365 Days, Zero Missed Calls novel · Chapter 3 of 16
Chapter 3: The Girl at the Gate
On day seven her father and two brothers come to the gate and won't say her name, and the ring box he returns holds a note telling her to stay away.
At breakfast I carried my tray straight to Tobias's table and sat down across from him.
The recruits around us went quiet.
"How often do you report?" I asked.
He kept cutting his eggs.
"Report what?"
"Every word I say about my family. Is it daily? Or only when I cry?"
His knife stopped.
Blythe, two seats down, put her spoon in her mouth and left it there.
"Who told you that?" Tobias said.
"Nobody had to."
"That's not an answer."
"You're not getting one."
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he set the knife down.
"The director gives me orders. I follow them. That's the job."
"Then here's something for your report," I said. "My family doesn't know I'm alive. You can write that down."
I picked up my tray and moved to an empty table.
Nobody followed me.
That was fine. I was used to eating alone.
The first week was running.
Running in the dark before breakfast. Running with a pack of rocks. Running up the mountain road until three recruits threw up.
I didn't throw up.
I'd been running for a year. I just hadn't been moving.
On the seventh day, Tobias came to find me on the range.
"Director wants you at the gate."
"Why?"
He didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
I could hear the engines from halfway across the yard.
Two black cars. One of them was my father's Maybach.
I knew the sound of its doors.
The whole intake was coming back from the morning run as I walked down.
They slowed to watch.
Harker stood inside the steel gate with her hands behind her back.
On the other side of the bars stood my father.
Asher was behind him, in his good coat.
Declan was behind Asher, and he was looking at the ground.
In the back seat of the second car, I could see the sleek black bob of my mother's assistant, Audra.
She had a tablet on her knees. She wasn't looking at the tablet.
Dad saw me, and his whole face went still.
Seven days.
That was how long it took.
"Director," he said. "We're here for the girl."
The girl.
Forty-nine recruits stood behind me on the gravel, listening.
"She's a sworn recruit, Mr. Halston," Harker said. "She's eighteen."
"I'm aware of how old she is."
"Are you?" I said.
My voice came out steadier than I expected.
Dad looked at me.
"You'll come home now," he said. "This isn't a discussion."
"Say my name."
Asher shifted his weight.
"Dad," I said. "Say my name, and I'll get in the car."
My father opened his mouth.
He closed it again.
He looked over his shoulder at the second car, at Audra, and then back at me.
"Get your things," he said.
Somebody behind me whistled low.
Blythe muttered, "Holy hell."
"You came two hundred miles," I said. "You can't say two syllables?"
"We don't have time for this."
"You had a year."
Declan lifted his head for the first time.
His eyes were red.
I tried to hear him. I pushed toward him the way Echo had shown me in the boathouse.
I caught one scrap, fast and panicked.
"Not here, Ro. Not in front of her."
Her.
I didn't know who he meant.
"I'm staying," I said.
"Rory will stay," Harker said.
My father flinched at the sound of it.
Not at the words. At the name.
He reached into his coat pocket and took out a small leather box.
He held it through the bars.
"You forgot this," he said.
It was my crest ring box.
I took it.
His fingers didn't touch mine.
He turned and got into the Maybach without looking back.
Asher followed him.
Declan stood at the bars one second longer than the others.
Then he got into the second car, next to Audra.
The engines started.
The recruits drifted away one by one, whispering.
Tobias stayed.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Put it in your report," I said.
I walked to the far corner of the wall, where the wind came straight off the mountain.
I opened the box.
The ring sat on its velvet, the Halston anchor in gold.
I lifted it out.
Under the velvet pad there was something that shouldn't have been there.
A square of paper, folded to the size of a stamp.
I unfolded it with numb fingers.
It was Declan's handwriting. I'd have known it anywhere.
He used to leave me notes like this under my door when I was little.
The message was short.
"Stay there. Don't call. Please."
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