Sovereign Hope

Sovereign
Hope

Frankie
Rose

Copyright ©
2012 Frankie Rose

Smashwords
Edition

Copyright © 2012 Frankie Rose

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying,
recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the
prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other
non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission
requests, write to the author, addressed “Attention: Permissions
Coordinator,” at
[email protected]

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to peoples either
living or deceased is purely coincidental. Names, places and
characters are figments of the author’s imagination, or, if real,
used fictitiously.

All rights reserved.

ISBN:

ISBN-13:

For the daydreamers.

CHAPTER ONE

Figueroa

The thing
about car chases is this: if you’re traveling through downtown LA
at lunchtime, you can forget about them.  In that kind of
traffic, all you can hope to have in the way of a highway pursuit
is a crawling affair where the object of the chase has plenty of
time to make a distress call. Phone in hand, I was inching my way
down Figueroa with a freak rainstorm pelting the world beyond the
windscreen into obscurity when my best friend, Tessa Kennedy,
finally picked up.

“
Did you know there’s a sale on at Hillman’s? My mom’s buying
me the cutest—”

“
Tess, I’m being followed,” I hissed. I was alone in the
truck, but it seemed necessary to keep my voice down all the
same.

A weary sigh
rattled down the phone. “Are you sure? Is it another
hallucination?”

 
A growl built in the back of my throat.
“Nope. Definitely real. This car was parked outside my front door
this morning and I saw it again when I left the dentist’s. I
thought I was imagining things but the same car is following me,
now, I swear.”

“
Is that Farley?” Mrs. Kennedy asked in the background. “Tell
her I said hello. We’re all thinking of Moira.”

“
Hey, my mom said—”

“
Yeah, I heard. Tell her thanks.” Tess wasn’t taking this
seriously at all. I could still see the murky outline of the black
1970s Dodge Charger two cars back, making every turn I did,
following me from lane to lane. “Can you meet me?”

“
Sure, I can, Farley. What else are friends for but swooping
in to the rescue when their girlfriends are being stalked by creepy
strangers? But listen, if you really are worried shouldn’t you just
call Detective Miller?”

I gritted my
teeth. “Yes, but I’m not his favorite person right now. He thinks
I’m harassing him. He probably wouldn’t even take my call.”

Tess sighed
again, a sigh usually accompanied by a crinkled expression of
concern that could practically be seen over the phone. “I thought
you said you weren’t going to call him anymore?” she said. “You
know what they say about the boy who cried wolf.”

“
This is 
not
 the same! My mom is 
missing
. She’s been missing for six
months. I think I have a right to know where they’re at in their
investig—” I broke off.  “Never mind. I’m by the Friday
Morning Club. How soon can you get here?”

Tess arranged
to meet me twenty minutes later in the Staples Center parking lot,
and I hung up the phone, feeling no better for having spoken to
her. The rain was coming down even harder now, and I could barely
see anything at all, just the beading streaks of rainwater that
caught and refracted the light like a thousand spent fireworks,
spiralling and twinkling to the earth in a satisfied sigh.

I was staring
into the rear view, trying to catch a glimpse of the Dodge again,
when the big black SUV in front of me jolted to a halt. My scruffy,
black Chuck Taylors hit the brakes but not quick enough, and my
truck rammed straight into the back of it.

Oh. Crap.

The metallic
crunch spoke of thousands of dollars worth of damage. I whimpered
and slumped over the steering wheel. Had they noticed? Of course
they had. A thin grey smoke rose out from under the hood of the
truck. Seemed like the force with which I’d slammed into their
expensive-looking sports vehicle must have been pretty
considerable. I spun around in my seat, looking to see if any of
the other stationary motorists were staring. I couldn’t see anyone.
My stomach still twisted when I looked in the rearview, though. The
Dodge wasn’t two cars back anymore. It was right behind me.

“
No, no, no—”

A sharp rap at
the window startled me even further, and my blood rushed in a
charge from my head to my feet. I blinked and then blinked again,
but the tall figure at the window didn’t appear to be going
anywhere.

“
It’s really wet out here, y’know,” came a muffled voice from
the other side of the glass. “Are you going to ignore me for much
longer?”

Um, yeah! 
I thought. But I
couldn’t. He obviously wanted my insurance details. I buzzed the
electric window down and cringed at the guy standing on the road.
Tall, black long-sleeved t-shirt that hid half his hands, black
jeans—I couldn’t see his shoes—black hair that curled in a wet mess
around his face, sticking to his skin. His strong jaw line was
clenched tight, and a pair of startlingly cool green eyes picked me
apart with scientific precision. There was something fierce and
angry about them that made me tremble a little. Fate was a bitch.
He was far too good-looking to be someone I’d just crashed
into.

“
Look, I’m really sorry. It’s this weather. I’ve never driven
in the rain. I have my insurance card here somewhere…” I rifled in
the leather messenger bag I usually used for school, but since St.
Jude’s was on break it was now filled with magazines and a stack of
dog-eared “Missing Person” posters. “It’s here, I know it
is.”

“
I don’t want your insurance card.”

I ignored him
and continued rifling. Burying my head in my bag was way safer than
facing him. I would probably start stammering. He looked like some
unnaturally perfect Calvin Klein model with his shirt clinging to
him like that. I took the stack of posters out of my bag so I could
see better. “Here it is.”

