Page 72 of Fire
They stayed holed up in their apartment for about a week, just long enough for Jake’s arm to improve fromreally fucking painful even with the good drugstoreally fucking painful, and he was starting to feel twitchy.
“Hey, Toby. Want to grab a burger someplace?”
Toby looked at him, his expression inscrutable. He’d been quieter since they’d done it, since they’d fucking blown that hellhole apart, and Jake didn’t want to push. He hadn’t beenableto push, not with sleeping most of the day and trying to breathe through a fuckton of pain during the rest of it. He’d had bullet wounds and broken arms before, but never at the same time, and the head injury hadn’t fucking helped. It had been hard to eat, piss, or do anything without wanting to throw up.
But he was feeling a thousand percent better, and it would be awesome to get out of the house. And maybe find a way to ask Toby if that haunted, distant look in his eyes was a good thing (fuck, it would take anyone time to process what they had done, let alone someone with Toby’s history).
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Toby’s tone was even, nonjudgmental, but Jake was reminded of one teacher in middle school who had liked giving oral quizzes where every kid in class had had to answer at least one question. It was a tone that said there was a right answer, but Toby was far from convinced that Jake knew what it was.
Jake bristled, as much as the cast allowed. “C’mon, Toby. They didn’t get a shot of our faces, they didn’t get a shot of the Honda, and if anyone had recognized us by now they would’ve knocked down our door. You know they would have.”
The “Bombing of FREACS” had eclipsed all other news for the last week. Overhead helicopter shots of the walls burning, closer looks at the devastation inside. Jake didn’t have a single fucking regret about burning that place to the ground, but he had a suspicion that those shots of charred bones and viscera-splattered rubble would join his nightmare fodder anyway.
He understood now why Toby had watched all those news reports when people had first talked about checking the ASC’s power. There was something addictive about the coverage, watching for any telltale hint of the truth finally coming out. Of course, Jake was watching for their names, faces, any sign that the news and investigators were turning their attention to the Hawthornes.
Not a peep so far. Alice had done a fucking brilliant job of spinning the story, he had to admit. The press conference she had given just two days after the attack had been downright cold-blooded. According to Alice Dixon, Acting ASC Director, Jonah Dixon’s own unauthorized experiments within Freak Camp had been the fatal error that simultaneously led to his own destruction and obliterated decades of work.
Everyone bought it. Even the fucking President. Her own address to the nation had called for an extensive review of the ASC’s internal workings and a freeze on any more spending, let alone rebuilding efforts, until her newly commissioned investigation ran its course. Jake would have worried about that investigation, but Alice had basically been a first-round draft pick for the committee.
Which brought them back to the pros and cons of leaving the apartment for some grub. Toby sighed. “Maybe that pizza place?”
Jake perked up. “Slice of Heaven? That would do wonders for my health, I promise you.”
He had to eat his words, as well as a double slice of Everything but the Kitchen Sink, by the time they got to Slice of Heaven. Even the short walk from their car left his arm achy and the rest of him shaky and ill, like he’d had a fucking bullet pass through him or something.
Although the place was nearly deserted, they still took an out-of-the-way booth. Toby had gotten a salad, but he fiddled with one of the fries they shared while watching one of the TVs showing some European soccer game. The subtitles were in a language that Jake didn’t even recognize. After a minute, he realized they were actually gibberish, closed captioning throwing up the occasional dollar sign and ampersand instead of anything intelligible.
He didn’t notice the girl until Toby stiffened across from him, his hand dropping the fry and moving to his knife.
Jake tried to focus, panic and adrenaline flooding his system. Maybe the ASC had come for them after all. Maybe they had been that good at keeping the Hawthornes’ faces off the news while they were setting up to take them out. Maybe Alice had betrayed them.
But when he turned to face the threat, it wasn’t six suited thugs with guns. It was a short, heavyset girl in mismatched clothes, her lank dark hair a tangled mess down her shoulders and acne streaking her face. She would have been unpleasantly forgettable, if she weren’t standing still and staring at Toby with the single-minded focus Jake had seen more often on Discovery Channel specials about sharks.
“Hi, Toby,” she said. Her voice was as flat and emotionless as her eyes. “You look good. Do you like my face?”
“Kayla.” Toby moved out of the booth. Jake started to struggle up out of his side too, before Toby stepped around and slid onto the bench beside him. Then he gestured to the seat across from them. “How did you find us?”
“I memorized your address.” She squeezed into the booth. “I’ve been watching with a few different faces ever since I got into town. That took me a few extra days. Had to make a stop. Victor’s dead, by the way.”
Toby drew a sharp breath. “Is that gonna be traced back to us?”
“Nah.” She shook her head, sharp and awkward. “He was on medical leave ’cause he couldn’t keep his pants zipped. No one will even check on him until he starts to stink.”
Toby’s jaw worked. “Did you leave evidence?”
“Sure did. Crusher killed him. They’ll find solid evidence of that.” With a curt laugh, her face lit up with unmistakable fierce, savage joy. The expression vanished the next second, leaving her face flat and empty again.
Kayla’s every motion, every word wasoff, and it made Jake’s skin crawl. “You’re from the camp.”
Those dead eyes moved to his face. “Little slow, ain’t he?” The words were directed toward Toby, but the shapeshifter—Kayla, Toby had called her—didn’t look away from Jake’s face. “Yeah, Toby and I go way back.” Then she turned her head, horror-movie slow, to Toby. “Did you like my present? I put a lot of work into it. Postage wasn’t cheap.”
As with everything she’d said, the words had zero inflection, no indication of significance, but Toby stiffened. He stared at her in a way Jake had never seen him look at anyone: shock and incredulity, horror mixed with dawning anger, but also a touch of respect. “You sent the tapes.” It wasn’t a question.
“You took longer than I expected,” she said, as though it meant nothing to her. “But you managed to make it out alive. Did you kill the Director?”
After several seconds, Toby said, “Yeah. I did.”
“And Crusher. Did you cut off his dick and shove it down his throat?”Her tone never changed, every word sounding like it had only the most perfunctory importance.
