Page 12 of Fortress
“Uh-huh,” Roger drawled. “Then why’re you bolting from a Hunting 101 case? You do something stupid, like KO the sheriff’s kid?”
“Nah, nothing like... nothing like that.” Jake took a breath and braced himself. “Hey, one hunter you definitelyshouldn’tcall... I mean, do you know where my—you know where Leon is?” As much as he was trying not to watch, out of the corner of his eye he saw Toby stiffen.
“Why, you got something you wanna say to his face?”
“No,” Jake said shortly. “I just need to know, Roger. It’s important. Like, even if you can... can you rule out Virginia?”
“Hm.” Jake heard a few papers shifting, the thump of a book. “We don’ttalk, you understand, but last I heard of him he wasdown in Florida hunting some kind of fire monster. That was... about a week ago. That help?”
“Maybe. It doesn’t rule out... anyway, just keep me posted, Roger.”
“All right, I’ll keep an eye out. Not like I don’t got enough shit to do. So what’re you and the brain up to now if you’re done clearing out?”
“Damned if I know.”
“Well, don’t do anything crazy. You get any hare-brained schemes, run it past Tobias first, and maybe you’ll be in one piece when I next see your ugly mug.”
Jake hung up and tucked his phone into his pocket before he could force himself to look Toby in the eye.
Then his stomach dropped because Toby was staring at him, eyes wide in his plaster-white face, hands gripping the sheets like they were the only thing keeping him from being swept away.
“Y-y-you s-saw yourf-f-father?”
Only then did he realize that he hadn’t actually told Toby what they were running from.
“Fuck,” he said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, Toby, I’m sorry.”
“H-Hawthorne?” Toby’s chest was working like a bellows: short, sharp, desperate breaths that he didn’t seem to notice. His eyes, fixed on Jake’s, held terrified, barely controlled panic.
“I—maybe. I saw him, maybe, okay?” Jake moved forward, hands extended, but didn’t make contact, not sure what would happen if he tried his usual calming tactics. “Not even him, just his truck, but it washistruck, the exact model, and I didn’t know... yeah, I ran because I thought it was him.”
They were both inches from a panic attack, and he wasn’t sure this time if he’d be able to calm Toby down or if he’d join him in the meltdown and the paralyzing dread. But Toby closed his eyes, drew in two slow, labored breaths, and released onehand from the covers to grab Jake’s hand. But instead of tugging him to the bed, Toby used him to pull himself to his feet, then let go. He paced toward the window and back.
“Fuck,” he said. “Fucking fuck. But—just the truck, you said?”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “There have to be, what, fucking hundreds of those?”
“Thousands,” Toby agreed. “Maybe thousands. Might not be him.”
“Yeah, probably not him. And we’rehere, you know, so...”
“Yeah.” Toby nodded. His hands twisted together. “So it probably wasn’t H-Hawthorne—I mean, your dad.”
“That doesn’t matter anymore,” Jake said. He found his own hands clenching at his sides.
Toby stopped dead still, then nodded sharply once. “Oh.” Then, “We’ll be okay. We’re here, so we’ll be okay.”
“Yeah.” Jake tried to sound confident. “He’s... he’s not going to follow us here.”
“Right. We’ll be fine.”
Toby had said that more than a dozen times since they’d bolted from South Boston earlier that day. This was the first time that Jake suspected Toby couldn’t wholeheartedly believe it either.
Chapter Three
“There is no such thing as monsters,” Mr. Ernest Krueger declared.
Several nearby patrons of the bright, clean diner winced or hunched a little closer to their coffee, but not one head turned. Tobias and Jake, seated across from the gray-haired and suspender-clad septuagenarian, glanced at each other, just to check there hadn’t been some mistake in the hearing.