I held out the
laminated card and he took it from me, all the while piercing me
with those freakishly green eyes. He didn’t even look at the card.
It disappeared into his back pocket. “Do you know someone’s
following you?” His voice was even, yet dangerously sharp.

I swallowed.
“Uh…yeah, actually. I—” I looked behind me. The driver’s door of
the Dodge yawned open in the rain. I looked back at the guy who was
still fixed on me, clenching his jaw, and a spark of panic
blossomed in my chest. “I didn’t crash into you, did I?”

He slowly
shook his head.

Shit.

I scrambled for the automatic door lock. The
resounding
thunk
that echoed around the car declared the doors were all now
locked, but the guy simply reached in through the window and opened
my door from the inside.

He stood
there, pale and stark in his black clothing, totally drenched from
the rain. His gaze never wavered from mine; his fists had turned
white, he was clenching them so hard. “You should come with
me.”

“
What?! I’m not going anywhere with you!”

“
You really should.”

“
And why would I do that? You just told me you’re following
me!”

“
No, I didn’t. I said
 someone
 was following
you. I was following them.”

I scowled and reached for the door handle, but he took hold
of the doorframe and held onto it fast. “Believe me,” he said.
“You 
really
 want to come with me.”

My mom always
used to say stubborn was my middle name. If anything, her
disappearance had only made me more so. “You still haven’t told me
why.”

“
Because,” he said, pointing to the pile
of “Missing” posters that bore my mother’s smiling
photograph sitting on the front seat, “you’re Moira Hope’s
daughter. Plus I can only hold them off for so long.”

I looked at
the picture of my mom—the same black hair, but shorter and a little
wavy in comparison to my own. The eyes that stared back at me were
a cool blue, a few degrees warmer than my almost silver
ones.  That was all it took. My indignation vanished like
smoke.

“
How do you know my mother?”

“
I don’t.”

“
Don’t lie! If you know anything about her—” I halted,
mid-breakdown. The SUV in front of us was trying to reverse. The
guy shot the other vehicle a disgruntled glance and seemed to focus
on it. A grating metal screech cut through the air, and the SUV
started to slide across the street. The wheels weren’t moving, and
yet it somehow jammed itself sideways in between two lanes of
traffic. It was like an invisible hand had shoved it in between the
other vehicles. On either side, people were screaming and trying to
climb out of the windows of their cars.

“
Listen! I’ve been keeping their doors locked but I can’t do
it forever. You have about five seconds.”

“
Five seconds before what?”

“
Before… urgh, before 
that!
”

The rear doors
to the SUV swung open, and three huge men in long coats dropped
down into the rain. Definitely thugs. Only thugs wore trench coats.
One of them had a gnarled scar that ran the length of his face from
his temple to his jaw, while the other two looked like a pair or
Russian twins. All three were headed our way.

“
They’re
 the ones who were
following you,” he said.

“
What do they want?”

The guy gave
me a hard look. “You won’t have to find out if you come with
me.”

The other men
were close enough to see they were carrying weapons in their hands.
The glint of a wet blade. The flash of silver metal. There was
nothing in Guy-In-Black’s hands. He was holding one out to me, and
a tiny pool of water was gathering in his open palm.

“
Promise not to kill me?”

A razor-sharp
smile spread across his face. That wasn’t a good sign. “Will you at
least try?”

He arched an
eyebrow. “I can try.”

The next few
minutes flashed by in a blur. I took his hand and stepped down from
the truck, only to have him pull me to the ground.  A
burst of blue flame ripped through the rain, turning it to smoke
before the drops could fall to the concrete. The truck’s open door
buffered me from the blast. The guy at my side tipped his head back
and started to laugh.

“
What the hell?”

He ignored me.
The heat seared at my skin, and loud tinging sounds rattled around
the inside of the truck. The flames kept coming and coming, the
sound roaring in my ears. The smell of sulphur and burning hair
surrounded us. Car alarms began wailing up and down the stretch of
road, and frightened people dashed in every direction, abandoning
their cars to flee from the unfolding chaos.

“
Wait here. I’ll be right back.” The guy got to his feet,
standing directly in the path of the blue flame. A scream ripped
free from my throat. He looked down at me, perplexed, the flames
licking at his skin and clothes. I waited. I waited for him to
start burning, for his clothes to ignite in a ball of blue
fire.  Nothing happened. He twisted his hand through the
roaring blaze that jetted around him, as though toying with the
flow of it, and gave me a crooked smile.

“
Like I said. I’ll be right back.”

I hunkered
down closer to the ground, sweat breaking out across my brow. How
could he have borne that heat? How had it not seared his skin right
off? I was only left wondering for a moment, though. A second after
he disappeared, the stream of fire ended without warning. I looked
up from my hunched position to see an old woman peering at me out
of the car window opposite. She gave me a disparaging look and
shook her head, as though this were all somehow my fault.

The sounds of
a fight broke out a few feet away. I ignored the foul look the old
lady cut me and stood up. The guy was locked in a wrestling match
on the ground with one of the Russian twins. Scar-face and the
other twin stood with their backs to me, apparently watching to see
if their comrade could handle him on his own. Guy-In-Black twisted
beneath the bulk of the larger man and somehow wrapped his leg
around his neck. Tightening his chokehold, he squeezed until the
twin turned a frightening shade of red, then blue, and then passed
out altogether.