14 - Olive
N ever again will I take t he 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.
Anyway, the point is I was on the run, the train ride sucked, and by the time I got off, it was night time. Almost eight-thirty at night, to be exact. And everything around the train station was closed.
Which meant I couldn’t rent a car—which I wasn’t gonna do anyway because of all the documentation you need. I might as well have just worn a neon sign that said, Come and Get Me .
The only saving grace was that I saw a sign across the street from the train station for Appalachian Tours and Transit. Which is a little place that offers bus tours of the scenic shit in this area and one place they go is Trinity County.
I slept outside the little storefront, waiting until they opened up at six. “Usually,” the woman at the counter told me, “we take passengers up on this first trip in the mornin’. We bring ‘em back down here after their stay is over. So there won’t be no one on the bus with you.”
I didn’t mind, and I told her that. My head was all jumbled and confused at this point. And I must’ve looked a wreck after my unnecessarily long journey from DC, so this lady sold me a ticket and I got on the bus.
It was about an hour ride up to Disciple, but since I was the only passenger, and this bus was driving straight past Disciple to pick people up in Bishop, I asked the driver if he’d mind dropping me off at Edge Security since it’s right on the Loop Highway, and he agreed.
When we arrive, there’s a school bus pulling in ahead of us. They get stuck at the gatehouse for a minute, so my driver just pulls along the highway and looks over his shoulder at me. “I don’t have time to chat with the guards, so you’re good with me droppin’ you here?”
I nod and get up, slinging my go-bag over my shoulder. “Yes. This is perfect. Thanks a lot for your help.”
He tips his head at me and smiles. “Have a nice day, young lady.”
And I get off, waving at him one final time as he pulls away.
The bus is still idling at the gate, so I can’t really see anything until it starts pulling forward down the long driveway.
I’ve seen aerial photos and drone footage of the Edge compound. And, of course, I know this place from when I was a kid. Not that I’ve ever been here, but we must’ve driven past it hundreds of times in the eight years I spent in Disciple. So everything in this moment is familiar, but in two very different ways.
On the one hand, Edge is an asset of Collin Creed, who is my target.
On the other, this is the Old Church Camp from my childhood, and my brother owns it.
It’s a weird dichotomy.
“Can we help you, ma’am?” There are two guards at the gate. The first one is tall and dark-skinned and the other is Hispanic, maybe. Both of them are looking at me like they are not in the mood for whatever is about to come out of my mouth.
“Yeah,” I say, letting out a long breath. “I’m… well… I’m Collin’s sister? Olive?” Both of these things come out as questions, which is not good. Because if I’m not sure who I am, they have no reason to believe me. “Can you let him know I’m here?”
“Is he expecting you?” the first one asks.
I shake my head, but force myself to project confidence. “No. But he will definitely want to know I’m here so you should probably give him a call.” I think .
“One moment,” the second one says. He goes into the guard house, while Number One glares at me like I’m wearing a nametag that says Enemy on it.
The second one comes back out. “He’s on his way.” Then they both stare at me with half-hooded eyes. It’s all very serious. Which might be weird. I mean, I’m a twenty-two-year-old girl. Blonde, and fit, and attractive, and small. They’re hardened, big, and wearing black tactical uniforms. Not only that, they’re loaded down with some serious weapons, like this is a military base in some violent desert country instead of a security operation in the middle of West Virginia.
I look over to my right and there he is. Collin Creed. My brother. My target.
He’s coming down the porch steps of the house closest to the highway with a strange look on his face. As he gets closer he squints. “Olive?”
I smile, shyly. Because he’s a lot like his compound. I know him—I grew up with him until I was eight—but I haven’t seen him in over twelve years. Haven’t even talked to him since I was a teenager, and that was just a random call out of nowhere that lasted about five minutes.
He’s… scarier than I thought he would be.
Harder than even these men he has guarding his compound.
And those eyes of his—those weird hazel blue-green eyes—they don’t look the way I remember. They look… suspicious.
I force a smile as he approaches. “Surprise!”
He’s confused and he starts looking around. “Where’s your car? How did you get here?”
