“If you’re seriously going to help, you need to be there,” I said, growing frustrated. Of course Hunter was blowing me off. “I’m expecting that you’re going to step up on some of these committee meetings.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hunter said as one of his younger brothers zoomed by on those tennis shoes with the wheels and almost bowled over the old women and the cat. Hunter scooped up the kid under his arms.
“There is a meeting at seven in the morning tomorrow,” I warned him. “You need to be there.”
“Sure.” Hunter flashed a smile at me.
I bet he doesn’t show up. Freaking liar.
30
Hunter
As if I was going to attend a seven a.m. meeting with—I checked the calendar invite—the Harrogate Composting Committee. If I recalled, Barry had never gone to those meetings. The deputy mayor was supposed to do it. Barry usually didn’t even wake up until nine thirty, and then he took a very long breakfast.
I deleted the reminder on the calendar invite then headed downstairs to deal with my brothers.
“You can’t have those shoes if you’re going to use them inside,” I told Nate as I grabbed beef out of the freezer to cook dinner for the kids.
“Why can’t Josie cook?” Nate whined at me.
“Josie has better things to do than cater to you,” I told him.
Isaac was slouched at the counter. “I don’t want anything you make.”
“Funny, because you’re just about old enough to be in charge of making dinner for everyone.”
Isaac looked at me in horror. “But I’m in school!”
“Then I guess you’d better be grateful for what I cook.”
“I have snacks!” Davy offered Isaac, taking a handful of linty cat food out of his pocket.
“Give me that,” I ordered.
* * *
The rest of my brothers,aside from Remy, were out with their girlfriends all evening. They hadn’t even come back for dinner.
Figures that they had left me here.
That was how it always was. They had all flaked out, and I was stuck picking up the slack.
I sat in one of the small salon rooms near the bedrooms. After catching one of the teenagers hacking into the security system, overwriting it with looped footage, then stealing a car to go joyriding, I now did random checks to catch them out of their rooms.
While I sat there, I researched my father. It always hit me at night. In the dark, I was reminded of being alone in the compound, my little brothers and I all stacked up like puppies in a pound in one of the tiny bedrooms of the shack my father had forced me to help him build for us to live in. I hated him. I hated him more than anyone else in the world, and yet I still wasn’t able to end him.
The FBI agent I was working with had no news. My father was too smart to be caught. Plus, my brothers insisted on trying to destroy Leif, and I was sure one of them had inadvertently tipped him off.
I checked my watch. I needed to make another round. I peeked in each of my brothers’ rooms. They had their own—that was one of the reasons I had insisted on this estate house. I didn’t want them to be kicked out of the cult and then have to live in a similar situation in which they were constantly fighting for food and space. However, old habits were hard to break, and frequently, they would end up bunking together in one room.
I did a head count. Two rooms were empty, but the next had five of my little brothers piled in Isaac’s bed with the teenager shoved into the corner. I smiled. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for my family. And that was one of the reasons Meg had kicked me to the curb.
I glared down the dark hallway.
“Hunter?” a little voice said.
I turned. Justin was behind me, standing in the middle of the hallway, eyeing me warily.
