Бентли Литтл - The Disappearance

“I was out.”

“I can see that,” Matt said, taking in Joan and Stacy and their disheveled appearance. He nodded admiringly.

“What happened?” Gary asked again.

“Who the hell knows?” Greg said. “I was asleep, and then the alarm went off and I smelled smoke, and I yelled at Matt to get up, and we grabbed our laptops, and we tried to save your sorry ass, and then people were screaming and the smoke got too thick and we bailed.”

“And here we are,” Matt added.

Joan pulled him aside. “It’s them,” she said.

“I know.”

From off to his left, he overheard one fireman talking to another. “It was an accelerant with a really low flash point, that’s for sure. But I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it was. I never smelled anything like that before in my life. And did you see that burn pattern?” He shook his head. “We need a real investigator on this one.”

“So what do we do?” Joan asked.

Gary didn’t know, but from his point of view right now, their options were narrowing. He didn’t see Father giving up and going away, and every outcome he could imagine involved a confrontation. He thought of his battle with the psycho at the gas station and wondered if another such event was unavoidable.

“Hey,” Greg was addressing Reyn. “Do you know if the school has, like, fire insurance on all this? I lost some valuable stuff in there.”

“Do you think they’ll stop?” Gary asked Joan.

She shook her head. “Never. We crossed Father and we won. That’s not something he’ll ever forgive or forget.”

“But the others… don’t you think they’re grateful to be free? And in the eyes of true believers, doesn’t this make him seem fallible? Won’t he lose followers?”

“Never,” she said again.

“So they’ll keep coming after us.”

“They believe in an eye for an eye,” she said.

Gary met her gaze. “What do you believe?”

Joan turned away, uncomfortable. “I’m not one of them. That’s why we left.”

Stacy was already calling someone on her cell phone.

“Who are—” Reyn began.

“The police. They need to know about this.”

She was right, and Gary found that he was glad she was calling. The cops may have been useless when it came to investigating Joan’s disappearance, but the Bitterweed sheriff’s department had saved his ass back in Texas, and he trusted law enforcement for protection. Wasn’t that their motto? “To serve and protect?” Or “To protect and serve?” The word protect was in there somewhere, and right now he and his friends needed protection. Especially Joan.

Besides, Tucker might be an asshole, but Williams seemed like a good guy. And Gary knew that it would be a huge feather in the detectives’ caps if they were the ones who caught Father. Police and sheriffs’ departments all over the country were looking for the man, and the one that nabbed him would get not only bragging rights among their peers but a whole heap of good publicity.

“When are we going to be able to go back in?” Matt was asking a fireman.

“Not for a while.”

“What if looters steal all my stuff?”

“ No one can get in,” the fireman said. “Not even looters.”

“Thanks for nothing!” Stacy flipped off her phone, scowling. “They said the fire department handles its own investigations,” she reported. “If the police need to be called in, the fire department will decide.”

“Did you remind them about the Homesteaders?” Gary asked. “I mean, the cops were only here an hour ago and now this happens. It seems like things are building. Who knows what could happen by morning.”

“They don’t care.” Stacy shook her head disgustedly.

Matt tapped Gary on the shoulder. “Did you lose a lot of stuff?”

He hadn’t even thought about it. “Yeah, I guess,” he said. The truth was, he didn’t really care. He had more important things on his mind.

Greg breathed deeply. “This might sound weird, but don’t you think this fire smells good? I mean, all fires smell good. But this one really smells good.”

“It does have a distinctive odor,” Reyn told Gary. “I was just thinking that myself. And it smells familiar , though I can’t quite place it.”

Gary,Joan and Stacy sniffed the air. It was more woodsy than would be expected from a dormitory filled with books, clothes and electronic equipment, Gary thought. And maybe it did smell kind of fragrant, like aromatic pipe tobacco. But it was not anything he recognized.

Joan was looking around, scanning the faces of the ever-growing crowd, and Gary asked what she was doing. “Looking for them,” she answered, and he mentally kicked himself. He should’ve done the same thing when they’d first arrived on the scene. If there had been any Homesteaders around after the fire had started, watching from the shadows and waiting to see what happened, they were long gone now.

Firefighters were emerging from the open front doors of the building, dragging dripping, deflated hoses with them. The blaze appeared to be out. No more flames were visible, and even the smoke coming out of the windows had died down to occasional wisps.

Gary glanced over at Reyn’s dormitory, its rectangular bulk dark against the night sky, the refracted red from the fire engine lights reflected in blank windows. Was it next? What about Joan’s room or Stacy’s? Or Brian’s?

“I don’t think we should go back to your place,” he told Reyn. “If they know where I live, they probably know where you live.”

His friend nodded. “Agreed.”

Stacy had her phone out again.

“Who are you calling?” Reyn asked.

“Brian.” She looked down at the small screen. “Wait a minute. He left a text.” Her fingers typed on the tiny keyboard. “He says, ‘Don’t call. Busy.’ What the hell does that mean?”

“His recording,” Gary said. “He’s waiting for the Homesteaders to call him so he can record it.”

“That guy knows his computers,” Reyn admitted. “He might even be able to trace them.”

“I’m calling anyway.” Stacy started pressing numbers.

“Call his cell,” Gary advised.

“That’s the only number I have.”

He must have picked up right away, because she started telling him about the fire. “ Gary’s ,” she said after a short pause. She listened for a moment. “No, I’m saying you should get out, too. You could be next.” She put her hand over the phone. “He says he’s not going anywhere. He’s ready for them if they come.”

“He probably is,” Gary said.

“What?” Stacy said into the phone. She listened again, facing Gary. “He says if they can’t even be bothered to call, to hell with them.” She looked surprised, then took the phone away from her ear. “He hung up on me!”

Gary and Reyn both chuckled.

“You think that’s funny?”

“A little,” Reyn said.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Gary offered.

Stacy faced him. “Yeah? Well, what about us?”

She was deeply frightened, he realized, and while he appreciated Brian leavening the tension and his friend’s bravery gave him hope, she clearly didn’t see it that way. Brian’s attitude had made her feel that even they weren’t taking the threat as seriously as they should. She was even more worried than she had been before.

“I think the most important thing right now,” Reyn said, “is that we continue to vary our routines. For all we know, they have people watching us, have had people watching us ever since we got back. We can’t make it easy for them. Yes, we go to classes at specific times, and we sleep in the same rooms, but we can make everything else a variable. Take different paths to class, eat at different tables or restaurants, make sure we’re not providing them with a blueprint to get at us.”