Page 27 of Freedom
“Has there been any funny stuff? Bad eggs, demonic signs, foaming at the mouth?”
“Well, there’s a few bad eggs in every batch, but no, nothing else like that as I can recall. Don’t want no trouble from the ASC here. Who you say you’s from again?”
“The Weekly World News,” Jake lied, making the last few marks on his legal pad. Tobias, from his secure place behind Jake’s shoulder, could see that he’d taken a couple of notes, mainly about the security on the farm and the scuff marks on the chicken house—or coop? Tobias thought it was a coop, not a house, dogs had houses—and a fairly stylistic sketch of a chicken foaming at the mouth, complete with little satanic horns and a trident, possibly a pitchfork.
“My wife reads theWeekly,” the man said. “Guess our chickens weren’t famous enough to rate a reporter from theEnquirer. And what’s with the boy?”
Jake had told Tobias to watch everything, to keep his eyes off the ground and on his surroundings, to think about everything he saw and heard, especially anything the witness said, so Tobias could deduce from even the smallest clues what might actually be going on. The first couple of times they had gone to question witnesses (questionreals, demand answers, hide what he was), it had been horrible. Tobias had held off a couple of panic attacks only by strength of will and the knowledge that their current job, no matter how innocuous it was turning out to be, would be completely ruined if he collapsed to the ground, shaking and gasping. Now, by their fourth interview, he was getting better at watching his surroundings, better at following Jake without retreating into his own head, and he had even managed to notice things that Jake hadn’t (or said he hadn’t) a couple of times.
But there was still no way he could keep his eyes locked on the current real’s face when that real was talking about Tobias, when he was calling attention to his existence, and clearly not in a good way.
Tobias’s grip on Jake’s jacket (carefully hidden behind Jake’s back, hopefully where Mr. Havers couldn’t see him clinging) tightened, and he breathed very carefully, gaze locked on his toes, running through all of Jake’s promises about what wouldn’t happen, the Eldorado’s location, and any possible weapons that Mr. Havers could be carrying in case they had to run, in case he suspected the truth.
But Jake just grinned at the question, his half-assed facade of a polite reporter vanishing into cocky cheerfulness as he threw an arm over Tobias’s shoulders. “Toby here’s my brother.”
Strange to feel safe being touched, to feel that Jake could protect him from anything and everything even when Tobias knew that the current position of their arms made getting to their weapons harder, that if the real—the civilian tried anything, their reaction time would be slowed because of the embrace. But the muscles in his back slowly unlocked, and the jump of fear from being noticed faded into the background at Jake’s touch.
All that was sorely tested when Mr. Havers frowned. “Ain’t a kid that age supposed to be in school?”
Tobias swallowed painfully. He and Jake should have thought of that, prepared some kind of cover; because of him, this entire job would be blown, and those chickens might—
“Parent-teacher conferences,” Jake lied smoothly. “Toby had a long weekend, I figured I’d steal him for the trip down here, get in a little brother-to-brother bonding. Anyway, I think I have what I need, Mr. Havers, thank you very much for your time.”
Still looking confused, Mr. Havers shook Jake’s hand, frowned at Tobias, and then Jake hustled them off the property and back to the Eldorado, where they pulled out of the country lane, back to the highway toward the nearby small town.
They got back to their lodgings, a smaller-than-usual mom-and-pop that offered free Belgian waffles if you got up early enough and had three six-packs of a local microbrew in the common fridge. Jake dropped his bag and sprawled onto the afghan-topped bed, arms spread, and said, “I just can’t get freaked out by Chicken McNuggets, no matter how nasty. So, what’d you think?”
Tobias looked up from carefully tucking Jake’s notebook back into his duffel, taking off his shoes and putting them in the hand-carved shoe rack near the door. “Mr. Havers didn’t seem to believe his chickens were haunted. He implied it was fairly normal for this kind of b-bad temper to manifest occasionally and was honestly confused about w-why we were asking. He was suspicious of you at times. I th-think he knew you weren’t being completely up-front about the reason behind your questions, and he thought it s-strange that I was there. A-also, given how nervous the nephew was when we mentioned the chickens, and w-what his friends said about his partying during their interviews, it d-d-doesn’t seem like this is something... supernatural.”
“Yup,” Jake said. “I totally agree. Looks like this case is another nonevent.” He sighed and pulled himself up to rest against the headboard. He flipped through theTV Guideeven though the bed-and-breakfast TV only got eight channels. Jake liked to check the guide anyway and talk about all the paid programming and bad movies he could be watching if they only had cable. Finally he tossed it back on the bed and reached for his wallet.
“Hey, you feel up to getting us a couple beers from the fridge?” Jake fished a few dollars out of his wallet and handed them to Tobias. He frowned at them and then looked at Jake, who grinned. “Well, get me one of those Ladies’ Blue Bloomers microbrews and yourself a root beer. It’s all gotbeerin it, right?”
