Page 112 of The Boy Who Cried Bear
Before I can answer, Dalton waves me to silence. He peers into the forest, as if he heard something. A rustling deep in the forest has us both looking, only to see a fox fleeing, having caught Storm’s scent.
Dalton stays still even after the fox is gone. He keeps looking and listening. Then he nods for us to continue.
“It’s the damn photos,” I say, speaking lower now, more aware that my voice is carrying.
“You send the guard to search, and he comes running back with irrefutable proof that Joe is a pedophile?”
“Except he doesn’t come running back with it,” I say. “He comes back with bloodied bandages and claims to have found photos. Still, not wanting to touch them also makes sense, so maybe I’m just…” I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“The photos are a bit much,” Dalton says. “Five minutes of searching, and they happen to notice a loose floorboard, look under it, and find child pornography?”
“Yes,” I say. “But if we know Jay tricked us and went after Max, then what does it matter if they lie about finding evidence he’s a pedophile? Rogers doesn’t want us in his camp, so he serves us answers on a silver platter. Here’s your nice and tidy solution. Jay was Sandy’s partner in kidnapping a child for the purposes of pedophilia. There, now go away, please.”
“He’s serving us a tidy solution, not giving us a scapegoat, because we know Jay did go after Max. The ‘why’ isn’t important. Which…” He rubs his chin. “I hate to say it, but I’d do the same damn thing to keep him out of Haven’s Rock. If the culprits are caught, that’s enough.”
We want to see Rogers as the bad guy. We fulfilled our dream of starting our own Rockton, and this asshole is stomping all over it. He’s rain on our wedding day, and it isn’t ironic, it’s just fucking shitty bad luck.
Except Rogers isn’t the villain. He’s the antagonist. The opposing force that stands in the way of our perfect happy ending. Are we going to paint him as the villain when he’s doing exactly what we’d do in his place to protect our community?
I’m saved from my thoughts by Dalton’s hand flying up. He tilts his head, listening, and scans the forest. Then he resumes walking, but we’ve barely made it five steps before Storm stops. Her head swings left, and she lifts her nose to sniff the air. Then she whines.
I glance at Dalton. He nods, meaning whatever he thought he heard came from that direction. We take out our guns. Dalton looks up into the trees. He’s mentally marking this space so he can find it again, in case this isn’t the shortcut it seems to be.
I ask Storm to bring up the rear. Dalton takes lead, gun at the ready. It’s open enough here that even Storm can move without crashing through the forest. When Dalton stops, I look past him and catch a glimpse of a figure maybe twenty feet away.
Dalton pauses. He shifts left and then right. After a grunt, he says, “I can see you there, Jay. I know you’ll have a gun so I’m not coming closer. Tell me how you want this to go down.”
Silence, and Dalton sighs.
“Look, either we chase—” he begins.
Jay steps out with his hands up, gun held over his head.
“I need help,” Jay says.
“Yep, I’d say you do,” Dalton says. “But I’m going to need you to put that gun away.”
Jay switches the gun to his left hand. “There. This has to be good enough, because I’m not lowering it. We need to talk. Whatever you think is going on here, you’re wrong.”
Dalton’s lips tighten. He’s considering whether to insist on Jay putting down the gun. I don’t interfere. I’m fine either way.
“Talk,” Dalton says.
Jay casts an anxious look around. “Not here. You need to take me back to your town.”
“After you talk.”
“Then you’re going to need a séance, because if we’re here for more than sixty seconds longer, I’ll be dead. Did they send you to find me? Did they promise to let you handle it and bring me back?” He snorts. “They followed you, and the only reason they haven’t shot me by now is that they knew you’d hear them if they got closer. They had to hang back while you were searching. Now they’re sneaking up, and in sixty seconds, I’ll be lying in the dirt with a bullet in my brain.”
“You tried to kill a kid from our town, and now you’re asking us to take you there?”
“I didn’t try to kill anyone. I was trying to save him. I don’t care whether you take me to your town or just take me someplace safe. Thirty seconds from now, I will be dead. They’ll tell you I was dangerous, and they had to put me down like a rabid dog.”
“Start walking,” Dalton says. “That way.”
He points. Jay turns around, hands still up. I move in behind him while Dalton and Storm bring up the rear.
We walk in silence for about fifty steps. Then Jay says, under his breath, “I am so fucked. So goddamn fucked.” His voice goes a little louder, still quiet. “I just wanted a job. Pay off my student debt. Can you believe that’s what I was worried about? Work up here for a year, and I’d pay it off, and they’d help me get onto a police force. That’s what they promised. Good money for a temporary job.”
