Page 68 of Freak Camp
“Wh—yeah, of course I am.”
“Well, you better start filing the paperwork.I don’t think he’ll make it another year.”
“What?”Jake sounded like he had just been punched in the gut.“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said.”Roger hung up, seething too much to trust himself to keep talking.It was stupid on every level, he knew, to get emotional over a monster in Freak Camp.Couldn’t end well.
But he wasn’t able to just walk out on two sadists torturing a kid and not do a damn thing about it.
***
Jake stared down atthe phone.That was ...not what he had expected when he had seen that the call was from Roger.
The mobile phone was new.It still felt like a reward when someone called him, even though Dad mostly didn’t—unless they had to get together—and not many other people had his number.When Roger called, it was usually to point them in the direction of a new hunt, or sometimes just to say hi.Jake thought of it aschecking up on him, but that didn’t mean it didn’t feel good to get the call.
He turned to see Dad watching him with a frown.It was one of their rare weeks together, when both of their respective hunts were over—or a different hunt had brought them back together—and Dad sat on the second bed in the hotel room cleaning his guns, getting polish all over the cheap, ratty bedspread.
“That was short.Harper in trouble?”His tone implied that Roger could go fuck himself, but his hands, hesitating over the weapon he was cleaning, said that if Jake said the word, they would be on their way.
Jake liked that, how Dad trusted him sometimes, how he’d pay attention when Jake brought him new information.Not that Jake ever really knew anything that Dad didn’t.Dad was still the best, and Jake loved working with him, not just because they were family, but because if Leon and Jake Hawthorne went after something, that sucker was going down.It was just a fact of life.Together the Hawthornes could stop anything.
Usually he liked that more.But then again, usually Roger had not just told him that he had to get Tobias out,get Tobias out now,in a tone that Jake had only ever heard before when he was telling some civilian toget the fuck down, it’s going for your heart.
Jake took a shaky breath, and then reached for his own guns.“Roger’s fine.You know how to get a monster out of Freak Camp?”
Leon Hawthorne froze and looked up from his gun.“Why would I know a fucking thing like that?”
Because you’re my dad and you know everything.“I’m getting Tobias out,” Jake said.“Figured I would ask you first because you usually know these things.I already called Leah Dixon in D.C., she hasn’t had any luck, so maybe I can try a different ASC resource hotline, and they can ...”
With a scowl, Leon tossed a greasy rag to the floor, next to the trashcan.“Jake, I thought you were over this.”
Jake’s mind had been spinning, trying to find a starting place for how to get Toby out.Research always had a starting point, after which the monster’s profile and vulnerabilities would fall into place.Even if this was a hell of a lot bigger than confirming a werewolf attack from a list of fatal animal attacks, or pinning a string of strange deaths on a shapeshifter.At last, at last, you’re going to do it, you’re going to keep your promise and stop putting it off like a coward—but he came back to the here and now at his dad’s tone.
“Sir?”
“I thought you had stopped obsessing over that monster.”
Jake blinked and considered.He still thought about Toby.He still thought about him all the time.He still ...but no, he hadn’t talked about him in a while, not to Dad.Not since the fight at Freak Camp and the eight-week suspension.
He and Dad had had an hour’s shouting match about appropriate behavior with other hunters and ASC personnel.Somehow the point Dad had landed on was that everyone ass-kissing the ASC really deserved a brand in their faces anyway, just for being Big Brother assholes, but Jake was still stupid and impulsive to do it.Dad hadn’t connected that fight with Tobias, and since then Jake had stopped mentioning Toby, because Toby was his, and talking about him just made Dad angry.
Actually, he hadn’t talked about Toby much since he turned sixteen.Everything he’d wanted to say about him to Dad, he had said then, even though the man hadn’t heard a word.
“Sir, I wouldn’t say obsessed.”Unless you mean I think about him every day.And I smile when I see M&M’s because he loves those, and I think about reading all these books just so I can share them with him.And my heart jumps every time I see boys who look like him.
“Yeah, what would you call it then?”Dad glanced at him for a second before turning his head away.“I can barely hold my head up in a hunter bar with sons of bitches cracking jokes about you mooning after that monster kid.Everyone knows, Jake, and you’re not ten anymore.”
Jake gritted his teeth before answering, “No, sir, I’m not ten.And I think that means that if I say something like this, it means that I know what I’m doing.Or that I’ve at least thought it through.”
Leon snorted.“You let me be the judge of that, Jake.”
The worst thing was that Jake would be perfectly happy letting Dad be the judge of things.When they hunted together, Jake let Dad take the lead, ask the questions, form the theories, send him out to do research or to flirt with a pretty girl or boy.Dad always knew the next step they should take.It didn’t make Jake angry, didn’t rattle him when Dad barked off orders without listening to his input.Jake had a lifetime of knowing that when Dad said to drop he should drop, when Dad said to run he should run.
Jake trusted him about everything but Tobias.Because on nights when Dad was gone, or too drunk to drive, or unconscious and bleeding, Toby had always been in Jake’s mind.He had never been able to fully explain, even to himself, even the night he turned sixteen, what Toby meant to him and why Jake knew he wasn’t just another monster.They might have only spent a couple of hours together at a time over the years, but Jake was sure about Toby like he was about precious little else in his life.He caught the same look on Toby’s face every visit, how Toby smiled at him—whenever Jake managed to coax one out.Nothing else in his life was like it.And while he couldn’t put into words what Toby meant to him, Jake knew with absolute certainty what he meant to Toby, and that rescuing Toby from Freak Camp now mattered more than any of the civilians he had managed to save.
Toby was his friend.Toby cared without demanding things from him—even though Jake would be willing to give him anything, anything at all.Toby was not a monster.
“You never ask me what I’ve thought,” Jake said slowly, “so how can you know when I’ve thought something through?”
