Page 63 of Fire
“He lived for revenge, for figuring out what happened to her, making them pay, and he never could do it because the werewolves or whatever that killed her are dead, or gone, or didn’t leave a fucking trace. I never got it, you know? I thought my dad was this fucking awesome hunter and man, and as I got older, with you, Tobias, I realize that there’s gotta be more to life than revenge. There should be more than hunting, even if it’s everything, because I have you, and Roger and... fuck, the Eldorado and burgers. But I can feel it, Tobias. Watching what they did to you, I understand him better than I ever fucking did. I can feel that obsession I saw in him like a fucking chestbuster. I don’t want it. I don’t want it, but I don’t know how to fucking stop it from eating me alive like it did my dad.
“The only thing I’ve got,” he continued, feeling light-headed, but relieved at having admitted to the rage, “is the idea that I can head it off. Strike at the heart of that fucking camp and reduce it to ashes before I start jumping at every damn shadow, thinking it’s another one of the bastards that made you bleed. That’s what I want to do, Tobias. I want to burn down this obsession before it poisons me. Or before it poisonsus.”
The silence after Jake’s words stretched a very long time. Tobias and Roger alike stared at him, and Jake could feel his skin crawl, his heart kick up into high gear in a fight-or-flight response.
Then Tobias blew out his breath and nodded. “That... that almost makes sense.”
“What?” Now Roger stared at Tobias instead, incredulous. “You can’t be serious. That’s... yeah, I get that, Leon was an obsessed bastard... is, probably... But going after FREACS is a stupid death wish of an idea with a shit-all chance of success.”
“Yes, it is,” Tobias agreed, and looked Jake hard in the eye. “If we did this, you could let it go? You really think you could walk away afterward?”
The adrenaline burning in Jake’s blood took on a different feel, a changed intensity. Fight-or-flight was definitely riding towardfight. “Yeah,” he choked out. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t put a bullet in another one of those bastards’ heads if I saw them in the wild. But if we went in, hit them where it hurts... yeah, that would be the end of the hunt. Even if the bones weren’t salted.”
“Tobias,” Roger said. “You can’t?—”
“Okay,” Tobias said. “We’re not going off half-cocked to burn it down, because that kind of stupidity just does their work for them, but… yes, okay. If we can come up with a plan thatRogeragrees isn’t just a fiery suicide mission, something that both of us can come out of alive—we’ll do it. Because I want this finished.”
Jake felt a grin burst across his face, a satisfaction that would have been frightening in any other situation. “Hell yeah,” he said. “Let’s burn it down.”
* * *
Of courseit wasn’t that simple. Roger, Jake, and Tobias talked for a few hours about everything they knew about the camp and its security features (which was a conversation that Jake had very little input in, and that Tobias had to leave the room for twice). Roger logged Tobias into his ASC intranet to see what he could find, and Jake went to help Roger dig up everything they knew about the layout, the structural design, and the current guard roster from his records.
“It’s all going to be out of date,” Roger said as they hauled boxes.
“Yeah, they’ve gotten more tight-lipped about their plans than they used to be,” Jake said.
“That too,” Roger agreed. “But I also haven’t been to FREACS in years.”
Jake was clearly about to ask why, and then realization came over his face. They were silent over the boxes for a long minute, before Jake gave a short nod of acknowledgment.
Back upstairs, they found Tobias frowning over an old laptop of Roger’s. He looked up at them. “Jake, I finally looked at that flash drive she gave us, and it looks legit. There’s some solid stuff here, including current blueprints. I think we have to call her.”
Jake looked intrigued. “No shit, huh? Well, I guess it’s now or never, all chips in.”
Roger narrowed his eyes at them. “And who are you calling?”
Tobias looked away, and Jake shifted. Neither answered, and Roger felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. Finally, Jake answered with feigned casualness, “We might’ve had a run-in with Alice Dixon a few months back.”
“Youwhat?”
Tobias winced.
“She sprang at us outta nowhere in Montana.” Jake scoffed. “Gave us this sob story about seeing the error of the ASC’s ways, wanted us to team up like some knockoff Justice League to bring down Lex Luthor and all his pals. ’Course we trusted it as far as you’d ever trust the mouthpiece of the ASC.”
Roger dropped his box onto the table with a thump. “And you melon-heads didn’t think to evertell me?”
“We’re telling you now,” Jake snapped.
Tobias said quietly, “We didn’t even look at what she gave us until just now. I didn’t want to put it in our laptop, that’s why I used your junker. But take a look.”
The flash drive had current blueprints, death records, and dirt on ASC officials that Roger never dreamed of having access to. It made his eyes cross and for the first time made him think that they had a chance, if this Dixon came through for them.
Jake’s eyes started to glaze over the fine-print forms and blueprints a couple hours in, and Tobias bullied him into bed. “You serious now about listening to me? Try getting more than four hours of sleep for once in the past four days.”
Roger and Tobias kept working for a bit afterward, but Roger’s heart wasn’t in it, and Tobias clearly had something on his mind. Jake would push and push hard for a plan, any plan with even a hint of success, but on that night of fraught emotions and pain, Roger didn’t have it in him to try to make the pages and numbers and possibilities fall into any kind of order.
Finally he sat back. “I’m going to throw something in the crockpot for when he wakes up, or when we get hungry, whichever comes first. You want to come with?”
