Page 85 of Grumpy Puck

Ted scans the room, wild-eyed.“Where is he?”

Oh, shit.

I run back toward the front door.

No Jack.

“Fucking shit.”I return and grab Ted by the shoulder.“Help me catch the fucker.”

We run out of the house and search a couple blocks, to no avail.

“Get inside the car,” I order Ted when we’re back at the house.“We’re going to drive around looking for him.”

Ted obeys, and we circle around the neighborhood, but with zero results.

Fuck.Where could he be?

Shit.Could he have gone after Calliope?

Everything inside me goes cold.

“Buckle in,” I growl at Ted and floor the gas, heading back to the circus.

“Where are you going?”Ted gasps as we blow through one intersection after another at breakneck speed.

My jaw flexes.“He might be after my girlfriend.She’s the new mascot.”

“Huh,” Ted says dumbly.“Why would he be after her?”

“For the same twisted reason he locked you in that room?”

“Oh?”Ted looks confused.“Did she also take a video of him jerking off to that gator?”

His question is so confusing I actually have to slow the car.“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“That’s why he wouldn’t let me leave,” Ted laments.“We got high together, and when he thought I was asleep, he snuck outside.I followed and caught him standing by the lake with his dick out.He was staring at the gator as he was jerking off and grunting shit like, ‘Yeah, those teeth.Those scales.That fat, juicy tail…’”

I glance at him incredulously.

Is he shitting me?I get that this is Florida and all, but come on.

“So… you see a dude jerking off to a gator, and your first reaction is to take a video of it?”

“I was high, dude.And it was funny as fuck.But Jack saw me filming him.He seemed crazed, so I jumped into my car, went home, and stuck the footage on a USB flashdrive.I then texted Jack to tell him that if he came after me, or if he pissed me off in general, I’d mail the flash drive to WTVJ.”Ted rubs his nose.“The next morning, he knocked me out as I was leaving my house, and then he kept me locked away until I told him where ‘all the drives’ were.He didn’t believe that I only had the one, stashed under a floorboard in my place.So I was stuck.Thank God that you came over when you did.I was about to go insane.”

Fuck.Suddenly, everything clicks into place.Calliope was right when she thought someone had snuck in and looked under the floorboards in her—formerly Ted’s—place.It was Jack, looking for the only existing flash drive.But Jack must have thought—and I use that term loosely—that Ted had hid another hypothetical drive in his bear suit, so he kept coming after it, first in Calliope’s dressing room, then in the hotel.I bet that’s why he tricked me into pushing her in the pool while she was wearing the suit for the first time—in the hopes that the drive would get damaged.Or that she’d leave the suit drying, and thus unattended.

What a fucking idiot.

Correction: idiots, the both of them.

“Can you do me a favor?”Ted asks plaintively.

I grit my teeth.“What?”

“Can you take me to the sheriff’s office?”

I’m about to tell him, “Fuck, no,” because I have to save Calliope, but then I realize Ted’s story means she’s not in any danger from Jack.Or from any stalker.

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