Kill Monster by Sean Doolittle

Author:Sean Doolittle [Sean Doolittle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2019-03-22T16:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

‘OK, back up,’ Anabeth said. ‘What am I missing?’

‘I’m just saying. Charley’s right.’

‘Right about what? You’re going to have to—’

‘Why are we running from the cops?’

‘Honestly, Ben, I guess I thought we’ve been on more or less the same page this whole time.’

‘I wasn’t thinking clearly before,’ Ben said. ‘Maybe I’m starting to now.’

While Abe had been digging bits of lead from his shoulder, he’d found himself with ample time for thinking. He’d squandered the bulk of that time on a useless recurring question: Why me?

But now he was beginning to see the same question from a different angle. These past few years, Ben had become so accustomed to identifying himself as the principal architect of his own misfortunes that his prevailing blamelessness in this situation was disorienting. But setting aside a little admittedly unauthorized dad time, had he even broken a law today?

Even Anabeth seemed stumped for an answer. ‘I’m still not sure I understand what you’re asking me.’

‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘How is that relevant?’

‘Between the three of us, the water boy, the guys, and whatever corroborating evidence we find in the First Floor IT GoPro archive, shouldn’t we be running to the police?’

Abe tilted her head. ‘I can’t tell if that’s a serious suggestion.’

‘Look, obviously they’re not going to believe some crazy story about a mud monster from out of the past,’ he said. ‘But Gordon strung up hidden security cameras all the way around that van. Twenty bucks says there’s a hard drive rigged up somewhere in there with ten different angles on what happened back at Christine’s. And I know those guys were recording this morning – nobody under twenty-five thinks they did anything if they don’t put it on YouTube.’

‘Hey, Charley,’ Abe said. ‘You’re younger than twenty-five, right?’

‘I’ll be fourteen in three weeks.’

‘Ah! Happy Birthday.’ She reached out and gave his arm a friendly squeeze. ‘So if you went on YouTube and found a video of a mud monster from out of the past attacking people in the woods, what would you think about that?’

Charley shrugged. ‘I’d think it was fake.’

Abe raised her eyebrows at Ben.

‘Yeah, sure,’ Ben said. ‘Fine. But they’ll see something. The time code will put us at my place. Emergency logs will show what time we got to Ashland. I’d have needed a rocket launcher to do that kind of damage to my own house in that amount of time. Then there’s Dr Blotto over there.’ He jerked a thumb back toward Wasserman in the corner. ‘Him and his psycho-stalker scrapbook.’

‘Now you’ve gone back to being unkind.’

‘No good deed goes unpunished,’ Wasserman mumbled.

‘And don’t forget poor Jeeter.’ A horrible thought popped into Ben’s head: If he pulls through. He cursed himself for thinking it, even involuntarily. Then he felt angry for being placed in a position to think it in the first place. ‘As soon as he wakes up, he’ll tell the same story we do. And it happens to be the truth. What else is there?’

‘Well, let’s ponder,’ Abe said.

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