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Surprise Visit
DR. GREEN
Sean Green threw open the driver’s-side door to Owen’s BMW. He patted his jeans pockets and then reached into his green jacket, finding only his cell phone. “Owen! Goddamnit. I left my keys somewhere.”
“No time,” Owen said, jogging toward the car. He carried a single backpack across his shoulder. He opened the back door and dropped it on the seat, making a whirling motion with his hand above his head. “Get in. I’ll drive.”
Sean’s head rocked back until he was glaring at the sky. “No,” he said in a whine. “You drive too slowly.”
“Just get in,” he said in a short bark.
Sean grumbled and jogged around the car, landing in the passenger seat and slamming the door. They had parked near their tent at Academy camp. There were piles of supplies in neat rows on a nearby picnic table.
They didn’t have time to pack it up. Not now.
Owen wedged himself in behind the wheel, inserted a key and turned the engine over.
Sean sent a text to the others around the camp about their tent and supplies. They’d take down their tents and would keep their things safe until they could be delivered back to their proper owners.
It’d cost them a favor, but they needed to get going.
Not only was Sang’s health at risk, but possibly her freedom, perhaps even her life.
Within minutes they were on the road headed back to Summerville.
Sean kept his phone in his lap, staring at the screen, prepared to call a thousand people and yet not wanting to clog phones in the crucial time they had.
The others were taking their time getting Sang packed up to go to her house.
Cameras were being monitored. Phones tapped.
Waiting for information was always the hardest. With information, they could do something. Take action. Make a decision.
Now all he had to focus on was the time ticking away as Owen barely broke the speed limit getting back to Summerville.
Sean groaned, throaty, louder than he meant to, with the frustration bubbling inside him. He gripped the phone harder in his hand, glaring out the windshield.
“I can’t risk going any faster,” Owen said. He shot him a look. It was one of the rare moments when Owen actually looked human to Sean. His hair was askew, blown by the breeze at the camp and then the rush to get into the car and on the road. He’d replaced his nicer clothes with an older sweater and a pair of old jeans meant to be worn while breaking down camps. Sean hadn’t seen him like this in months, maybe not even a year now. Owen never wore jeans.
“Because getting pulled over and getting a speeding ticket will take more time than following the rules,” Sean said, repeating the lecture Owen had often given him. “I know, I know...”
“She’s not hurt,” Owen said. “And she knows to leave if he tries anything dangerous. He wouldn’t do to her what her stepmother tried...locking her up. We’ll get her out even if he tried.”
“The fact is, we don’t know what’s going on,” Sean said. He held on to his phone, turning the screen on every once in a while, anticipating and feeling phantom vibrations every few seconds. He’d take a shock, if any of them wanted to hit the emergency button, just to hear any news. “She doesn’t have to go in, you know?”
“I know,” Owen said darkly, his eyes narrowing on the road. The sunlight streaming through the windshield reflected off his glasses. He raked his fingers through his hair, and with a few swipes, it was perfect.
He’d always had a knack for hand-combing.
“We could get her out,” Sean said. “In a heartbeat. We could stop all this.”
“We don’t know if she’d want us to,” he said. His knuckles were turning white as he gripped the wheel. “But
, please, stop tempting me.”
Sean smothered another grumble and turned his eyes to the trees they passed by along the way. He folded his arms across his chest, his windbreaker rustling. When it got too warm in the car, he stripped it off and left the T-shirt underneath on, tossing the jacket into the back in a heap.
Owen eyeballed the crumpled jacket in the rearview mirror but said nothing. He tightened his mouth, too polite to grind his teeth but on the verge of it.
Good, Sean said to himself, although he didn’t mean it. He knew he was irritated and anxious, without anything to do other than wait.
He was tempted to check the camera signals, but if Victor was already checking them, it would slow things down if he tried to do the same thing. The cameras were handy, but the server could get overloaded if too many of them tried viewing at the same time.
Sean tucked a thumb close to his mouth and started biting a nail absently.
