Page 51 of Fire
Not so long ago, Tobias would have struggled to say no to Jake, even when he suspected Jake was only asking for something he knew Tobias could and would refuse. Now, Tobias told Jake no all the time, over matters small and large, and he hardly ever thought about it. He rarely felt that clenching tension in his gut before saying no either.
As he decided to relent this time, it was with the knowledge that he was saying yes willingly and wholeheartedly, and it was no more correct than any other answer.
“Okay,” Tobias said, with a last glance at the current speaker as he reached for the remote. “We can take a quick run.”
* * *
As the Cleveland Massacrescandal intensified from a storm to a hurricane, Alice couldn’t tell what it would demolish and what it would leave untouched. Despite the growing public outcry and demands for accountability, she knew that taking down the ASC, or at least its most corrupt elements, would require more than this furor and more than just herself.
As she wrestled with the dilemma of whom she could trust, Alice realized she knew someone who was certain to hate Freak Camp with all his heart. If Jake Hawthorne’s under-the-radar lifestyle wasn’t enough evidence, the fact that 89UI6703... Tobias... had featured heavily in the “training videos” was bound to be a pretty good indication.
Even though Alice had long ago stopped updating Jonah on the whereabouts of his cousin Jake, she still kept up what she called her “Hawthorne Watch.” Most of the time it gave her notices about where Jake and Tobias had been, cases they had closed, and what monsters or supernatural threats they had eliminated. Sometimes she delegated that investigative work to one of her underlings, mostly as a training exercise. Piecing together a coherent story from fragments of news and supposition was good practice for them.
The idea that Jake Hawthorne was probably on her side hit Alice when she was in Butte, Montana, handling an issue with a local ASC office that had escalated enough to require her presence. After the situation was resolved, or as resolved as it was going to get, she checked on her Hawthorne Watch.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered.
“What, ma’am?” Her young, wide-eyed intern looked up.
“Nothing,” Alice said. “Don’t worry about it.” She shut down her laptop and tucked it into its carrying case. “Just realized I have another errand to run before we head out. Should still be able to make the flight home tomorrow morning.”
If her Hawthorne alerts were accurate, Tobias and Jake had just finished a job in Deer Lodge, Montana, involving some kind of haunted object at the Old Montana Prison Museum. That was less than forty minutes away.
Deer Lodge was not that big. The alert had given her a bead on the Hawthorne’s motel, but when she didn’t spot Jake’s car in the lot, she drove around town in her anonymous gray rental. Less than five minutes later, she spotted her quarry: the notorious Eldorado, parked at a diner.
The Four B’s Restaurant was clunky but classic, with green signs and a retro diner interior. Alice parked on the other side of the lot from the Eldorado. Walking toward the restaurant, she wished she’d worn a hat, something with a brim to shade her face.
The place was almost empty. Alice ducked into one of the tall booths on the empty side of the restaurant and took a couple of careful breaths.
This was a stupid plan. She was going to get herself shot. Her face was extremely recognizable—she was literally the face of the ASC—and for the last six months she had succeeded in keeping anyone, especially a certain Director, from noticing her crisis of loyalty.
But what other options did she have? Try to convince the family that Jonah was a madman? Turn hunters to her side? Go public with the very private, damning information that she had collected and wait like a sitting duck for Jonah’s surefire revenge? Messed up as it was, the renegade Hawthornes were her best hope of allies, and Alice was probably the best chance they were ever going to get to take down FREACS and the ASC from the inside. She just had to tell them that.
Alice flipped open her phone and dialed a number that she had saved for exactly this occasion.
Jake Hawthorne didn’t keep the same number for long and he couldn’t be tracked reliably, but if you knew the right people, you could get the number of the hour.
He picked up on the third ring. “Yeah?”
“I have information about a mutual enemy,” she said, more rapidly than she’d planned. “I’d like to meet to discuss it.”
A pause. “I don’t have any enemies,” Jake Hawthorne said, the breezy unconcern so thick it carried a palpablefuck offundertone. “I’m just that lovable a guy.”
“This enemy owns a place,” Alice said, undeterred, even with the distant sense that she was teetering on the edge of solid ground, soil crumbling under her toes, and the bottom a long way down. “Your friend Tobias lived there once.”
A pause, and then Jake said in a new, dangerously low tone, “Who the fuck is this?”
Alice swallowed. The Hawthornes had never been brought into the family. They were uncontrolled, unpredictable, deadly as any monster out there. “I can’t say here. But I’m a friend, and we have the same goal.”
“Like I trust a single fucking word you say,” Jake snarled. “Where the fuck are you?”
She nearly hung up then, but in the background another voice said, “Jake, what is it?”
Tobias. She recognized his voice in her gut, even if he had grown and changed from the abused boy in the videos. He didn’t sound like a broken child anymore. Alice felt relieved, and her hand shook on her phone.
“I’m alone and unarmed.” Then, with every ounce of well-honed calm she possessed, Alice took the plunge, diving headfirst into the abyss. “But if you’re ready to meet now, I’m on the other side of the restaurant.”
She could hear low, fervent swearing through the phone, echoed across the room. Her palms were slippery and her heart beat hard in her chest as though she were again testifying in front of a dozen cameras, about to lie through her teeth that the value of the ASC far outweighed the damage that it did.
