Page 47 of Fortress
Tobias adjusted his overshirt, grateful he no longer had a sling. He’d understood the necessity for it, but every moment he had worn it made his spine itch.
“Okay, Toby,” Jake said. “We’re looking into genealogies, old town history, neat junk, that sort of thing. I’ll distract ’em with my charm, and you can ask the questions, okay?”
“Got it, Jake.” They’d talked about their game plan in the hotel room as well, and Tobias couldn’t help but smile as he followed Jake to the Grant family’s door. He half suspected that Jake might be more nervous than he was to get back into hunting.
The woman who cracked the door open couldn’t have been much older than Jake. From what they could see through the narrow opening, she had her dark hair pulled back tight and dark circles under her narrowed eyes. “Yes?”
Jake gave her his most engaging smile, despite the chain spanning the gap. “Hi, we’re in the area looking into some of the history of the St. Louis area for my kid brother’s class project on energy disasters, and we’re wondering if you knew anything about the family that died in the gas leak?”
She stared at him for a moment, unblinking, and Tobias shifted uneasily. Something felt off, though he couldn’t put his finger on it. Then her eyes widened.
“You’re goddamn hunters,” she breathed.
Tobias stepped in front of Jake, because if words could be poison, they’d already be dead. She’d saidhuntersthe way Jake saidcopsand other hunters saidfreaks, and the way monsters in camp had breathedCrusher.
“Howdareyou come here.” Her voice shook and her eyes had narrowed in fury, and this was going wrong so very quickly, Tobias didn’t know what had given them away, what had gone wrong. He’d worried that people would figure out that he was amonster, not that they would guess that he and Jake were here to save them from one.
“You goddamn bastards take away my brother,” she said, volume rising, “and you have the guts to come back here and—get thefuckoff my porch! You think you can ask your questions and get fucking answers when he’s—getoutof here, I’m not telling you shit, go!Go, you motherfuckers!” She slammed the door shut, and a bolt shot home.
There was nothing to be said. As one, they turned and walked away, Jake bringing his arm around Tobias’s back as they hustled off that porch and to the Eldorado.
Inside the car, Jake jingled his keys in his hands, looking rattled. Tobias pulled his hands close to his chest, trying to get them warm, even though the day had been pleasant just before. “We could try another house,” Jake said, eyes focused on the street ahead, “but I don’t like going in blind when I don’t know what the fuck happened back there. Let’s hit a bar, do some recon before we stick our heads in a wasp’s nest.”
Tobias couldn’t do much more than nod. He still felt shocked that anyone in the real world would treat hunters (even those they just believed to be hunters, without proof) that way. He didn’t want to think about the repercussions if they’d really represented the ASC—or what might have happened to that woman’s brother. It twisted his stomach unpleasantly. He’d seen countless monsters arrive at Freak Camp—monsters of all ages, sizes, and temperaments—but he’d never once thought about those they’d left behind as anything but glad to have them removed from their lives.
But Jake was right. They still had a case before them, and they needed more info before they tried to confront any more hostile witnesses who might recognize them as hunters.
As it turned out, the little town had had enough contact with the ASC that most of the locals could spot a hunter from twenty paces. Or at least as soon as they started asking questions.
Jake looked unnerved when the first response to his faux-casual “Heck of a weird thing, wasn’t it, that Mitchelson death?” was “Why, you hunters? Fuck, you are, aren’t you?” The jumpiness didn’t ease when the barkeep called out, “Hey, hunters are back!” loud enough to be heard in the far corners of the bar.
Within moments they were surrounded by a handful of fellow drinkers asking about cases they’d worked, where they’d been, how many freaks they’d put down. Tobias kept his eyes down, even when one skinny guy with an afro poking out from underneath a Red Sox cap said, “Hey, little young for this, ain’t you?”
That comment would’ve made him tear for the door if that didn’t mean leaving Jake. Instead Tobias breathed out carefully through his nose, didn’t look up or respond, and kept close to Jake. It hadn’t been said likethat, anyway.
But the press of bodies reminded him of a gang of vamps circling some poor bastard in camp. He wasn’t panicking yet, but there was a buzzy sort of adrenaline under his skin that he didn’t think was a good sign. He’d felt this way when he’d scaled the truck to get at the troll or when he’d tackled the yeti. He didn’t think it was very safe to feel like that in a bar full of reals who posed them no physical threat (at least as far as he could tell).
That didn’t mean these guys couldn’t blow Tobias and Jake’s cover out of the water if they started talking to the ASC. Jake tried at first to bluff their way out.
“Are you guys serious? Us? No way we’re hunters.” He pulled out his bestnothing to find here, officergrin. “Why would we—”
But no one was buying it. “You’re asking about the Mitchelsons,” said a heavyset guy with thick glasses and abattered wedding ring the color of aged copper. “And trying to getinformationabout it.”
“You’ve got a fucking rad car,” said the Red Sox cap guy with enthusiasm. “But you’re real young to be asking questions.”
“I’m legal!” Jake said as the bartender handed him another beer.
“You’re also carrying,” said a guy with long braids tied back. “And the trunk of your car’s too heavy.”
“Which makes you hunters or serial killers!” The round-faced guy with droopy eyelids, who completed the quartet (a little drunker than his buddies, and a little more of a threat in Tobias’s eyes), laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world.
His friend—acquaintance?—with the braids gave him a look, then turned back. “So, hunters.”
Jake took a drink.
Eventually he gave in and answered the questions. “Yeah, we’re checking it out” and “No, no solids yet, but we think spirit” and later, after the alcohol had kicked in (or he had gotten over the shock of being discovered), “Man, we tried checking out the neighborhood, but this nutcase chick told us to get the fuck off her porch before she called the cops. You guys know anything about that?”
The drunkest guy raised his glass cheerfully. “You must’ve met Karen Grant. Crazy freakfucker.”
