7
By dinnertime, Scott’s encounter with David had coalesced into a nauseous knot that sat between his lower esophagus and clenched sac of stomach. He picked over his dinner plate—blue boiled crab, coleslaw, and corn on the cob—without actually eating any of it. A shame. It was one of the few Spruel meals in the last four years that hadn’t come out of a microwave.
While the others snapped hard shells and slurped crab meat (and his mother grumbled some more about the mayor’s incompetence), Scott replayed David’s voice in his head. Now taunting Scott, now inviting Janis to the amusement park, now having one of his minions threaten J.R…
A loud crack sounded.
“Gracious!” Scott’s mother exclaimed, wiping her cheek with the back of a hand.
Scott followed her sharp gaze down to where he’d broken his crab in half, its brine dripping from his fingers. He set the crab back on the plate and dried his hands on the cloth bib his mother had made them all wear.
He stood. “I’m going to excuse myself, if that’s okay.”
“Want me to finish that for you, Scotty,” his father asked, already clearing a space on his placemat.
“Go ahead, Dad.”
Janis’s chewing slowed as a question formed in her eyes.
Take your time, he told her. I’m just going upstairs for some air.
A cool sea breeze fluttered Scott’s hair as he stepped onto the deck. He paced toward the sound of lapping water and leaned his arms against the rough wooden rail. What in the hell’s eating me?
But even as he asked, he knew the answer.
Though he’d taken David to the ground that day, though he’d landed several solid shots, it still felt as though David had won, somehow. It harkened back to being bullied in middle school. The anger he used to feel toward those cretins had been so raw, so … impotent.
Much like how he had felt today. He blew out his breath.
“Want to talk about it?”
Scott turned toward Janis’s voice. She had freed her ponytail; hair breezed past her face in dark red strands.
“Oh, hey,” he said.
“You’ve been sort of quiet since we came back today.” She tapped her temple. “Up here, too.”
It was true. He had clamped off his thoughts so she couldn’t read them. There were still parts of himself he was reluctant to share with her. His insecure parts, especially.
“I’ve just been thinking a lot about today.”
“Hm.” Janis arrived beside him. She followed his gaze into the darkness, her shoulder resting against his.
“The thought of David getting off Scot free…”
“The authorities took their crack,” Janis said. “We need to let it go.”
“We do? Why? Because David said so?” Anger flashed hot behind his eyes.
She looked at him for a long moment. “No, Scott. Because there’s nothing more to be done.”
“You said that you felt something different about them.” He calmed his breathing. “I don’t have your powers, obviously, but I felt it, too. The coldness. They’re bad people, Janis, and they’re up to something.”
“It sounds like someone’s working on another theory.”
“Well, you have to admit the case for vampirism is back on the table. They all but admitted to being bloodsuckers. And did you notice how all four were wearing sunglasses?”
Janis made another noncommittal noise.
“I’m telling you, this thing is going to escalate further,” Scott said. “First it was break-ins, now its murdering dogs, sucking them dry. Oh, ‘for now, anyway’—that’s what he said—which tells me that humans could be next on the menu. And it all has to do with their ‘delicate work’ that he mentioned. That’s what you’ve been feeling. That’s the bad thing that’s going to happen.”
Janis didn’t appear convinced.
“All right,” he said, “what?”
“I won’t deny that the ominous feelings are still stirring around inside me, and I won’t deny that I did feel something off about them. But the feelings don’t … fit.” She manipulated her hands like she was trying to seat a square peg in a round hole. “Not directly, anyway.”
“But there is a connection?”
“Possibly. But what’s this really about, Scott?”
She looked at him so frankly that for a moment Scott’s mind felt like a large-print book. To break eye contact he kissed her forehead. “I’m coming around to your way of thinking.”
“And what way is that?” she asked.
“You once said these abilities are ours. No one else’s. That while you were honored to put them in the service of your country, you weren’t going to stop being human. I’m saying the same thing. We need to prevent whatever they’re planning. For the sake of Murder Creek.”
Beneath his glowing show of altruism, Scott hid a red-smoldering burn for vengeance.
“So you’re suggesting we become Murder Creek’s law enforcement for the next four days?” Janis asked.
“More like private detectives.”
“Scott, the Program would freak.”
“The Program doesn’t have to know. They’re staked out around Murder Creek, remember? Not actually inside the town lines.” The faint whine of a motor boat rose above the wind, and Scott wondered if it was being powered by one of the agents assigned to protect them.
Janis held up her Champions-issued watch. “What about these?”
“All they’ll know is that we’re tooling around town,” Scott said, referring to the positional locators inside the watches. “They won’t have the slightest idea what we’re up to.”
“And J.R.?”
Scott started to answer, then stopped. He saw Markus holding a switchblade to his dog’s throat while David stroked his head of curls. Word on the street is that there’s a bloodsucker on the loose. Or bloodsuckers. Without his laser, Scott had only been able to stand and watch.
“We’ll do as David says,” Scott replied, the taste in his mouth turning bitter. “We won’t venture into Murder World, and we’ll keep the police out of it.”
