Page 34 of Killer Moonshine

“You won’t ruin this for me again! I’m capable! I can do anything!”

“Turn yourself in Gideon. Turn yourself in before your business partners come hunting for you. I would suspect that they’re going to want their money back. You foolishly took their money in advance, didn’t you?”

Gideon was breathing so heavily they honestly thought he might be on a treadmill. They could hear him moving things around, stomping his feet, and pacing in whatever room he was in.

“Hey, Gideon?” called Nine. “How’s the view of the Gulf from Pass Christian this fine evening?”

Now, there was silence. Nothing except silence, and they wondered if he had passed out. Nine gave a thumbs up to the comms team.

“We’ll see you soon, Gideon. See you soon.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“Hey, Riley. Can you come look at something for me?” asked Suzette.

“Sure. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t think anything is wrong, necessarily. I just found something strange. I’ve been combing through all the data on Stephanie, Marilisa, Victoria, all of our resident geniuses. There’s something really weird in their blood work, and in the tissue biopsies we did of their brains.”

“What do you mean weird?”

“I’m not sure. I mean, I know it’s not normal, but I can’t figure out what it really is. If you look at the tissue samples beneath the microscope, they have a pink, fluorescent look to them. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Riley looked at the slides, then at the sheets of blood work results, and back at the slides. She magnified it, looked at it through multiple microscopes and then backed up from it.

“Did you show Gabi?”

“She did,” said Gabi, standing in the doorway. “What the hell is that, Riley?”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know, but it’s identical in every single one of them.”

“Don’t say anything to them,” said Gabi. “I don’t want any of them feeling more different than they already are. It could explain their advanced intelligence and abilities to hear and see things we can’t. It’s like superpower juice or something.”

“I doubt that will make them feel better,” said Suzette.

“No. I’m fairly certain it won’t. It is odd, though, considering they weren’t all always together. There is a significant age gap between them all, and we believe there are more out there. What does this stuff do to them?”

“I’m almost afraid to find out,” said Suzette. “They’ve all been adjusting so well. I don’t want to disturb that, but I also want them to understand any health risks they could have.”

“Let’s keep looking into this,” said Riley. “If we can find something to sink our teeth into, it might help us to find the source. If not, maybe we just let this go. I mean, maybe it’s not something we’re supposed to know.”

“Maybe,” frowned Suzette. “It all just seems like something we need to know.”

Pass Christian, Mississippi, sat neatly between Gulfport and Bay St. Louis. It was a sleepy, quiet little town most of the time. In the summer, it brought in beachgoers from north Mississippi and Louisiana.

As the men pulled within a block of the location where Gideon’s signal had pinged, they stopped to watch for a while.

“We all used to come up here and make a day of it,” said Gaspar. “We’d bring all the kids up here, swim in the warm waters of the Gulf, grill on the beach, eat ice cream, and then drive back. The little ones would be sound asleep in the back by the time we got home.”

“Sounds wonderful,” smirked Nine.

“It was. It was damn sure a simpler time, wasn’t it?”

“Maybe. Or maybe we just make everything more complicated. Maybe if we put away all the devices, all the phones and computers, all the distractions, it would be simpler again,” said Ian.

“Let me remind you all that we are what we are because of those damn technology devices. We couldn’t function without them,” said Ghost.

“That’s true,” said Gaspar. There was a tap on their window, and a man motioned for them to roll their window down. “Can I help you?”

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