by Jeff Strand
It was dark out already. Wow. Today had just flown by.
"You killed Dewey!" Lou shouted from the cage.
"I know!"
"Why? Who does that?"
"It wasn't completely on purpose!"
"We're screwed!"
"We're not screwed!"
"We couldn't be more screwed!"
George eased up on the gas pedal a bit. It was still snowing and this would be an abysmal time to get into an accident. He made a right turn to help lose any of the men who might pursue them, which was probably all of them.
"Are we really worse off now that he's dead?" George asked.
"Yes! Yes, we are!"
"What if this means our problems are over?" George asked. "Maybe with Dewey dead, we can finally relax?"
Mr. Dewey's corpse slumped over and hit the dashboard.
"Have you lost your mind?" Lou asked.
"A little, yeah."
"Why did you shoot him?"
"I told you! He moved aggressively! Don't blame me! If you had both hands then you would've been up here driving and keeping him covered at the same time just like I was, and you would've done the exact same thing!"
"No, I wouldn't have!"
"I guess we'll never know!"
"Couldn't you at least have shot him in the leg? That would've stopped his aggression."
"I'm not saying that I weighed every option."
"You said I would've done the same thing!"
"You would have! In my place, you would have made an equally poor decision."
George checked all of the mirrors. There was not, at the moment, any sign of anybody chasing after them. That wasn't going to last.
Just ahead there was a tiny Mexican restaurant that looked dumpy enough not to have security cameras. He pulled into the parking lot, drove around to the back of the building, stopped the van, reached across Mr. Dewey's body, opened the door, and shoved his corpse out onto the ground. Then he rolled down the window to hide the blood on the glass, and drove away.
"I can't help but feel that somebody will find him," said Lou.
"We can't drive around with a dead body in the front seat. Who cares if they find him? It'll be something to distract the police. We probably should have dumped him right in the middle of the road."
Damn. They really should have dumped him in the middle of the road. Oh well. Too late now.
Okay, yeah, he wished he hadn't killed Mr. Dewey. When you killed somebody with Mr. Dewey's power, a lot of vengeance came your way. But, technically, they were already on his shit list, underlined and in boldface. Would Mr. Dewey have ever stopped seeking his own revenge?
The answer to that was: yes. Because Mr. Dewey was dying of brain cancer. Once his expiration date passed, they would've been more or less fine.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire, then into the volcano.
"Well, what's done is done," said George. He said stupid things like "what's done is done" about as often as he reassured doomed people that everything was going to be all right, but it seemed appropriate in this case. It was done. Mr. Dewey wasn't coming back. They were dealing with werewolves, not zombies.
"Yeah, our lives are done," said Lou, who was also not bringing his A-game to this particular conversation.
"Can you two please stop arguing?" asked Ally. "It's not accomplishing anything."
She was right. She was also thirty years younger, had a hole in her foot, and was in a cage with one of her kidnappers and a ghastly freak, so the fact that she was the one proposing rational discussion was kind of embarrassing.
"Yes, we can," George announced. "Thanks for getting us out of there, Lou."
"Anytime."
In the rear-view mirror, George could see that Eugene was pressed tightly into the corner of the cage, chin against his knees, covering his face with his hand and paw.
"That's Eugene," said George. "Dewey messed him up bad."
"Yeah," said Lou. "I was going to ask about that."
"I don't want to talk about it," said Eugene.
"I can respect that."
"Where are we going?" Ally asked.
George continued to carefully watch their surroundings. Obviously, it was going to be much more difficult to watch for cars full of gun-toting criminals speeding toward them in the dark, but so far things looked okay. It was entirely possible that Mr. Dewey's men wanted to riddle the van with thousands of rounds of ammunition, yet felt it was more prudent to just abandon the warehouse and worry about George and Lou later, since the police would be on their way to investigate the gunshots.
Or they might be right around the corner, ready to fling dynamite at them.
"We're going to get you someplace safe," George told Ally.
"Just pull over and let me out. I'll be fine."
"No. It's got to be a hospital or a police station or something. Well, preferably not a police station. But we can't let you out until we know for sure that we've lost these guys."
"We're closer to my house than a hospital. Just take me there."
George considered that. Thus far, as far as the police knew, Ally was just a fourteen-year-old girl who was a few hours late getting home from school. Even if her mom reported her missing, the house wouldn't be crawling with cops. Sure, somebody might have said that they saw the van outside her house, and maybe somebody noticed that the wolf-girl in the pictures was wearing the same dress as the missing girl, but it should be safe enough to drop her off near her home.
There was the issue that Mr. Reith probably knew her name and where she lived, and the whole werewolf element was something that she'd have to figure out how to deal with, but that wasn't George and Lou's problem. They'd get rid of her and get the hell out of town.
* * *
Shane tilted back his head and breathed deeply, taking in the cold night air.
"Anything?" Robyn asked.
"Nope. Crabs?"
Crabs closed his eyes as he inhaled. Shane could catch the scent of another werewolf from at least a mile away, but Crabs had an even more finely tuned sense of smell. If they kept driving around Tropper, they'd eventually find her.
"I can't smell your daughter yet," said Crabs.