“Assuming I go along with this,” Janis said, which usually meant she would, “where would we begin?”
“Their criminal records.”
“So, we’re just going to walk up to Chief McDermott and ask for them?”
“No. He said they were in the process of transferring the paper records to a computer system. I doubt they’ll be on a network, a town this size, which means I’ll need to get close enough to— ”
“We are not breaking into the police station,” Janis cut in.
“No, not the station. The post office next door.”
“A federal crime. Even better.”
11:05 p.m.
A set of headlights swept through the post office’s front window, chilling Janis’s heart. She held her breath until the shadows had swelled back around the particleboard station that concealed her and Scott.
“Do you have your pen ready?” he asked.
They were sitting cross-legged on opposite sides of an outlet beneath a wall of P.O. boxes, but Scott was presently on the other side of that wall, inside the police station. Energetically speaking.
After lock-picking them into the post office, Scott had found the secluded outlet and concentrated into it, navigating a network of wires to arrive at one of the computer’s power supplies. With a thought, he fired it up. From there, he jumped to the hard drive to begin the data mining.
Pretty cool, Janis had to admit.
“Hit me,” she said, her pen poised over a small notepad.
“I’ve got full names.” His voice sounded distant, almost like he was sleep talking. “David Dacula, Paulo Ruthaven, Duane Arnaud, and Markus Lester. Their listed addresses are the same. Cemetery Road.”
“How appropriate.” Janis scribbled the information down.
“And now for their crimes.” He was silent for a moment, and Janis imagined him sorting through the bits of data, compiling
them into something sensible. “A lot here, but it’s small stuff, mostly. Loitering. Vandalism. Breaking into abandoned buildings.” Disappointment seemed to weigh on his words. “Some knocks for petty drug possession. Nothing about theft.”
“And no animal cruelty either, huh?” Janis asked, surprised herself.
“But this seems odd…”
“What?”
“In almost every case, the charges were reduced or dropped.”
“Maybe Murder Creek has a lenient judge. He or she did deny the search warrant.”
But Scott was already shaking his head. “I’m cross checking with other files. In almost every other case where similar crimes were committed, there’s punishment. A fine. Ten days. Fifteen. Community service. But with these guys…” He paused as though reviewing their information. “Nothing.”
“A special relationship with the judge, then?” Janis asked.
“It looks that way. Jot this down: ‘RP.’”
“Okay. What does it mean?”
“It’s on their files’ headers.” He fell quiet. Janis could feel him scouring the data for what the abbreviation might mean. “Nothing about it in the database. Must be a department code.”
Janis tried to work it out in her head. Repeat Problem? Reprobate? In the end, she circled the abbreviation twice. She peeked around the particleboard station. Though the sidewalk and street were empty, she felt as though she and Scott were treading on the shrinking sand in an hourglass.
“All right, Tron, if that’s everything…”
“Whoa, this is worth getting down,” Scott said. “Their birthdates. Markus is the youngest of the group.”
“That’s what I would’ve guessed.”
“Wanna take a stab at his age?”
Janis shrugged. “Sixteen? Seventeen?”
“Try forty-two.”
“As in years old?” Janis stared at Scott’s closed eyes. “You can’t have the right person.”
“It’s him. The information on last night’s arrest is right here. My name’s even in the report. According to the other records, Paulo and Duane are forty-four. And our boy David? He’s four years shy of a half century.”
Janis revisited the cold energy she had felt coming off them that day. She had compared the energy to the dead. But could Scott be right? Could the energy she felt have been … undead?
Another light swept through the front window. But not from a car.
With a gasp, Janis pulled Scott against her. The flashlight beam searched one side of the particleboard station and then the other. Janis made them as narrow as she could, leaning so they remained inside the moving box-shaped shadow. After several seconds, the beam fell away.
In the ensuing darkness, just as Janis was relaxing, a key scraped into the front door.
8
The sudden pressure of Janis’s body against his shocked Scott from the system. The data dissolved away. Like a retracting power cord, he felt himself being zipped from the computer, his consciousness backtracking along the building’s wiring until he blasted from the outlet.
The post office wavered into focus.
“Mmm,” he murmured, nestling into Janis’s warmth, “that feels nice.”
“Hush, dummy. There’s someone at the door.”
Scott picked up the sound of a key in the lock and froze.
“It’s all right,” she whispered near his ear. “I’m jamming the bolt.”
“Can you feel who it is?”
Her head nodded against his. “It’s Detective Buckner. And if he’s responding to a report of two people breaking in here … We’re just going to have to wait him out, hope he doesn’t call for backup.”
Scott reached up to the brim of his fishing hat to make sure he was still wearing it. The hats had been Janis’s idea, “to make us harder to identify,” she had said, stuffing her red hair up under hers.
A great idea, it was turning out.
A minute later, the scraping stopped. Footsteps receded from the door.
“He’s going next door to the station,” Janis said. “This might be our best chance.”
She stood and helped Scott to his feet. He staggered behind her. Without his Champions helmet, which eased his way in and out of data systems, the excursions took him longer to recover from.
