Page 52 of Fire
“If you don’t want to meet now,” she continued, “that’s fine. I won’t follow you. I won’t call you again. But if you’re interested, call this number and we can set up a place and time.”
“Jake, just give it to me!” Tobias again. There was a brief scuffle with the phone, and then he came on, strong and confident. “Who is this?”
“I’m a friend,” Alice said. “Or I want to be. This is Tobias, right? I have information about a place where you used to live. I’m in the restaurant now, if you are ready to meet.”
The silence lasted long enough that Alice began to wonder if their call had dropped. Wouldn’t that be just her luck if Montana’s shitty reception shot this to hell before the Hawthornes even got the chance?
“You try something and it won’t go well for you,” Tobias said, level and cold. “We’ll come to you. Stay where you are, and don’t make any sudden moves.”
“You might recognize my face,” Alice said cautiously. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t shoot me.”
Tobias Hawthorne hung up. Alice laid the phone on the table and carefully stretched out her hands next to it, palms up. That was the best she could do to appear harmless without sticking her hands in the air like she was going to get robbed. When the Hawthornes rounded the corner, first Jake and then Tobias, Tobias’s eyes locked onto her hands. She could tell the second he looked up and recognized her face, because he flinched backward.
Alice managed a small smile. “Hello, Tobias. You’re looking well. Hello, Jake. I’m your cousin Alice.”
They did not move from the end of the row of booths. Jake was as handsome as the picture in his file. She recognized his hunter’s stance, tense and on guard, one hand not-so-casually at his hip. He kept slightly in front of Tobias’s willowy frame.
Jake jerked his chin toward the exit. “Outside. You first.”
Moving slowly and deliberately, Alice stood, retrieving her purse. She swung it over her shoulder and kept her hands down and visible as she walked out of the restaurant. She felt more than heard them following. She walked into the parking lot, halfway between the restaurant and the road, stopping in a large empty space without any cars nearby before she turned around. The Hawthornes stood shoulder-to-shoulder, about ten feet away. All three of them were still clearly visible to the restaurant windows, and, she hoped, under the eye of the restaurant staff. Though she wasn’t sure how much help they would be against the Hawthornes.
Alice took a careful breath. “I reached out to you because I need help. You might have seen me on the news or know my role in the ASC organization.”
Tobias nodded, eyes locked on her face, while Jake glowered at his side.
“In spite of what you may have seen, the truth is that several months before the Cleveland video went public, I discovered what Jonah Dixon has been doing in FREACS. With monsters and with hunters. And to innocents. It’s evil.” She looked straight at Tobias for those last words, but his face didn’t change, just as implacable as Jake’s. “I can’t continue like before. Letting it happen. Letting it slide. But I don’t know anyone else who sees the ASC for what they really are, who might be capable of working with me to stop it. To bring the ASC down.” She nearly faltered in the final line, her end goal, and all it could mean for her, the world, and the two hunters in front of her.
For a dozen frantic heartbeats, neither man responded or moved, and Alice willed herself not to move or look away. Then Jake said, his voice pleasantly smooth in a way that made her mouth go dry, “And why should we believe a single word from your lying Dixon lips?”
Alice had been prepared for a response like that. “You can report me, to start.” In front of a press conference, she would have kept the smile on her face, kept the statement light. Here and now she let herself think, just a little, of what would happen if Jonah found out that she had betrayed him, and she let that show on her face. “For another, I can give you confidential, critical information, things that would bring people down if they got out. Blackmail, death records, FREACS blueprints, all here.” She took a USB drive out of her purse and offered it to them. “It’s not all the information I have, but it might count as a show of good faith.”
The Hawthornes exchanged a look, and then Jake held out his hand, beckoning, and she tossed the drive to him. He caught it easily. “How did you get my number? And how’d you pin us down in the Armpit of Nowhere, Montana?”
Alice offered a small, twisted smile. “I’ve been trying to track you for years, and the ASC has resources to make it possible. You never made it easy, and I never actually got close enough before to find you. Your number came from one of the smaller hunter hotlines. I got lucky today with the location.”
Jake waved the USB drive. “That’s quite a coincidence.”
“It is,” Alice agreed.
“I don’t like coincidences, and I sure as hell don’t like you,” Jake said. “C’mon, Toby.” He half-turned, sticking his hands and the drive in his pocket. He looked like he was thinking about just dropping it on the ground and crushing it or tossing it the second she was gone.
Desperate, Alice spoke directly to Tobias. “I saw the videos. The—Jonah’s training sessions.” She snapped her mouth shut on rising nausea and emotion, but she didn’t need to say anything more. Tobias went white, rocking backward onto his heels, and Jake turned his head toward him before his attention snapped back to her.
“That was evil,” Alice said, and perhaps it was good to speak now after all, to let them hear her voice shake. “I never—I never knew he was capable of that. That he was evil. Elijah wasn’t, he had morals, even if they were fucked-up hunter morals, sometimes. Jonah doesn’t, he’s—” She caught and steadied herself, then went on. “Nothingjustifies what he did in those videos.Nothing. And he doesn’t see anything wrong with it. I can’t, I cannot keep working beside him without fighting for a way to stop him. I’m asking for help. Help me. Let me help you. I have access to more than you can imagine inside the ASC, and I am willing to give you anything you need to bring it down.”
She still couldn’t tell if they believed her. It could all be over: her life crashing down, and FREACS and Director Jonah Dixon still standing. Tobias turned his head to whisper into Jake’s ear, and he murmured something back.
Jake straightened, the same glower on his face as when she had started. “First off, get it through your head, and you can tell anyone who asks, that going toe-to-toe against the Man, blowing up the goddamn ASC, whatever the fuck you’re talking about, ain’t in the Hawthorne agenda. Never has been. We’re just two simple hunters minding our own business, taking out low-grade monsters screwing around in people’s backyards. Small stuff. Stuff that matters to normal people, not to Washington yahoos like yourself.
“But second—” Jake held up two fingers. “We’ll keep your number. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
“People need you.” Alice tried not to let her voice shake. “I can’t bring this down by myself. I can’t keep doing this job knowing that everything I’ve ever protected is a lie.”
“You think you need us,” Tobias said. “But there’s nothing we could do.”
“You could tell people what happened!” Alice said, voice going high and tight despite herself. “You could tell them what he’s done.”
Tobias’s mouth quirked, but he held himself stiffly, as though careful of an old injury. “What would I tell them? Everything was done to a freak.”
