Sovereign Hope Read Free Page A

braced myself and hit the play button.
    “ Farley, this is Detective Miller. Just calling to check in,
make sure everything’s okay. Oh, also…do you have any thoughts as
to why the charred carcass of your Toyota Tacoma might have been
abandoned downtown this afternoon? If you could call me when you
get this message, that would be great.”
    The red light
flashed, indicating that there were more messages to follow, but I
hit the delete button anyway. They would all be from Miller, and I
hadn’t come up with anything good to tell him yet. Spontaneous
combustion probably wasn’t going to cut it. In truth, what I really
wanted to say was that the truck had been stolen and deny being
there at all. But there had been far too many people out on the
street, not to mention that sour-looking old bat who had gotten a
good look at me. She had probably already given a statement
confirming that I was the root cause of the afternoon’s breakdown
in civilization, and yes, I had last been spotted fleeing the scene
like a criminal. So what was I supposed to say to Miller? Even
explaining it to Tess, who was normally so good at accepting all
the weird, hallucination-related crazy that often invaded my life,
was proving difficult.
    “ Start over,” she demanded, pouring hot coffee into mugs for
the both of us. “I still don’t get it. The guy who saved you
was  hot ?”
    Typical. She  would  get stuck on that
point. “Yeah, but—”
    “ Did you get his number?”
    “ Tess! This is serious.” I accepted the mug she offered out to
me. “I have to think of something to tell Miller.”
    “ I only have one suggestion. You’re probably not going to like
it, though.”
    Tess’
suggestions were rarely likeable. They usually involved trawling
the local malls for cute guys to stare at, or purchasing fake IDs
from scary weed dealers. “Just hit me.” Even a bad suggestion was a
suggestion, after all, and at this stage I was willing to consider
anything.
    “ Tell the truth.”
    Anything but
that. I placed the coffee mug down slowly and gave my friend a dry
stare. “No. Way.”
    Tess rolled
her eyes. “Look. You were driving down Figueroa, for crying out
loud. It was packed with people. And those big trucks? Y’know, the
big fire-engine-red ones? Well, I hate to break this to you but
they were, indeed, fire engines. Half of LA’s emergency services
probably saw you down there. It’s better that you tell him the
truth than make up something even more unbelievable.”
    Tess did have
a point, but there was just no way Detective Miller was going to
buy that I was attacked by three guys in an SUV, that I was saved
by another stranger (who had also been following me, as far as I
could tell), and that he had some sort of freakish power that
turned his hands into burning white light. He was more likely to
believe disgruntled aliens incinerated the truck. I collapsed face
first on the counter. “Can’t you think of something else?”
    “ Nope.” 
    I groaned, but
the outlandish truth-telling concept was prevented from taking any
real shape when Tess’ phone rang. She shot me a furtive look.
“Sorry. I have to take this.” She slipped out of the back door to
stand in the yard with her coffee mug steaming in the brisk
air.
    My own coffee
was making my stomach churn. I got up and poured myself a glass of
water. I paced the kitchen for a moment and then stalked to the
hallway, pausing to study the jigsaw puzzle of photo frames that
hung on the wall by the front door. There were at least thirty,
ranging in size from the tiny heart-shaped frames that used to hang
off the Christmas tree when I was a kid, to the largest—a square,
silver frame, easily the length of my arms stretched wide. It was a
black and white picture of my mom cradling me in her arms, just a
few days old. My mom wore a dazed expression on her face, that
mixture of astonishment and confusion that you saw on most new
mothers.
    I stood with
the glass sweating in my