Page 24 of So Twisted

They fell silent and watched Alex for a moment. The kid’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates, and he breathed heavily. He was clearly afraid, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a killer. It didn’t take a lot of bravery to murder someone one on one with a weapon.

However, itdidtake some bravery to let a deadly wild animal out of its enclosure. Faith could see Alex opening the snake cage, not realizing how aggressive black mambas were, but pretty much everyone understood that a jaguar could effortlessly kill you if it felt so inclined.

Alex hadn’t wanted to mess with Turk, but then again, Turk was very clearly being aggressive, and he was wearing a K9 vest and under the command of the FBI agent ordering him to surrender. And he didn’t seem prostrate with fear, just aware that he wasn’t going to beat Turk in a fight.

She needed to probe further.

“Why did you send those messages.”

“Because they were assholes. They treated animals like shit and got away with it. That’s not cool.”

There was no anger in Alex’s voice. He was just stating a fact. Actually, he sounded pretty miserable now that it was dawning on him that there was a solid chance he would end up spending time in jail. Quite a lot of time.

“And you think that justifies killing them?”

Alex sighed. He rolled his eyes and said, “Look, I didn’t kill them. But… if you’re asking me honestly, yes. I think they deserved to die for what they did.” He wasn’t afraid anymore, or at least that fear was masked behind his passion for animal rights. “Think about it: why do we get treated differently just because we’re, what? Smarter than animals? I mean, that’s cool, and it’s how we became the dominant species on the planet, butwe have to be good stewards. I’m not even saying we shouldn’t eat meat, just that we should be… you know, not assholes.”

“I’m beginning to wonder ifyouknow what you mean,” Michael said.

Alex sighed again. “What if someone hurt your dog? Turk, you said, right?”

“That’s right,” Faith confirmed.

“Well, what if someone hurt him? What if someone beat your dog or kicked him or threatened to kill him or starved him to death? What would you do?”

An image of West’s manic grin as he held Turk up by his neck crossed Faith’s mind. She heard the sound of Turk’s yelp as his boot slammed into his ribs.

“Honestly? I’d kill them.”

Michael shifted uncomfortably in his seat, but Faith kept her eyes on Alex.

“Exactly,” Alex said, relieved.

“Exactly,” Faith agreed.

It took Alex a moment to realize his mistake. When he did, the color drained from his face. “Wait. No… I didn’t…” He looked up at the ceiling, then lifted his hands as far as the shackles would allow and held them open in front of him, fingers splayed. “I didn’t kill them! They deserved to die, but I didn’t kill them!”

“Why not?”

He blinked. “What?”

“Why didn’t you kill them? They deserved to die. You tell your sycophants in the Knights of Nature to stand up violently to animal abusers. Why didn’t you kill them?”

“I don’t… When did I… Are you talking about the essays? That was satire!”

“You just told me that Marcus Reeves and Alison Chen deserved to die.”

“They did! But I don’t tell my people to kill them! Read more of my work. I wrote those essays for a fiction project in literature class. It got published after the demonstration where we wore animal skins because the news likes to make everyone look violent.”

“Telling me that people deserve to die sounds pretty violent.”

Alex dropped his head. A moment later, he started speaking again, going slowly as though trying to make the two of them understand a simple concept that they should have no trouble getting through their heads. “Some people deserve to die. Killing them, unfortunately, only creates more people who deserve to die.”

“Interesting philosophy,” Michael said. “Can you expand on that?”

“Do you support our cause?”

Michael raised an eyebrow. "The Knights of Nature, you mean? No."

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