Page 49 of Fortress
After bringing their duffels out of the hotel, Jake opened the trunk. Tobias handed him his bag to store, then moved away, most of him already on the road, planning their route, hoping that they could get far enough away before the hunters were back on their trail. As he started to open the shotgun door, however, he realized Jake hadn’t moved.
Tobias turned back. “Jake? You okay?”
As Jake finally closed the trunk, the fading evening sun illuminated his face, showing unexpected strain, something Tobias would not have expected at the end of a successful hunt without injury to either of them. Concerned, Tobias took a step forward.
“Toby.” Jake paused, leaning forward onto the trunk with both hands. “Toby, I fucked up.”
Incredulous, Tobias scanned Jake over for any sign of what he meant, where he might be bleeding. They’d put the monster to rest, no one had died... “What do you mean?”
Jake bit his lip. “Toby, you’ve... you’ve got a family out there. Parents, maybe a pack of siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. People who probably remembered your birthday this week too.”
Tobias blinked at him, confused. The comment seemed so completely out of nowhere, they hadn’t even—but then he knew. The Grants. The boy dragged away, his sister still weeping and screaming years later. Jake was wondering if Tobias had anyone like that. But he’d already considered the possibility.
Slowly, Tobias said, “That . . . seems unlikely.”
Jake’s shoulders twitched, almost a flinch. “Seriously, Toby. Chances are someone’s out there who remembers you, who knows your whole name, what time of day you were born, all that. They could tell you your whole history, who you are. Because it’s not just from that—that shithole.”
Tobias said nothing, not to Jake’s harsh intensity, nor when his voice rose louder, higher, sharper.
After a breath, Jake continued more quietly, but with a different kind of desperation. “Look, Toby, I’m sorry. I never thought—I mean, I could have looked for your family while I was waiting to get you out, while the fucking paperwork went through. I should have looked for them instead of thinking I could just, I dunno, call you a Hawthorne and keep you all for myself. You deserve to have a real family.”
Tobias took a sharp breath and braced himself with one hand against the Eldorado’s frame. He needed something under him, the smooth metal reassuring him that the world wasn’t going to give way under his feet. “Jake.” Tobias had to take a moment to swallow. Jake waited, eyes steady on him now, finally. “We’ve been over this. D-don’t you think I’d remember them if I had them?”
“If you had—”
“A family,” Tobias said. “People who loved me.”
Jake shrugged slightly, a hunch of his shoulders upward. “I dunno, brains are weird. It doesn’t mean—”
“Jake, I don’t rememberanyone.” Tobias tried to keep his voice level. “Just Becca. And you. I have a family now, and I’m a Hawthorne. Tobias Hawthorne. You told me so.” The last words were more pleading, more question, more accusation, than he meant them to be.
Jake straightened, though he didn’t step around the car. “Yeah, Toby. ’Course you are.”
Tobias took another steadying breath. “Then I don’t need any other family. We don’t know how, what happened—who might have tipped off the ASC, anyway. And even if they didn’t—they think I died. Like Karen does. They buried me years ago. I’m not going back to haunt them.”
If anything, Jake looked more unhappy at that, but just coughed and said, “If you’re worried about someone dousing you in lighter fluid—”
Tobias snorted. “Yeah, Jake, that’s it. C’mon, let’s go.”
Settled in the front seat, Toby readjusted the map on his lap, fingers tracing interstates and roads as he talked with Jake about where to go next and how far they’d get tonight. He knew he ought to be more worried about how close the ASC might be behind them, especially considering the number of people who might describe their faces, but he’d never felt anything but safe with Jake behind the Eldorado’s wheel, accelerating on the open road. Here, no one could touch them. This was where he—where both of them—belonged.
Chapter Nine
Every high school, no matter how bland and soul-sucking it appeared during the day, took on a different character at night, something creepy and sinister: the vast darkness of the halls punctuated by the blinking of smoke alarms and the occasional distant flicker of an emergency light. Minden High, save for its dependable brown brick and the occasional window lit by the streetlamps, was no different from a dozen others that Jake had wandered at night with no more than a flashlight to guide him.
Of course, only a handful of those times had involved Jake scouting to catch a spirit in the act.
He and Tobias turned left toward the administrative offices, silent as ghosts themselves except for the whine of the EMF reader in Tobias’s hand, until Jake saw a flicker of light beneath the office door. Jake froze and raised a hand to stop Tobias behind him.
Jake turned off his own flashlight, motioned Tobias to the side. He dearly loved breaking down doors (it wasn’t something he could do much outside of hunts), but he didn’t want Tobias to catch any splinters when the wood burst. Jake gathered himself, then moved forward, kicking the wooden door in with a satisfyingcrackas the lock and lintel gave way, leaping through it, leading with his gun.
A shadowy figure whirled by the filing cabinets in the corner, then lobbed something toward Jake’s head. He ducked instinctively, bringing his gun up, but the throw had been bad to begin with, and the projectile—something blobby and shapeless—burst as it hit his arm. The air filled with a substance between smoke and dust, blocking out the thin light from the windows just as Tobias came around with his gun at the ready. The last thing Jake saw, before he had to shut his irritated eyes and cough from the powder clogging his lungs, was his assailant disappearing deeper into the offices.
Tobias let out a frustrated hiss. “Do we go after him?”
Jake would have answered, had there been enough clean air in his lungs to breathe.
Tobias didn’t know why Jake always had to be the one to break down doors. Tobias was pretty sure he could manage it, if only Jake would let him try. It was more a question of what angle one applied the force rather than actual strength or size, and his smaller frame meant he had less chance of being hit on the other side.