I point down the highway, like the bus that dropped me off is still there, but of course it’s not. “The Appalachian Tours bus dropped me off. I got into Charleston last night and?—”
But he cuts me off. “What are you doing here? Where’s Mom and Dad?”
My heart twists a little when he says these words. Mom and Dad. Like we’re really related. Like we share parents. Which, of course, we don’t. And I haven’t thought of them as Mom and Dad for so long now, this question stuns me. Memories begin to flood my head and I don’t know what to say.
“Olive? What’s going on?”
Now he’s looking at me like he’s worried and I know this was a mistake.
A huge mistake.
Suddenly, Brose is in my head, whispering those oh-so-familiar words right into my mind. My mission is you and your mission is me .
For a moment, I feel like he’s here with me. All the growing sense of abandonment fades and… it’s just us.
Me and him.
He thinks for me, I act for him .
He thinks for me, I act for him .
He thinks for me, I act for him .
“Nothing,” I say. “Nothing’s going on. I mean, I’m here, so that’s something. But… why do you look so worried?” I crinkle my nose at Collin, which makes him smile and drop his guard. I’m very cute when I crinkle my nose and this is something he told me often when I was small.
Suddenly, memories are flooding through me. All the years he was—like truly was—my big brother. And I can feel the tears building. Not from a sense of fear that he will start asking me questions I can’t answer, but from relief. Because I know him and he knows me, and there’s actually a whole lot to say.
So that’s what I do. I say it. “I’ve missed you.” And I let those tears form.
Collin grabs me and pulls me in for a hug. “God, I’ve missed you too. I don’t think I actually realized just how much until right now.”
I hug him back and we stay like this for a good long moment. Then he pushes me back to get a better look and grins. Those crazy beautiful eyes of his focus on me for the first time in so long, I actually get lost in them. “Come on. I live down at the end of the driveway there with Lowyn. She’s still here, and she’s gonna fuckin’ freak when she sees you, I’m sure. Wait till you see what she did to our house, Olive. Your room is an office now.”
We begin walking deeper into the compound and that’s that.
It’s like I never left because suddenly I feel… home .
Don’t get comfortable . These words float through my head in the subdued and low voice of Brose. You have a lot of questions coming, Olive. And you need to be ready .
But it’s really not a problem because the very first project Brose and I ever worked on together was me. My backstory, I mean. “Everyone has to have one,” he’d said.
“What’s yours?” I remember asking.
“Old money.” He sighed when he said that. “It goes with old power.”
I was flirting with him during this conversation. I was only eighteen and Brose is fucking hot. Everything about him is hot. Those lean stomach muscles, his broad shoulders, that bit of scruff that’s always on his chin and looks like someone sketched it into place, that’s how perfect it always is. And that voice. My God, he could make me come with words if he tried.
“You’re a legacy,” I’d said.
“We’re all legacies, Olive. There isn’t a single person in CORE who isn’t. So it’s your blood as well as mine.”
The bus, which had preceded me at the entrance of Edge and rumbled down the driveway to the very end, spurts out a cloud of black diesel smoke and slowly pulls away, rounding the curve of the driveway to head out.
“You have kids?” I ask, pointing at the school bus as it maneuvers the curve.
“Nah. It’s Amon’s boy. Well, Rosie Harlow’s boy. Cross. You remember Cross?”
I shrug, because maybe? But not really. I would not call Rosie a stranger, just like I would not call anyone in Disciple a stranger, but I didn’t know her. And maybe I have a memory of her being pregnant, but if I ever saw her baby after it was born, it didn’t leave an impression.
I’m looking right at the bus though, so when it finally rounds that corner what I’m really looking at is… Shep.
Holy fuck. I mean, of course I knew he was here. But I was not expecting him to be present when I started telling my fake story about my fake parents to my fake brother.
There is a fleeting moment here when I almost panic, but luckily, Collin is looking at me, talkin’, so when Shep ducks away real fast, Collin doesn’t even notice.
Hmmm. I guess Shep is as nervous about seeing me in front of Collin as I am of him.