Shane could only smell another werewolf when they were actually in wolf form, but Crabs could smell her even if she was human. In fact, he'd been the one to assure Shane that Ally had inherited his gift.
"Okay. Let's go talk to her mom."
* * *
"What happened to you?" Ally asked Eugene.
"Nothing you need to hear about."
Eugene should've been terrifying to her—okay, he was terrifying—but he also looked so sad that he was more heartbreaking than scary. She couldn't quite bring herself to place a reassuring hand on his knee, but she wanted to.
"At least you're free now."
Eugene nodded. "Yeah. Maybe I can be fixed, a little. They can do amazing things with plastic surgery, right? I think my ribs have healed like this, so they'll have to be re-broken. Do you think doctors have a rib-breaking machine, or do they just...you know what, you should talk to Lou instead."
"Really," said Ally, "you look kind of bad-ass."
"Think so?"
"Definitely."
Eugene smiled. "It's sweet of you to lie to make me feel better. So why are you here?"
"I'm a werewolf."
Eugene's smile disappeared. "Don't tell me you believe that, too."
"I am. I found out this afternoon."
"Come on."
"How do you think George got all ripped up?"
"No offense to George, but it seems like lots of people want to rip him up."
"Maybe, but I did it."
"Can you change now?"
"Please don't," said Lou. "Seriously."
"Well," said Eugene, "if you are a werewolf, then I wish you the best of luck with it."
* * *
There were no police cars at Peggy's house. Shane was simultaneously relieved, because it meant that he could talk to h
is ex-wife in person, and annoyed, because it meant that she wasn't taking their daughter's disappearance seriously enough.
"Both of you wait in the car," he said, as Robyn pulled into the driveway.
"Crabs will wait in the car," said Robyn. "I'm coming with you."
"Peggy hates you."
"She hates you, too. I need to be there to make sure things don't get out of hand."
"Robyn Miles, keeper of the peace," said Crabs.
"Okay," said Shane. "But you can't be antagonistic."
Shane and Robyn got out of the car. The yard needed mowed and Peggy still hadn't gotten that dent in the mailbox fixed. How the hell did the judge give her the house?
"How about I do the talking?" said Robyn, as Shane rang the doorbell.
"I don't need you to do my talking for me. I'm perfectly capable of speaking to her about this matter. I'm going to find out what she knows about Ally, and then leave. No big deal. Quit acting like it's going to be the apocalypse."
The front door opened. Peggy didn't look happy to see him.
He wasn't happy to see her, either. Her face didn't look great—her makeup was streaked and her eyes were puffy from crying—but her post-divorce body pissed him off every time he saw it. Did it occur to her that if she'd kept herself in shape while they were married he wouldn't have slept with other women? (She only knew about Robyn, but there'd been six or seven, not counting prostitutes.)
"Shane," she said, as if he didn't know his own name. She glared at Robyn. "You're not supposed to be here."
"Ally is missing, and you're going to wave a restraining order in my face? Is that what kind of mother you are?"
"I'm sorry, Peggy," said Robyn. "Obviously we're worried and we wanted to find out if you had any information. May we come in?"
"No. You can't. We can talk out here."
"Fine," said Shane. "Be a bitch about it. Let's talk out here instead of inside like civilized human beings."
"Shane! Knock it off!" Robyn gave Peggy an apologetic look that made him want to puke. "I'm sorry. He's really upset about Ally. We all are. You've talked to the police, right?"
Peggy nodded. "They've filed a report. I've been calling all of her friends but nobody knows anything, except that Trista walked most of the way home with her. That's it. That's everything I know so far. She's a teenager; she could've just gone to see her boyfriend and lost track of time."
"She has a boyfriend?" Shane asked.
"Not that I know of. I'm just saying."
"You don't think you'd know if she had a boyfriend?"
"What I'm saying, Shane, is that she is a teenaged girl, and teenaged girls sometimes do things like go off with boys without thinking to call their mothers to let them know where they are. I'm saying that, yes, I'm worried, but it's too soon to think the worst."
"Fine. So basically you have no useful information whatsoever. I'm going to look in her room real quick, and then we'll let you get back to all of the helpful stuff you've clearly been doing to aid in finding Ally."
"I told you that you can't come inside."
"And if you're going to stop me from doing a two-minute search through my own daughter's room to see if there are any clues about where she's gone, then you're putting our differences before Ally's safety, and I don't have to tell you what kind of a parent that makes you."
"The police already looked."
"And they know Ally better than I do?"
Peggy rubbed her forehead as if suffering from a migraine, then stepped out of the way. "Two minutes. Then leave."
"Thank you," said Shane, moving past her. He didn't expect to find any clues in Ally's room. What he needed, and what he would never admit even to Robyn, was to get a fresh scent. He hadn't seen Ally in a few weeks, and though he was sure he could find her if they got close enough, a deep whiff of an article of clothing she'd worn yesterday would be extremely helpful.
It would be even more helpful if Crabs did it, but no way in hell would Robyn or Peggy allow him up in her room, and some things weren't worth fighting over.
He hurried up the stairs and into Ally's room. Wow. It looked like it had actually been cleaned within the past couple of weeks. Incredible.
