Jeffery Deaver - Solitude Creek

Wes had watched then pedalled off, not fast, not scared, like no worries.

The next day at school, Donnie’d cornered him and said, ‘The fuck you were looking at yesterday?’

And Wes said, ‘Nobody special.’

‘Fuck you,’ Donnie’d said. Not being able to think of anything better. ‘You tell anybody what you saw and you’re fucked.’

Wes said, ‘I coulda told somebody but I didn’t. ’Cause, duh, you’re here and not behind bars.’

‘Fuck off.’

Wes just walked away slow, like he’d biked away the day before.

No cares...

Then a couple days later Wes came up to Donnie in the hall and gave him a copy of Hitman , the video game where you could go around fucking people up, killing them for assignments and even strangling girls. He said, ‘My mom won’t let me play. But it’s a good game. You want it?’

Then a week later Wes was sitting outside and Donnie came by and said, ‘I couldn’t play it, I don’t have Xbox, but I got Call of Duty . I traded it at Games Plus. You want to play sometime?’

‘My mom won’t let me play that either. At your house, yeah.’

It took a couple weeks of games and pizza and just hanging out before Wes said, ‘My father’s dead.’

Donnie, who’d heard, said, ‘Yeah, I heard. Sucks.’

Nothing more for another week. Then Donnie sat down at the lunch table and they talked about shit for a while and asked, ‘I heard your dad was FBI. Somebody killed him?’

‘Accident.’

‘Like a car?’

‘A truck.’

Wes sounded as calm as Donnie’s mother after she took her little white pills.

‘You want to fuck up the driver?’

‘Yeah, but he’s gone. Didn’t even live here.’

‘Wish somebody’d run into my father. Don’t you want to fuck things up sometimes?’

‘Explode, yeah,’ Wes had said. ‘And my mom’s going out with this guy. A computer guy. He’s okay. He hacks code real good. But it’s like my dad never even existed, you know. And I can’t say anything.’

‘’Cause you’ll get the crap beat out of you.’

Wes had just repeated, ‘Explode.’

They hung out some more and finally Donnie let him into the Defend and Respond Expedition Service game. He needed a partner because Lann, fuck him, had moved.

Donnie, who spent hours a day at video games, had made up the game himself. Defend and Respond Expedition Service. But they thought of it as what it really was: DARES. Well, dares .

Donnie and now Wes were on one side, Vincent and Nathan on the second. One team dared the other to do something totally fucked up: steal something, shoot pictures up a girl’s skirt, piss on a teacher’s lesson plan. You got a point if you met the challenge — and came back with proof. At the end of the month, whoever had the most points won. They wrote it up like a board game with fake countries and codes and names — Darth and Wolverine — so that any parents looking the game over would just think it was like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or whatever.

Wes hadn’t been sure about joining at first. Donnie’s crew wasn’t Wes’s flavor. But Donnie could see he was interested and, after the first couple dares, even though he only watched Donnie’s back, it was way clear that he got a high out of it. Like he’d almost smiled in Asilomar that time, watching Donnie and Nathan beat the crap out of the whiny little Lat.

But would he really come around? Donnie Verso wondered again.

He walked into Starbucks, got a coffee and sat down next to Wes, who was texting. He glanced up, nodded and put his phone away.

‘Hey.’

They bumped fists.

For the next ten minutes they talked, in whispers, about how best to get into Goldshit’s garage and steal their bikes back. Wes thought it was smart not to do it just the two of them but get Nathan and Vincent too.

Donnie thought that wasn’t a bad idea.

After a few minutes, Wes said, ‘I heard Kerry and Gayle’ll be at Foster’s. Want to go up there?’

‘Is Tiff with them?’

‘I don’t know. I just heard Kerry and Gayle.’

‘K. Let’s go.’

They headed out and turned north, making for the old department store, now a restaurant — at least on the first floor.

They got about one block and Donnie laughed and slapped Wes’s arm. ‘Look who it is.’

It was that prick Rashiv. Mrs Dance had mentioned him the other night. Donnie and his DARES crew had wailed on him about six weeks or so ago. Donnie didn’t quite know why, maybe because Rashiv wasn’t even a democratic US citizen and he should go back to where he came from, Syria or India or wherever. But mostly they’d pounded on him and pulled his pants down and launched his book bag into the water off Lovers’ Point because it was something to do.

And here he was now.

Rashiv glanced up and, terror in his eyes, saw Donnie and Wes walking right toward him. They were on Lighthouse, the main commercial street in Pacific Grove, and plenty of people were around so the kid didn’t think he was going to get lashed but he still looked plenty scared.

‘Yo, bitch,’ Donnie said.

Rashiv nodded. He was a way skinny little guy.

‘Whatchu up to, bitch?’

A shrug. ‘Nothing.’ Looking for a place to run, just in case Donnie decided to lash on him even with people around.

Wes just looking at him with this blank expression.

‘Hey, Wes.’

No response from Wolverine.

Rashiv said, ‘Haven’t seen you for a while. I called.’

‘Busy.’

Donnie said, ‘ You been busy too, Rashit?’ It was funny how a question could be both friendly and threatening.

‘Sorta. Yeah. You know, school.’

Wes said, ‘What’s that?’ Squinting at a book the boy was carrying.

‘Just some manga.’

‘Let me see.’

‘I don’t—’

Wes lifted it away. He laughed in shock. ‘Japanese edition of Death Note — it’s signed by Ohba.’

Shit, Donnie thought. Holy shit. One of the best, kick-ass manga comics of all time. And signed by the author? Donnie said, ‘I figured you’d beat off to Sailor Moon .’

Death Note was about a high-school student who has a secret notebook that gives him the power to kill anyone just by knowing their name and face. Fuck, this was pure solid, the most righteous of any manga or anime in the world.

Wes flipped through it. ‘I’m going to borrow it.’

‘Wait!’ Rashiv said, eyes wide.

‘I’m just going to read it.’

‘No, you’re not! You’re never going to give it back. My parents brought it to me from Japan!’ Rashiv reached forward and gripped Wes’s arm. ‘No! Please!’

Wes turned to him with a look that sent some ice even down Donnie’s back. ‘Get your hand off me. Or you know what?’ He nodded toward Donnie. ‘We’ll totally fuck you up.’

The boy dropped his hand and stared in pure misery as Donnie and Wes walked leisurely away, sipping their coffee.

And with that — totally fuck you up — Donnie knew that, at last, Wes was one of them.

Dance’s Pathfinder careened along the hilly stretch of Highway 68.

Not a good vehicle to be executing these maneuvers.

And not a good driver to be attempting them. Kathryn Dance had her talents but motoring wasn’t one of them.

‘Where are you, Michael?’

‘Twenty minutes. There’s a cruiser there now. CHP happened to be nearby.’

‘I’ll be there in three.’

Whoa, a faint skid and a blare of horn. You’re allowed to honk angrily at a large Nissan SUV straying over the centerline toward you, even if there is a flashing blue light on the dashboard.