’ he added, as if I needed another reason to spend time with him. I walked up to the unlit store and tapped lightly on the door. The Greek owner, Chris Hanno, who I’d met a week before, opened it immediately. He smiled brightly.

‘Veronica!’ he beamed. ‘Please come in, it’s cold out! Here, this is my wife, Eleni.’

I shook the hand of the tiny woman who appeared behind him, her dyed blonde hair glowing almost luminous in the warm corridor light. Behind me, Kal drove away. Part of me was relieved. I didn’t want them to see him and start asking questions, because they weren’t the sort of questions I was prepared to answer.

I stepped inside the shop, my legs almost trembling beneath me, but I needn’t have worried. My interview turned out to be an informal chat about when I could start and what the job would entail.

‘So why do you want to work in the travel industry, Ronnie?’ Eleni asked.

I opened my mouth, ready to give an answer I felt appropriate in a job interview, but the words that came out were not what I’d planned. ‘My father died and now I have to take care of the house and my sister. I’m scared if I don’t get a job like this, I’ll never get out of Clanots Ocean.’
Where had that come from?

My brain told me to say something better – to cover it up – when I saw Eleni nodding sympathetically. She smiled in a way that told me she’d heard about my father. Of course she had.

After a five-minute private chat with her husband, Eleni came back in and welcomed me to their travel firm with a hug.

‘Thank you so much, Mrs. Hanno,’ I said. ‘I promise you won’t regret it.’

She shooed me out after that, telling me to enjoy the rest of my Christmas. I thanked them again and stepped out onto the pavement in a trance. I’d done it. All I needed to do now was convince Rachel that the house was worth keeping and that if she and Jared could just re-mortgage, I would help pay the bills and we could keep our father’s house. The Audi pulled up in front of me almost instantly, as the first drops of rain began to fall.

‘You got it, then?’ he asked with a knowing smile as I slid into the front seat.

‘I got it,’ I agreed, shocked to hear it from my own mouth.

Christmas lights still brightened the streets around us and the light flurry of snow that had fallen made everything sparkle. I felt like I was in a movie, or perhaps an extended version of one of my many daydreams.

I looked at the driver and smiled.

***

At the mansion I tried to behave like nothing had changed. But now that I knew what the boys were about, it was surreal being around them and I wasn’t sure if I was pulling off acting natural. Nash sat with a laptop computer resting on his lap, wearing a frown as he stared at the screen. Denver and Laith threw a ball absently across the room to one another and Ace had his nose in a book. It was all so normal, yet it wasn’t normal at all. I turned to Kalen and saw him watching me, watch his friends. I couldn’t read what he was thinking, but as I looked in his eyes a chilling thought occurred to me: the similarities between them – the look of innocence they shared and smiles that belied any wrongdoing; I wondered if they had been handpicked as children for that exact reason, because when you looked at their faces you could be forgiven for believing they were angels. It was only on closer inspection, looking into their eyes, that you could see the darkness that lurked inside – the torment and pain they carried with them. A look that can only be acquired from years of hardship and horror that any normal person would be unaccustomed to.

There was nothing angelic about that look.

17 – One Good Day

‘So how come you don’t have a phone?’ I asked on our way back to my house later that evening.

He rubbed one hand over his mouth. ‘It’s difficult,’ he said eventually, ‘but the boys and I agreed to it a long time ago. One less way for them to find us. If we separate, we have a few agreed meeting places and all the time in the world to find each other anyway.’

He glanced at me, one hand resting casually on the bottom of the steering wheel, the other on his leg. I wanted to reach out and hold it. I didn’t.

Soon, we were pulling up outside my house. Rachel’s BMW was in the driveway.

‘Oh, great,’ I mumbled. I wanted to stay and talk, but if I didn’t go in soon she’d only come out and get me. It was more embarrassment than I could handle. I stepped out. ‘Will I see you tomorrow?’