Page 9 of Fortress
“No, look. They’re going to take that and bring back what you wanted. That’s theirjob, not that anybody seems to know it around here.”
“Jake,don’t,” Toby said, just as their waitress sauntered back to their table.
“Is there a problem?” she asked, looking at Jake as though she knew perfectly well that there was a problem and really didn’t have time to deal with his crap.
Pointing at Toby’s plate, Jake began, “Well, unless you guys are breeding a whole new kind of tuna back there—”
“It’sfine,” Toby said, loud enough to drown him out. He pulled the plate closer as though she were coming to take away his firstborn. “It’s the best ham and cheese sandwich I’ve ever had, I love it, I don’t want anything else. I don’t really like tuna. This is an excellent meal,thank you.”
The waitress blinked in confusion, then said, “Okay,” and backed away.
Jake stared at him, feeling stunned and unbalanced, as though he’d hit the Eldorado’s brakes hard enough to throw himself against the wheel. “Toby...”He hesitated as Toby bent his head over his plate and poked moodily at his fruit cup.“Sorry,” he said at last. “Didn’t mean to go all super-controlling asshole on you.”
Toby still wouldn’t look at him, but the tense way his jaw was set was surprisingly nice to see. Finally, he lifted his head. “Don’t do that, Jake. It’s food. Re—good food, there’s nothing wrong with it. I don’t want anyone in trouble over it.”
Jake swallowed. “Hey. They wouldn’t have—nobody’s gonna be fired over a tuna sandwich. It happens.”
Toby shrugged. “It’s not worth the trouble. They would have just—thrown this one away. I don’t want two. I don’t want them towasteit. Can we please just talk about s-something else?”
“Yeah. Sure,” Jake said. They kept poking at their food, but they didn’t actually talk.They’d both lost most of their appetite, and Jake, wishing that he could figure out how to get them back to their easy banter, eventually gave up and helped himself to a couple of Styrofoam to-go boxes. He wasn’t sure that their waitress, now chatting with another set of customers she clearly knew and one guy that she might have been dating, even noticed.
On their way out, Toby, cradling their to-go boxes, stopped by the Eldorado’s door. “Jake, I’m s-sorry, I shouldn’t have—talked to you like that—”
“No no no,” Jake said, stopping short and turning to face him. “No, that is one of the things you donotget to apologize for. Seriously, Toby. Calling me on my bullshit is something I want you to get good at, okay?” He leaned against the Eldorado’s warm hood, one hand sliding as close to Toby as it could get with the car between them. “I told you,” he said with a wink. “It gets me all hot under the collar.”
Toby’s grin was easy and bright, and Jake realized how much he’d missed it.
They found a hunt in the snug little town of South Boston, Virginia, just shy of the North Carolina border. A string of semi-mysterious deaths following an estate sale had all the markings of a haunted object or curse.
Toby was the one who suggested splitting up. They had a list of potential witnesses as long as the Eldorado’s bumper and still only a handful of clues as to what was killing people or how it chose its targets. The victims weren’t falling into a particular type or dying in a particular place. There were some common denominators among the various death locations, families, and artifacts in the victims’ homes, but in a town with as much history as South Boston had, that wasn’t hard to manage. So Toby’s suggestion had seemed reasonable: he’d sift through the dusty archives of the two-story library while Jake made the rounds of the traumatized civilian survivors and witnesses.
But it wasn’t his favorite arrangement. Jake missed Toby’s steady presence as soon as he dropped him off in the morning, but he knew that this was the fastest way to wrap up the hunt. He managed to resist picking up his cell until it was a quarter to noon.
“Hey, Toby, how’s it shaking? Any luck?”
“Hey, Jake—hold on.” Toby’s voice was soft, almost a whisper. Jake heard the rustle and shift of the phone moving away from Toby’s ear, a couple steps, and then a thump. “I just stepped outside.”
Jake frowned. “Anyone hassling you? Because I can be there in like—”
But he was cut off by Toby’s short laugh. “No, I just didn’t want to make noise. It’s really quiet and nice in there. I’ve found a lot, though I don’t know how much is going to be helpful yet. I’m going to have to run it past your witness reports.”
“Sounds good. I guess that’s what libraries are for, right?” Jake had to smile. “So, you ready for some chow?I thought we could try that Mexican place we passed earlier.”
“Actually—” Toby paused. Jake could imagine him ducking his head, scuffing his feet on the edge of the concrete stairs. “I went down to the corner to get a sub. And a Sprite. I thought—I mean, you’re not done yet, are you?”
“Uh—no, nah, that last granny talked forever about her grandkids, and her kids, and her kids’ kids that somehowaren’ther grandkids, and her kids’ dogs until I was about falling asleep, before throwing in there that they haven’t owned that house on Barrigan Street for about ten years and change. I barely avoided keeling over from boredom the whole time and learned pretty much squat. There’s always one like her that’ll talk your ear off and not say much.”
“Ask the next one about the Rockwells. They seem to be showing up a lot in the records. Hey, maybe we can have Mexican tonight. You can keep going now while you’re on a roll with the grannies. I mean, if you want. I’m in the middle of one of the archive books they don’t let you check out, so I don’t really want... I mean, I would’ve liked to have lunch with you.”
Jake was still smiling, drumming his fingers lightly on the steering wheel. “Nah, it’s cool. We’ll have Mexican tonight and catch up. Keep plugging away, and call me if you get any other names or new leads. Or, you know, anytime, if you want.”
“I will. Jake . . .”
“Yeah?”
He heard Toby sigh against the phone, soft and relaxed. “It’s a nice day.”
Jake looked out the window at the blue sky and picturesque oaks shading Main Street. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
