Chasing Zero by Jack Mars

Author:Jack Mars [Mars, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: thriller
Amazon: B085PV836W
Goodreads: 53710653
Published: 2020-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Sara awoke with a groan to the blaring sound of the alarm on her cell phone. She cursed at it, turned it off, and saw that she had a notification. A text from her friend Camilla, who was in rehab on the shore.

The text said: Omg, did you see the news? The Israel thing?

Sara tossed the offending device on the carpet. She was decidedly not a political person, and even less a morning person. Never had been. There was a sanctity to sleep, one that she understood even though her father and sister didn’t seem to see it. They were often up before the sun. Heathens.

For a moment she entertained the notion of rolling over and going right back to bed—there was only one window in the basement, and she’d covered it with thick curtains so that it could feel like any time of day that she wanted it to down there. But then she remembered why she had set the alarm in the first place, and with another groan, and another curse, she forced herself to stand.

She had made a promise to her dad to look after the girl. More importantly, she had made an arrangement to get paid, the sum of which would put her more than halfway to her goal of a brand-new electric bicycle, the motorized kind that didn’t require pedaling if she didn’t feel like it.

Sara trudged up the stairs, intent on visiting the bathroom for her morning ritual of teeth-brushing, yanking a comb through her tangled blonde hair, and washing off the eye makeup that she perpetually forgot she had on the night before. But this morning she paused at the top of the basement stairs.

Mischa looked up at her from the sofa, a book open on her lap. The girl looked fresh as a daisy, fully dressed, her hair combed and parted.

“Hello.”

“Uh, good morning,” Sara said. “Been up long?”

Mischa looked at the wall clock. “One hour and forty-three minutes.”

“Yup. Maya will just love you,” Sara muttered as she headed to the kitchen to put on some coffee. “What are you reading?”

“A history of the Magyars. I found it on a shelf in the… that other room…”

“The den,” Sara told her. “And that’s interesting to you?”

Mischa nodded.

“You know, you could have turned on the TV or something. The remote’s right there on the table,” Sara offered.

“American television is propaganda,” Mischa said simply.

Sara snorted. She was about to say that suggesting American television was propaganda sounded, in itself, like propaganda. But that reminded her too much of her older sister. So instead she said, “Sure. What isn’t, these days?”

She fixed herself a cup of coffee—two sugars, no milk—and joined Mischa in the living room, sitting in an armchair opposite her. “I’ve got the car. What do you want to do today?”

“I would like to read this book,” Mischa said simply. To anyone else it might have sounded like a passive-aggressive brush-off, and in fact at first it did to Sara, but something about the girl’s tone made her think twice.

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