At the door Janis peered through the plate glass, eyes large in the dark, and twisted the bolt. She waved for him to follow her outside. As she closed the door, Scott fished his thieving wallet from his front pocket. He had barely inserted the pick beneath the tension wrench when the lock snapped closed, seemingly of its own.
“Wha— ?”
“C’mon,” Janis whispered. “There’s no time.”
He stuffed his tools away as he ran to catch up with her. “Why didn’t you do that when we got here?”
“I know how much you like your toys.”
She had him there.
They crossed the street and jogged two and a half blocks toward the waterfront before turning into an alleyway. They buried the fishing hats in a Dumpster and pulled a pair of beach cruisers from behind it—their getaway vehicles. Scott didn’t feel too bad about trashing the hats—salt-stiff things his father had found on one of his beach-combing expeditions.
They pedaled hard to Beach Drive, then coasted to catch their breath. Save for the rumble of their thick tires over the asphalt, all was quiet.
“Admit it,” Scott said, “that was kind of fun.”
Janis narrowed her eyes at him before allowing a smirk. “All right. Kind of.”
“And educational. We learned some things.”
During their flight, Scott had been contemplating the data. A long list of crimes but no real punishment. The designation “RP.” And their ages—if that didn’t substantiate his vampire theory, Scott didn’t know what would.
“There could be other explanations,” Janis said, apparently picking up the last thought.
“Oh, c’mon. Like what?”
“Some sort of genetic condition…”
“They’re not related.”
“Plastic surgery, then.”
“You think they can afford plastic surgery?” Scott snorted. “They raided my dad’s closet, for crissake.”
“Well, some people age better than others. Look at Dick Clark. His face hasn’t changed in thirty years.”
“Now you’re grasping.”
“I’m just saying— ”
A loud blip sounded behind them. Janis’s back-turned face lit up blue and red. Scott swiveled as well. A police car had coasted up behind them. The blip sounded again: a command to pull over.
Great.
Stay cool, Janis thought in his head.
They glided their cruisers to the top of a driveway and set them on their sides. The police car stopped behind them, its swirling lights going dark. Scott tried to squint around the headlights. The door opened and slammed shut. A tall, solid figure bisected the car’s brights.
“Good evening,” Detective Buckner said.
“Good evening,” they answered together.
“A little late to be out riding.”
“We weren’t ready to go to sleep,” Scott said, “so we thought we’d— ”
“Can I ask where you’ve been?”
Detective Buckner had arrived in front of them and was looking from Janis’s face to his. Something official in his eyes told Scott, I may be a junior on the force, but I’ve been doing this long enough to know when someone’s lying.
Scott’s throat tightened.
“We just took a loop around downtown and now we’re heading back,” Janis said.
“I see.” Detective Buckner watched her for another moment as though trying to decide something.
Janis dipped her chin and grasped her opposite arm at the elbow. She was putting the social engineering component of their Champions training into practice, posturing herself to suggest that she and Scott had just been caught kissing or something—not fleeing the scene of a crime.
/> Scott struggled with what to do with his own arms. In the end, he folded them across his chest.
“I see,” Detective Buckner repeated, but in acceptance now. “You didn’t happen to come across anyone else on your bike ride?”
“A few cars,” Scott said, finding his voice again. “A couple of people out walking.”
“Were any of them wearing fishing hats?”
Looking to Janis, Scott mirrored her tilted head and thoughtful expression. They waited the appropriate second before beginning to shake their heads slowly. “No…,” Scott said, drawing out the word as though searching his memory one final time. “Not that I can think of.”
“Me, neither,” Janis said.
Detective Buckner nodded, also in apparent acceptance.
“Has there been another break-in?” Scott asked.
“No, just a report of suspicious activity. Why don’t you two head on home.” Detective Buckner told them goodnight and wheeled around.
He was halfway to his car when Scott called after him. “Whatever happened with David and those guys?”
Janis, who had been stooping for her bike, shot him a “what in the world are you doing?” look.
Detective Buckner turned. “Judge denied the warrant request. Said we couldn’t hold them anymore.” A note of weariness pulled on his voice, telling Scott he’d been dealt that disappointment before.
“The judge believed them?” he asked in half-forced indignation. He still couldn’t stand the thought of David getting off without so much as a slap on the wrist.
Detective Buckner sighed. “David knows a lot of legal tricks. I think some around here have given up trying to get anything to stick on him. Not me. If he gives you any more trouble, I want to know about it.”
For a moment, Scott thought about reporting that day’s encounter in the alleyway. He enjoyed the thought of David being squeezed again. But then he remembered the threat to harm J.R. That killed the idea.
“We will,” he said.
Detective Buckner was turning to leave a second time when his gaze fell to Scott’s left hip. The detective paused, his brows drawing in.
Scott looked down and felt his heart leap halfway to his mouth. The top of his thieving wallet was showing. In his haste to flee earlier, he hadn’t stuffed it to the bottom of his pocket. Even worse, a pick was poking up from its sleeve.
XGeneration (Book 5): Cry Little Sister Page 5