“Olive?”
“Huh?” I look up at my brother. Who doesn’t feel fake at all. Not even a tiny bit.
“I said, where are Mom and Dad?”
“Oh. They’re in Florida. Pensacola. You haven’t talked to them?”
Collin scoffs. “Not in many, many years. They disowned me, I think.”
I frown. Because I didn’t know this. I mean, I suspected they were not close, but I’m not close with them either so I didn’t get any updates after CORE took over my life. I don’t actually know where they live. Maybe Pensacola? Maybe not. It’s just a story.
“What about you?” Collin asks. “Are you close?”
“No. Not really.” I look up at him, readying the lies. “I dropped out of college.”
“Why?”
“I hated it.”
“So what do you do?”
“I’m an influencer.”
“What?” Now he’s laughing. But his eyes are shining with amusement. “What kind of influencer?”
“I’m a van-life girl.”
“Stop it.” He laughs.
“I am! I swear. I’m just in between vans at the moment. But I have a whole channel of content. Gypsy Compass. Look me up.” The channel is real, but the girl doing it is actually AI. It’s all fake. Even the destinations, which are mostly state and national parks with a smidge of coastal Mexico thrown in for variety.
“What happened to your van?”
“It got stolen. Just last week, actually. And it wasn’t far away, so after dealing with the insurance, I decided to look you up. That’s how I got here.”
While Collin is thinking about all this, I watch as Shep makes his way over to a brown building and disappears inside.
I have an irrational urge to ask Collin about him, but I hold it in. He can’t know that Shep and I know each other. That, despite Collin being the official reason I’m here, it’s Shep I want to see.
Then I hear, “Oh, my God! Is that little Olive?” And then Lowyn McBride, a girl I kinda thought of as a sister when I was small, is bounding down the porch steps of an old house with her arms wide open, ready to give me a hug.
I let her do this and then, as if she and Collin are the same person, she pushes me out to arm’s length and takes a good look at me. “You’re gorgeous, Olive. Absolutely stunning. Do people tell you that all the time?”
My laugh comes out immediately. “Um… no? No. They really don’t.”
Brose does tell me nice things, but it comes off as platitudes. And I don’t actually interact with anyone else these days, so… this isn’t even a lie.
“Oh, that’s crazy. You’re hanging around the wrong people then.”
And before I can make any more decisions or have any thoughts at all, actually, I’m being pulled up the porch steps and led through the door of the house.
The next thing I know I’m sitting at the kitchen table of a very bright and modern kitchen and Lowyn McBride is setting a cup of coffee in front of me. She gives Collin one too, then sits down next to him.
I squirm a little when they stare at me as a team, but manage to smile and take a sip of my drink to buy time. I don’t know what comes next. Meeting Collin was always a hypothetical. This wasn’t planned, I’m not supposed to be here, and Brose is missing.
So I don’t know what to say.
“Do you need anything?” Lowyn asks. “I’m about to head into work. I run a vintage thrift store in Disciple, so if ya do, you can come along and check it out.”
“Oh…” I stall. “I… well, I’m kind of tired, actually. So if it’s OK, maybe I could just hang out here for a little bit?”
Collin looks at me like he wants to ask questions, but Lowyn gets there first. “Sure,” she says. “You make yourself at home. I’ll be back late afternoon, but you’ll be here, right, Collin?”
“Well, I’ve got some meetings in the office,”—he nods his head to indicate some place outside the house—“but I’ll be around. So yeah, sure. Rest. We’ll catch up tonight at dinner.”
“There’s a guest room right down there, Olive. You unpack your bag there and settle in.”
Then they both get up, so I get up too, and we all hug one more time before they leave to go about their days.
I watch from the front window as the two of them linger near what I assume to be Lowyn’s car, then Collin opens her door, lets her get in, and closes it behind her.
He always was a gentleman like that and it makes me sigh a little at how perfect they are for each other.
But once Lowyn’s car disappears, and Collin is all the way up the driveway, mostly hidden by dozens of his men, I slip out the front door and straight over to the brown building where I saw Shep disappear.