“You should be thinking about what we’ll need to do once we can get her to the hospital,” Owen said. “Maybe you should have someone prepare some sort of test?”
“Because she fainted?” Sean asked and shook his head. “There’s nothing to prepare for. I’ll do another couple of blood tests, but I bet she didn’t eat like she promised she would.”
“She’s clearly got low blood pressure. It’s the stress.”
“I agree,” Sean said. He stared out the window, not really looking at anything, but picturing the time Sang had been carried into the nurse’s office, looking pale and tired. She’d been getting better, but this week had been quite over the top. “Even if she’d been okay with her girl team, she has a lot to be stressed out over.”
“There might be underlying causes for these fainting spells,” Owen said. “She wasn’t having seizures, was she? We’re not looking at epilepsy, are we?”
“They would have noticed a seizure,” Sean said, and he shut his eyes, wanting to focus, but too many questions popped into his brain. He opened them, looking over at Owen. “There’s no point in doctoring when the patient and the data aren’t in front of you. We’re doing guesswork.”
Owen closed his mouth and pressed his lips together. Sean couldn’t blame him. Answers were what they were continually looking for, especially when it came to Sang. Would they ever have a day they wouldn’t worry about her?
Suddenly, the phone rang in his hands and he pushed the button quickly, bringing it to his ear.
“What?” he asked quickly. “What is it?”
There was silence for a moment, and then a heavily accented voice spoke over the phone, female and mature. “Is something wrong?”
“Mother?” Sean choked out with surprise, sitting up straight as an arrow in the car. He’d been so anxious expecting a call from the guys that this threw him off. “What...how...hello.” He coughed and then continued, “Hey, I meant to call you.”
He pictured his mother as he spoke, a Japanese woman, short, thin with few wrinkles and minimal gray strands of hair at the temples, which she often dyed to keep her hair completely ebony in color.
It was her eyes that made him shiver. The darkness that demanded perfection.
If there were ever a tiger mom, Sean’s adoptive mother was the epitome.
There was a very long pause, and eventually his mother spoke. “I am calling to let you know I’ll be in town soon.”
Sean squeezed his eyes closed tightly and pinched the bridge of his nose. Not now. “What? Oh. That’s...nice.” Now? Right now? She always had the perfect timing...
“If that’s not a problem,” she said in haste. “Do you have some sort of trouble?”
“No, Mother,” he said and looked longingly at Owen, silently pleading for some help. Tell him that this emergency is way more important than his mother visiting. Give him an excuse to put off this visit. “What brings you down?”
“Work,” she said. “Temporary, but it might be a month or more. I can secure an apartment closer to downtown—”
“No, I wouldn’t hear of it,” Sean said, although he didn’t mean it. She knew full well he had a spare bedroom. She’d agonize over the cost of another apartment and would never let him hear the end of it if he didn’t invite her to stay. “Of course you should stay with me. The guest room is yours.”
Owen remained quiet, but his hands twisted at the wheel. He was displeased with this news.
Silence again on the phone. “Oh, I shouldn’t do that,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”
Within Japanese culture, it was really hard for her to do anything but politely decline at first and make him insist she stay. It was the same dance she had gone through with him since he’d moved out and she had come to stay.
If the timing had been a bit better, he might have even enjoyed her visit—as much as he could enjoy her constant criticisms. She wouldn’t understand the fuss he was making about a girl.
“Of course, Mom,” Sean said, feeling the regret drip through his body at agreeing to this. “Stay with me. When are you getting here?”
“There’s a cheap flight tonight,” she said. “I can call a cab. Or Uber.”
Tonight? Why so last-minute? Sean spoke through his teeth. “No, it’s fine. I can come pick you up. Text me the details?”
“Is something wrong?” she asked. “Why do you sound like your mouth is broken?”
Sean coughed and then spoke properly. “Sorry, Mom. Might be the phone reception.”
“I’ll see you tonight.”
The phone silenced, and Sean dropped it into his lap. He pressed his back against the seat in a stretch and leaned his head back. “Tell me I can just sleep at the hospital and claim I need to work overtime.”