Shane opened the lid to her clothes hamper and looked inside. There was a pair of light blue cotton panties on the very top, and it was tempting, but he could hear Peggy's footsteps coming up the stairs and she'd have an absolute meltdown if she caught him. He supposed he couldn't blame her.
Instead, he grabbed a nightgown, pressed it to his face and inhaled deeply, then tossed it back into the hamper.
He paced around, pretending to look for clues, as Peggy entered the room.
Seriously, would it have killed her to hop on an exercise bike a couple of times after Ally was born and before their marriage crashed and burned? As far as Shane knew, she wasn't getting any, so obviously her toned body was just to make him jealous about what he couldn't have. As if he cared. If Peggy knew the things that Robyn let him do to her, she wouldn't bother trying to compete.
"What exactly are you looking for?" Peggy asked.
"I don't know. Anything."
"I'm sure she's fine."
"I'm sure you're right."
"I need you to leave now, Shane. I promise I'll call you the second I hear something."
"When did she quit playing the violin?"
"Excuse me?"
"Ally quit, right? Isn't that what you told Robyn? Why didn't you ask me what I thought?"
"We can't micro-manage every aspect of her life."
"Apparently not, since you can't even keep her safe."
"This is absolutely not relevant or appropriate right now. We can discuss it later. For now, I need you to leave before I call the police."
"You're gonna call the cops on me?"
"I don't want to."
"Did I really hear you right? I'm here out of concern for our daughter, who could be in somebody's basement with duct tape over her fucking mouth, and you're threatening to call the cops because I'm lingering too long? Is that what I heard?"
Peggy sighed and turned away. "I don't care what you do. I'm going back downstairs. Stay as long as you want."
That bitch was going to call the cops on him. Shane couldn't believe it. He wanted to change right here and start scattering her body parts all over Ally's room.
He wouldn't do it, not really, but, oh, he would enjoy every second of it.
* * *
No police cars were outside of Ally's home. Perfect. But there was another car in the driveway that hadn't been there before. Plainclothes cop? Private investigator? Concerned friend, relative, or neighbor?
"You recognize that car?" George asked, stopping the van about three houses away.
Ally crawled to the other side of the cage to get a better view. "Yeah! It's my dad's!"
"All right. I'll let you out."
CHAPTER TWENTY
Father/Daughter Reunion
George put the van in park but left the engine running as he got out and walked around to open the back door. If Ally didn't have an injured foot, he would've done this several blocks away, to avoid witnesses, but he'd have a complete meltdown if he released Ally only to have Mr. Dewey's men nab her again before she made it home.
"Lou, come on up front," said George. "Eugene, we can't risk anybody seeing you, and there's no room up there for you anyway, so you're going to have to stay in the cage until we get a new ride."
Eugene shrugged. "Okay with me."
Lou got out of the van, quickly followed by Ally. George didn't expect a hug or an "I'll miss you most of all, George," but he couldn't help feeling weirdly betrayed as she limped off toward her home without a word.
George shut the rear door, then he and Lou got back into the van.
"So...New Zealand?" Lou asked.
"In a minute. I want to make sure she gets inside."
"You're not dropping off a date."
"Yeah, yeah, fine, you're right. Let's go."
/>
* * *
Every step hurt and she might be causing permanent damage to her ankle, as well as getting frostbite from walking in her bare feet, but right now Ally didn't care. She was free! She couldn't believe it. She'd thought she was going to die a horrible death at the hands of several different madmen today, but she was finally free!
Though she had a lot of new issues to work out in her life, for now she wasn't going to worry about anything but seeing Mom again. And Dad.
The back door of Dad's car opened and somebody got out. Ally stiffened a bit but kept walking.
Crabs.
Why had Dad brought him?
She'd only met Crabs once before, and that was plenty. He'd looked at Ally as if he wanted to lick her face. If he'd stopped by again, Ally would've asked Dad to keep him away during her visits, but fortunately he hadn't come back. She suspected that this was at Robyn's request (though she hated Robyn for stealing Dad away, she also couldn't deny that Robyn had always been nice to her) but hadn't wanted to bring up the issue.
"Hello there, young one," said Crabs. "I know some people who are concerned about you."
"I'm okay," she said, stepping up onto the curb with a wince.
"That's a lot of blood. I don't like to see a little girl bleed like that. Let me take you inside to see your mommy and daddy." Crabs reached out his hand.
Ally didn't take it. "I'll be fine."
"I guess you're a big girl now." Crabs walked ahead of her and opened the front door. She stepped past him and called out to Mom that she was home.
* * *
"Is it just me," George asked, "or was that guy seriously creepy?"
"He was a little creepy."
"Did you notice how Ally avoided him?"
"Maybe she's got a creepy uncle. C'mon, George, it's time to go."
"I don't like it. My gut tells me that something's wrong."
"My gut tells me that we're sitting here in a van filled with bullet holes outside the house of a girl we kidnapped today. This is not a good place for us to linger."
"I'm not sure if I get a vote," said Eugene from the cage, "but if I do, I'm voting with Lou. This is a bad, bad, bad place to linger."
