Chapter 3 #2
He shakes his head. “It’s nothing, Allie—”
Bullshit.
My jaw goes tight. “Daddy.”
It’s a manipulation tactic, and I’m not afraid to admit that. He hates it when I call him by his first name, but when I call him ‘Daddy’ like I’m a kid again instead of a hard-earned twenty-five, he’s putty in my hands.
Especially when I add, “You’re not hiding something from your own daughter, are you?”
It’s not an unfounded suspicion. For weeks now, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m out of the loop.
That there’s something everyone knows… except me.
It’s an intangible belief, like catching the wind in the palm of your hand: I feel it, I almost have a grasp on it, but it isn’t there when I look for it.
Except for now.
A fleeting expression of pain flutters across Jack’s tired face, there and gone again before the guilt can really creep in. Fucking shame that he hurriedly rearranges his features into a look I know all too well.
His “leader” look.
The one that says that not even I’m getting around it.
“What? That? Eddie’s helping me set up another one of those boring meetings we’re always having.
” He waves his hands, dismissing the meetings though I’m well aware that the only reason Jack is always going to meetings at the high school is because he insists on them.
“There weren’t any lurkers sighted last night, but some of the boundary boys think that we could be in trouble tonight.
Like the beasts are biding their time.” Considering lurkers are too brainless to do anything but hunt to feed, I doubt it.
I don’t get a chance to tell him that, though, before Jack is adding, “We’re weighing the benefits of doubling up patrols to make sure there’s always a pair of sensors”—someone with Hallie’s unique ability—“and hunters on duty after nightfall instead of leaving some of our borders unprotected. It’ll put a strain on our sensors, but the boundary boys think it’s worth the risk.
A debate like that could go on for hours, sweetie, you know how it is. ”
“And that’s all?” I know how it is—and I also know that can’t be all. “What about ‘he’?”
“‘He’?”
As a hunter who knows their place in the Grave, I’m not usually so curious about the day-to-day running of the community. I trusted Jack. Relied on my father. Give me a mission, a rig, and a match, and I’ll protect our people the only way I can.
But, nowadays, I’m on the bench. If Jack’s trying to shut me out of hunting, he should’ve expected I might turn my attention elsewhere.
Like, oh, a called meeting with a stranger.
There are no strangers in the Grave. If you were a survivor in our community when we closed ranks, you’re one of us. If you’re part of the Outside world, you’re a target for the lurkers. We protect our borders. We don’t let anyone in or out.
At least, I didn’t think we did.
“Yeah,” I say pointedly, “you said ‘he’… ‘he’ might be trusted. ‘He’s at St. Matthew’s. You called him a stranger, Jack. Who’s ‘he’?”
Jack blinks once, twice, three times before he visibly relaxes. “Oh. I know what you’re talking about. You must’ve misheard. Eddie and me… we were talking about Oliver. You know him, don’t you, honey?”
Oliver. He was a sanitation worker in the old days.
Now, he fancies himself a hunter, even if he—like Hallie—gets his worth in that ability to sense when a lurker is lurking.
In all of the Grave, there’s about forty people who can.
That’s only about ten percent. Jack appreciates his skill, though he won’t let the tall, lanky, klutzy man in his early thirties anywhere near a flame.
I narrow my gaze. “Yeah. I know Oliver.”
He’s definitely not a stranger—and I definitely heard Jack use that word.
My dad still tries to play it off like he didn’t. “He has this cockamamie idea that he should take a group of survivors past our borders, see if there’s anything we can salvage for our stores. Eddie sent him to Audrey so the doc can talk some sense to him.”
Audrey Monroe isn’t a doctor. Not really.
A second-year nurse who once worked at a hospital an hour away, she’s one of the only survivors with any medical training at all.
She’s also a kind soul with a good nature, and though Doctor Wilson—a surgeon before the Turning—did the most when it came to my recovery and healing, it’s Audrey you can find at St. Matthew’s at any given hour of the day.
That would explain why Jack mentioned ‘he’s at the church. If Oliver is acting strange-ly, maybe that’s what I heard. I bite the corner of my mouth, wondering if I could buy that. His story rings true and yet—
“Whatever. Anyway, I was thinking about going to the library today. Maybe I can grab a snack for lunch, then I can walk with you over to the school.”
I know in a second that I’ve got him. Jack has this habit of fiddling with his wedding ring whenever he’s feeling super anxious. And now? He’s turning it and turning it until it slips off his finger, landing on the floor with a soft clink. He picks it up and jams it back on again.
“You don’t have to do that,” he tells me while I inwardly smirk. “In fact, it would probably be better if you stayed home. Put a bandage on your finger and get back to prepping your bottles. You might need them soon.”
Oh, you dick. I love my dad, but when Jack goes “leader of the Grave” mode, he can be a real dick.
Distract me with the prospect of returning to the hunt? Why not?
I decide to go along with it.
“Really? You mean it? You’re going to let me back on patrol?”
“Well, you heard Eddie and me talking about it, Allie. If the Grave decides to double up on the protections we already have, it would be selfish of me to keep you home when the threat out there is only growing. At the end of the day, it’s all about keeping our people safe.”
All of them, not just his sole surviving family member.
“In that case,” I reply, “I should probably get some of my rigs together.”
“I— yes. That’s a good idea, honey.”
He edges closer, squeezing my shoulder in a wordless gesture before he absently pats my bicep.
It was hot in the condo. I shrugged off Rory’s jacket while working on my bottles, and the tank top I have on does nothing to hide the large scar on my upper left arm.
Surprisingly, the apple-sized second-degree burn was the only visible injury I suffered in the explosion that didn’t completely go away.
As it was, it took three weeks for it to heal enough that I could call it a scar, but while it stopped peeling, the raw pink skin is a reminder of what one stupid fucking mistake cost me.
Jack’s breath catches in his throat, a sure sign he’s thinking the same damn thing that I am.
I answer his suffocating grief with a fleeting smile that doesn’t quite reach my eyes.
As Jack adjusts his wedding ring again, I go back upstairs—but I leave the glass bottles right where they are.
Instead, I hurry over to the open window just in time to see Jack slipping through the front door beneath me.
Using my phone as a clock again, I wait until Jack’s been gone for five minutes before I grab Rory’s jacket from the back of my door, run down the stairs, and stroll after him.