CHAPTER 7

After a rough night in which Cleo hardly slept a wink, she woke up the next morning at 6 o'clock, usual time, to Pippa pulling her arm. Her little sister had climbed into bed with her at some point in the night after having a bad dream, and was now wanting breakfast. Cleo sighed and reluctantly got out of bed and padded over to the kitchen, making a bowl of cheerio's for Pippa, and a bowl of dog food for Oskar. Then she collapsed back into her bed and in the few minutes of peace she had thought about the task that lay ahead of her. She had known Sam back in the old days and he'd always seemed like a kind-hearted boy. There was the whole school bus incident of course; she'd been on board at the time. And had witnessed Sam's calm as he saved everyone and had earned the nickname School Bus Sam. Then after that he'd just faded into the background again. What was it Caine had said? 'All he cares about is power and status'. That didn't seem very believable to Cleo, but the FAYZ had affected everyone in different ways, a lot of people had changed. Maybe Sam was one of them. She remembered Caine's kind and trustworthy face and decided he must be right. She got back up and dressed and ready, deciding that the earlier she performed this task the better. Hopefully people would still be in bed until at least 8. So half an hour later she managed to leave the house, Pippa and Oskar in tow, and whisk them off to the day-care. Then she set off to Sam's house, feeling like some kind of secret agent.

By 7 o'clock Cleo had broken into Sam's family home (well, like many houses in the FAYZ the front door was kept unlocked, so it didn't really class as breaking in) and was searching for the missing items. The laptop was easy to find as it was left open in the living room, but the box was harder. Caine had described it further to Cleo (she wondered how he knew about it, if he'd seen it why hadn't he just taken it himself?) and she finally managed to spot it in Sam's room. As well as a VERY weird thing in his wardrobe, but after the whole FAYZ thing she wasn't as freaked out as she would have been before. She decided she would report it to Caine anyway. She left swiftly, scared of Sam returning to catch her red-handed, and power walked to the safety of the Mayor's office, hoping against hope that no one caught her with the items on the way.

Caine paced impatiently across his office as he waited for Cleo to return. He'd had to send Cleo, who no one really associated with him, to pick up the items so that if she got caught he could deny having anything to do with it. But he still wasn't certain he could trust her. She was easy enough to persuade and manipulate, but she was a bit of a goody goody and he had to hope that her conscious didn't ever overpower his persuasive words and charm that she completely fell for. Caine found it easy to charm people, and it had got him a long way in life, but Cleo was definitely among the people who it had the most effect on. Also in the office were Diana and Drake, both sat on the sofa, but as far away from each other as they could be while both sitting on it. Drake was playing with a pocket knife and Diana was filing her nails. Finally Caine relaxed as there was a knock at the door and swiftly walked over and answered it, to see a nervous looking Cleo there clutching at the two items. In his excitement, Caine completely ignored Cleo but grabbed the two things and walked over to his desk with them. Diana and Drake both looked up with interest as well, but Caine only had eyes for his treasure. He examined both things and slowly his excited expression faded. Diana walked over to him and looked over his shoulder at what he was looking at. Then she began to laugh. Caine spun round and glared at her.

"It's not funny." He snapped dangerously but Diana couldn't hide her grin.

"Sammy's your BROTHER! You're TWINS!" She laughed, Drake smirked as well.

"4 minutes." Caine said quietly. "He poofs 4 minutes before me…" He muttered, examining a birth certificate he had retrieved from the box.

"Umm…what do you mean 'poofs'?" Came a quiet voice from the door, and 3 heads turned to see Cleo still standing there. Caine shook his head.

"You shouldn't have heard any of that…" He muttered, shaking his head, Cleo blushed slightly under the scrutinising gaze of the three Coates kids. Caine finally pulled himself together, he still seemed in shock from finding out about his long lost brother. "Drake, get Panda, take her to Coates. She can help out there. We can't trust her to walk around here anymore…" Drake nodded and walked over to Cleo but Cleo shook her head.

"No…I won't tell anyone I promise! I won't say a word! I need to look after Pippa! And Oskar!" But Caine wasn't listening, he was staring at the things on his desk again, and Drake had grabbed her arm and was pulling her roughly out of the room. "No…" She said again but Drake dug his nails in hard.

"Shut up Cleo or you might find yourself breaking one of the town rules. And then the sheriff's gonna have to punish you…" He winked and smirked at Cleo's sudden silence. He frogmarched her off across the plaza where no one so much as gave her a second glance, not wanting to draw attention to themselves in front of Drake Merwin. Cleo found tears forming in her eyes as she thought of her dog and her sister, without her to look after them. What would happen to them? But she had her own safety to think about as well, as Caine had left her in Drake Merwin's charge…