Monsters (Page 83)

“It wasn’t dark yet, but the water was so black Peter used a flashlight. That boat filled and rolled pretty fast. Once you were in the water, you really couldn’t see, had no idea which way was up. I don’t think he or Simon realized Penny and another kid weren’t there until they did a head count,” Hannah said. By then, the fire was out, but the boat had disappeared.

Both frantic, Peter and Simon jumped out of the raft and swam back to the spot where the boat had gone down. What happened next was . . . a little hazy was how Hannah put it. As Peter later told it to the Coast Guard, he and Simon dove a good fifteen or twenty feet, grappled their way through what was left of the hatch, and surfaced in the skeletal remains of the engine room. The remaining air pocket was tiny, no more than a ten-inch gap. Numb with cold and nearly exhausted, Penny was treading water that was up to her chin. The other girl, a townie no one really knew except for the boy who’d brought her aboard, was already dead.

“Peter told them the other girl must’ve gotten snagged on something that held her underwater,” Hannah said. “Simon said the same.”

“Who was she? The girl who died?”

“Amanda . . . Peterson? No, Pederson.” She paused. “You know, I remember that at the time, there was one thing I thought was . . . weird. As soon as the boys got Penny to the surface? Peter screamed at Simon to take care of her and not follow, and then Peter dove back under, on his own, and he was gone a long time. I thought he’d drowned.”

“Why would that be weird?” he asked. “He probably tried to get that girl’s body out.”

“I guess.” Smoothing back her hair with one hand, Hannah rose to go. “Maybe you had to be there, but I know something happened down there, in that boat. I just don’t know what.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because Peter never came back to school,” she said. “And about six months later, Simon tried to kill himself.”

Plopping down on the last step up from the boathouse, Alex decided to steal a few minutes to spaz in private. Chugga-chugging ahead like the little asthmatic engine that could, Darth was already halfway to the house. Or maybe he was daring her to run so he could shoot first, eat second, and ask questions later.

You have lost your mind, honey. She propped her back against a knotty red pine. The pistol knuckled her spine. She’d slipped the capped syringe into a right cargo pant pocket. What was she thinking? Wolf always slept close. If he sniffed or felt that pistol? She was sunk.

So far, all her grand schemes had been pipe dreams of an oh-sodaring getaway. But now, she had a real weapon. Two, if she counted the tanto. (That funky syringe she wasn’t sure about. The more she mulled over that feathery thing, the more she thought: fletchings. Was this some kind of dart?) But no kidding around this time. Execute this just right—blind someone, set a few Changed on fire—she could swipe a couple rifles, have herself some real gun-guns. For that matter, she could’ve shot Darth right then and there. Of course, a twelve-gauge shell in a tiny little gun had to be loud. Still, she could’ve grabbed his rifle and skedaddled before anyone knew what was going on. If she really wanted to throw a monkey wrench into things? Set the house on fire. Those propane canisters she’d found, combined with popcorn-dry, resin-rich pine certain to throw off a ton of sparks—what’s not to like?

So what’s wrong with me? Wolf ’s not here. So it wasn’t a question that she might hurt or kill him. But whoever was left standing might take it out on Wolf. That would be on her. And so what?

Tired of this endless, mental rat race, she reached into her parka, withdrew the candy bar, inhaled memories. Jump, sweetheart. “I agree, Dad.” She slid another nibble of candy onto her tongue. “Live a little.”

Why care about Wolf ? How long was she supposed to be grateful? Wolf was not Chris. She was starting to think like those kidnap victims . . . what was it? Stockholm syndrome? Sympathy with the devil’s more like it. She worried coconut between her teeth. What is this, I kissed a zombie and liked it? He ate part of your shoulder, for God’s sake. So what if he protects you now? He put you in this position—

She suddenly stiffened. Hello. That familiar and yet very weird scent—wolf and not-wolf—was very close, much more so than ever before. Dead ahead, in fact, and practically in her lap. Oh shit. Did it sense easy prey? Here she was, alone, in the open. What help she might count on—hah!—was too distant to do her any good, if Darth even bothered.

Just be calm. The scent hadn’t deepened to And, oh, what big teeth you have, but she felt her heart giddyap in a spastic gallop. She inched her eyes, sweeping up from untrammeled snow to the denser green of the woods and a screen of low cedar—and it was right there, so perfectly still that were it not for its scent, she’d never have known where to look.

What , she thought, are you?

A flare gun? Sighing, Chris massaged his aching temples and let himself sink more deeply into the bed. What the hell had Penny been thinking?

He was alone again, Hannah having locked him in almost a half hour ago, according to the old clock. He could hear her moving around in the kitchen downstairs, caught the chatter of plates and chinks of glass as she put together food to take out to Isaac in the lambing barn. His own lunch still waited. He should probably eat, but the prospect of dragging himself off the bed made him groan and pull a pillow over his eyes to blot out the bright afternoon light. After two weeks spent dreaming, he’d have thought he would never want to lie down again. Yet the creep of a deep weariness was too powerful to ignore, the bed very inviting—and he needed some time to digest all this.

Having burned so bright and hot, Peter’s boat sank fast in water over five hundred feet deep. Neither it nor the dead girl were ever recovered, and so they joined the litter of wrecks at the bottom of the largest and deepest of the Great Lakes. Which meant that Peter’s story—an engine room fire ignited by an electrical short—never could be investigated. According to Hannah, the Coast Guard and then the police questioned them but got nowhere. Simon was the only eyewitness who hadn’t been drinking, and he backed up Peter.

“I knew what I’d seen,” Hannah had said. “But it all happened so fast, I kept thinking I might be wrong. I didn’t know it was even a flare until Simon finally told me. Can you believe Penny still had the gun? After she shot it off, she crammed everything into her pockets.”