“Isn’t that what you do most of the time anyway?” Owen asked. “But I agree. This isn’t the best timing.”
“She may not understand about Sang,” Sean said, rolling his head to look out the side window. Trees zoomed by, making him dizzy. “No, she wouldn’t understand. Not at all.”
“Because she’s sixteen,” Owen said.
“Because...yeah,” Sean said and sighed, closing his eyes. He knew this was going to be a problem. For another two years, perhaps, he and Owen would have to conceal their interest, hide their feelings about Sang to everyone else. She was close to them in age, so close that in two years, it wouldn’t matter.
But for the next two years, other people really wouldn’t understand it.
Not to mention that they were a part of a group of nine other guys also trying to win her affection and love.
Sometimes Sean wondered if it mattered. No one could know what they were doing. Another Academy group had a similar relationship: Lily, Liam, and a few other men had stayed together.
They stayed together by having a house in the middle of nowhere. They managed things by not telling anyone about themselves.
Was that their destiny? To hide?
“There has to be a way, Owen,” Sean said.
The corner of Owen’s mouth dipped, and his gray eyes narrowed at the windshield. “We’ll find out. But first, we have to get there and stop whatever is happening.”
The Return
SANG
Kota called my name with such a desperate tone in his voice, so eerie that I’d never forget it.
A heavy twist of emotion had captured my heart that week. At camp, I’d been with a group of girls who had stressed me out. Being with them meant I was being torn away from a group of guys I wanted to stay with.
The guys, on occasion, also seemed to encourage me to go with them, as if pushing me into it.
However, by displaying what an emotional wreck I really was, somehow that had convinced a council to stay with my group.
The boys then fought over me. Enough that I couldn’t help but think they’d split over me.
I didn’t think I had any feeling stronger than the anxiousness I felt over the nine guys who argued about whether they could share a unique relationship with me.
Not until Kota called fo
r me, in a panic, and I was rushed out of Victor’s home and into North’s Jeep.
Kota drove. His hands were tight against the wheel, his lips pulled back until his teeth were bared, clenched. He wore the same dingy jeans and a sweater he put on at the last minute before running out the door and getting into the car.
Nathan sat next to him in the passenger seat. His reddish hair was askew as his window was cracked just enough to let some of the cool air in to combat the sun beating into the windshield.
His hand was stuffed up against his face as he leaned his elbow against the door, glaring at the trees and traffic going by.
I was crammed into the rear seat between Victor and Gabriel. Shoulder to shoulder, they too stared out the windows on either side of them.
I could only look forward, at the miles closing in on returning to Summerville, to Sunnyvale Court, where my house was.
Where my father was.
The others were forced to stay at Victor’s house to collect laptops and supplies.
Just in case.
The fact that we had to prepare for anything made it difficult. I sensed it, even from the inside of the Jeep.
The silence.
The tight mouths.
The clenched hands.
They’d been in an argument and now had to work together.
My father was back, and from the way Mr. Blackbourne had described it, he was calling the school, asking for Mr. Hendricks or someone who could bring me back from school camp. That’s where I’d told my sister I’d be.
Kota had been the last of them to speak to me as we were leaving the house. “If he came home to check in and found you gone, he might be worried something had happened to you. Remember, he’s just as desperate to keep your background a secret. Now that your stepmother hasn’t been around to keep you at home, he’s probably worried about exposure. Especially now that you know, and you could tell anyone.”
It was dangerous that he was calling around for me. While they were capable of monitoring the calls and redirecting any call to designated Academy people who would say whatever we wanted, someone like Volto, or if one of Mr. Hendricks’s people were watching the house...
Disaster was waiting for me if my father made any mistakes right now.
The twisted knots in my heart tightened with every mile as we got closer. Despite the panic, I was still in turmoil over the argument I’d overheard. Gabriel had held my hand, and the more they argued, the closer he got, until near the end, to where we were clinging to each other. We’d stared silently into each other’s eyes, knowing what the other was thinking.
