PROJECT ANDERSON

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE: ANDIE/SARGE

Jesse reached over and grabbed my hand as I sat there staring out the window.

"When are you going to talk to Sarge?" He finally asked breaking me out of my own conflicting thoughts.

"I was actually going to wait for him to call me." I answered with a fake smile. "That way I can think about what I am going to say."

"What if Steve did work for Lavender? What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to allow him one chance to explain to me why and then I will decide whether I choose to believe him or not." I answered honestly. "But that doesn't mean that I won't let him have it first."

"As you should, I'm just worried about you taking a little bit of it out on me." He said before kissing my hand softly.

"Ally bug? It's Steve." A soft voice said through the CB. "We have a few things to talk about."

"Yeah we do...starting with where did Sarge find you?" I asked as I readjusted in my seat.

"I was posted in an old crumbling shack that was used as...um...a Crawler farm." He answered reluctantly.

"Please tell me that you just happened to be there and not what I think you were doing." I said giving him his one and only chance to explain.

"I really wish I could say that, but I can't." My best friend of almost eight years said with a regretful sigh. "The truth is Ally...I've been working with Lavender under the assumption that Sarge and his crew were the ones that wanted to kill you."

"That can't be when you started working for him." I said knowing that he must have been trying to hide something from me.

"Originally I was only supposed to help him find you." He explained through audible nerves. "I had no idea he was Lavender until after he implanted the cure into you."

I let out a shaky breath as I tried to process what he had just told me.

Not only was my fear confirmed, but he might have been the reason I was found in the first place.

My best friend and adopted cousin had turned his back on me...betrayed me for the man that ruined my life.

"You're the reason he found me...aren't you?" I asked near tears.

"I had no choice Ally...I'm so sorry." He said...I could hear him choking back his own tears. "He forced me to watch him turn my family...and said that if I didn't help him I would have to wash their brains off the walls."

"Aunt Lizzie and Uncle Eddie." I said softly.

"And Christina, Josephine, and EJ." He said in a choked voice.

Even though my Aunt was as white as snow and was raised by a strict mother with very backwards beliefs she didn't let that stop her from falling in love with sweet and protective Latino man.

I was never really that close to her, but as the years went by after my parents' murder...I began to feel safer with them more than anyone else.

My Uncle Eddie could be too protective of his daughters, but it was only because he loved them so much and would do anything to prevent them from being harmed in any way.

My cousins Christina and Josephine were twins, but you couldn't tell...Christina was taller and considered by both of them as the more attractive of the two, but not by much. With her deep chestnut brown hair and bright almost golden Amber eyes.

Josey on the other hand was two inches shorter with a beauty mark on her right cheek and bright red hair and green emerald eyes...she defiantly took after my side of the family, but Eddie didn't let that change the way she was treated by him or anyone else.