“I don’t think root beer is alcoholic, Jake,” Tobias said, but he was smiling when he left.
Intellectually, Tobias knew that the people who ran the bed-and-breakfast—a plump old lady with a huge, layered pile of white hair and equally white, even teeth, and a rickety old man with only two yellowed teeth and no hair at all—wouldn’t be upset with him for going into their fridge. The elderly lady had told him and Jake straight away when they arrived that the food and drink in the kitchen was for everyone, that they should just pay attention to the food prices attached to the fridge by cat magnets, but Tobias’s shoulders still tightened as he stepped into the room.
But still, today was a day for bravery. He’d been quiet and attentive during the interview, unlike the first few he’d done. He’d been panicked and borderline hyperventilating during those until Jake had asked him if he wanted to wait in the car, at which point he had retreated to the Eldorado with the taste of pain and shame in his mouth beneath the overwhelming relief from being away from the reals. This time, he’d been able to tell Jake about his observations without stuttering too much over the words, and they’d been right, and Jake had smiled at him. It was always good, always a relief when Jake agreed with some conclusion that Tobias had offered, some theory that he had drawn from words and tone and body language—even when, as they did more and more interviews, Tobias was realizing that Jake didn’t always know everything. He missed some small clues, occasionally ignored what the interviewees thought of him in favor of pressing his questions, and couldn’t see behind his back. Tobias wouldn’t say that Jake was wrong, ever, that was ridiculous, but he did miss things, and it was good to know that he, Tobias, was there to catch those details for him.
Tobias still checked the kitchen before walking in. Empty. He could breathe a sigh of relief, drop the dollar bills in the box marked with a smiley face and a money sign, grab a beer and a root beer from the fridge, and then take the stairs two at a time back up to the room.
Jake smiled when he pushed the door open, and Tobias had to stop for a minute. That was the smile just for him—the one that said Jake hadn’t been completely sure who would come through that door, that he had been ready for a completely different response if a stranger walked in. But because it had been Tobias, his smile spread from his beautiful lips to his bright gray eyes.
He took the beer that Tobias held out to him, and their fingers touched. A hot flush spread over his face and neck that matched the flutter in his stomach—the same odd sensations sparked every time Jake touched him, ran a hand over his shoulder, brushed his fingers over his wrist. He sat next to Jake on the wide, short bed, held out his root beer for Jake to pop that cap off too, and tapped the neck to Jake’s bottle.
Jake took a long swig and sighed happily. “Well, the job’s all wrapped up, but I figure we’ll stick around here tonight at least. I don’t have any place in particular to be after this one, and we’re paid up through tomorrow, so no reason to head out too soon. So, you want to work on picking?”
Tobias leaned his head against the backboard, keeping his breathing even and his heart rate as close to normal as he could so that if Jake reached for his hand or his wrist, he wouldn’t feel the difference. It didn’t matter how many times he practiced or how happy Jake looked afterward, grinning widely with a thousand variations ofyou were awesomeandbadass work, Tobyon his lips. He couldn’t shake that same old clawing fear, the knowledge of what happened to a freak that tried to get free, someone who dared even think about getting out of a lock. Images of those consequences (guards seizing and holding him down as another fetched a saw, taunting him before starting the slow, excruciating cut) had started popping up in his nightmares too, even though those weren’t happening nearly as frequently as they had before.
It was almost too much, more than he wanted to do today. But it wasn’t about what Tobias wanted. It should never be about what he wanted, but about how quickly he could do what Jake wanted, what he needed so that Tobias could be as useful as possible on a hunt, so they could go on a real hunt and not keep asking old men about chickens that Jake had suspected weren’t possessed the first time the nephew’s friends had mentioned the parties they’d thrown on the farm. Tobias wanted to save people. And he understood, intellectually if not instinctively, that if he wanted to save reals, there might be a time that he would have to save himself before he would be any use to them.
“Okay,” he said.
Jake smiled and leaned closer, his silver eyes brighter. “Sweet.” Then he rolled off the bed toward the dresser where he kept his duffel, pulled the handcuffs out, and slapped one cuff over his own wrist.
When he came back, sprawling down over the too-short bed with his boots hanging off the end, Tobias had already unfolded the paper clip from his pocket. When Jake held out his wrist, the open end of the cuffs dangling like he’d already escaped from a distant prison, Tobias took his hand with all the care he always had for Jake’s person, the worry and anticipation boiling together.
He took one deep breath, eyes closed, reminding himself that if he couldn’t do this, nothing bad would happen. Jake would use the key he kept in his other hand and free himself, and they’d watch bad television until Jake decided they should go to sleep, and it would be fine. And then he focused on Jake’s hand, on the thin band of metal confining his wrist, on breaking that. And slowly, with each click of the pin within the mechanism, that fear faded away.
