Page 21 of Freak Camp (A Monster By Any Other Name #1)

Chapter Five

I t wasn’t easy to convince Dad that Jake was serious about picking up a photography hobby.

Jake ultimately won twenty bucks playing cards with some of the dumb kids at the next junior high—no one his age could beat him in poker—and bought a disposable camera himself.

Taking pictures as they traveled through Arizona and New Mexico was a lot more fun than he expected, and Dad finally caved and helped him pay to have the photos developed.

They looked pretty good, Jake thought, as he stored the packet of photos at the bottom of his duffel bag until they turned, inevitably, north again for Nevada.

Of all the things he’d smuggled into Freak Camp, the photographs were among the easiest. He tucked the envelope into the back of his jeans, under his jacket, with a bag of candy in each pocket.

He smirked at the guard as he strolled through the metal detectors, heading out the exit to the yard while Dad continued on to Special Research.

The guard gave him a skeptical look, but lifted his radio. “Karl, send Baby Freak out. Hawthorne’s kid is here to see him.” An affirmative crackled through the air, and the guard jerked his head toward the building behind Jake. “He’ll be out in a minute.”

Jake nodded curtly before turning away.

Sure enough, Tobias trotted out the side door a minute later. Jake, who had hung back to watch all the doors, jumped forward to meet him. “Hey, Toby, just wait until you see what I—dude, what’s up? Are my shoes more interesting than my face?”

They always went through this—Toby refusing to look him in the eye for the first few minutes of a visit—but normally Jake got a peek of his face and a smile at the start. This time, though, Tobias had his chin tucked close to his chest until Jake’s words snapped his head up.

Jake sucked in a breath, grabbing Toby’s chin and barely noticing when Toby flinched. “What the hell happened?” He leaned in close to examine Toby’s black eye and split, swollen lip.

Tobias swiped his tongue over his cut, fidgeting without pulling away. “Monster fight. It’s not so bad.”

“Shit.” Jake touched his thumb to Toby’s lip, drawing away when Toby winced. “You need some ice.”

Toby tilted his head, confused. “What for?”

“Just . . .” Jake sighed. “Never mind, probably too late now.”

Toby blinked at him with his one good eye. “Doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“Well, that’s good.” Jake smiled crookedly, then reached around Tobias’s shoulders as they walked around the building to one of their secluded spots. “Did they get their ass kicked? The monster who did that to you?”

He felt Toby’s shoulders shrug. “He got hurt too. We all got in trouble.”

Jake blew out his breath. “Yeah, well, that’s bullshit, going after a kid your size. There are plenty of bigger monsters here to pick on.”

Toby’s mouth tugged in a smile. “Monsters don’t care, Jake.”

“Yeah, of course they don’t.” Jake squatted down against the wall, only then remembering the bulge tucked into his back pocket. “Oh, yeah—got something for you.” He twisted to reach back behind him.

Toby brightened, sitting up. “Chips?”

“Nah, M&Ms this time.” He stopped to dig into his pocket and toss a bag to Toby, who quickly tore into it and tossed a big handful into his mouth.

Jake grinned. “You like those, huh?” Toby nodded, chewing happily, and Jake pulled around the photo packet.

“This is the other thing I brought you, what I promised last time—pictures I took over the last month, when we were down south.”

Toby’s left eye went very round. “ You took these?”

“Yep,” Jake said. “Wasn’t that hard.” He spread them out and launched into explaining what was taken where.

Here was one of the stuffed jackalopes he saw in the gas station where he bought the camera.

One later, outside that same stop, of Dad scowling at him while leaning against the Eldorado.

The next six were of different angles of the Eldorado—Jake hadn’t been able to decide what was the best to really show off its glory to Toby.

Next was one of Independence Rock—from pretty far away, Dad hadn’t wanted to stop.

And then a view of the Rocky Mountains, the Eldorado again in the foreground.

Jake hadn’t realized how many pictures he’d taken until they were all laid out in front of them and Toby was staring down at them, fingers cautiously reaching for their edges.

“What the fuck you doing, freak?”

Tobias jumped, and Jake reached automatically for his knife—a bit awkward, because he and Tobias had pressed together to look at the pictures, and Jake’s knife was wedged between his hip and Toby’s—but none of the guards were looking at them.

The same guard that Jake had talked to earlier was heading toward a shapeshifter, who looked terrified.

“I’m talking to you, freak, you think you can just ignore me?

” The guard snagged a hook in the shapeshifter’s collar, jerking him off his feet, and then he saw Tobias and Jake.

He smiled nastily. “Look at that,” he said to the shifter, but kept his eyes on Jake.

“You’re bothering Hawthorne’s kid. I think we ought to have a chat.

Sorry about that, boy.” He pushed the shifter around, and they moved out of sight, the shifter stumbling along.

“My name’s Jake!” Jake called after him, angry and unsettled. The guard made no reply, but Toby’s hand clenched on his jacket.

When Jake turned to him, Toby had shrunk down to where he’d been at the start of the visit, head hanging and shoulders tense. He had dropped the last photo to fold one hand—the one that didn’t have a death grip on Jake’s jacket—tightly over his front ankle.

Jake studied him, and both the adrenaline from the guard’s shout and the happy rush he had felt just a second ago ebbed away, impossible to catch and pull back. It would take a while—maybe longer than he had before Dad was done—to coax Toby to lower his guard again.

He scowled in the guard’s direction, reaching across to touch Toby’s opposite shoulder. Toby glanced up, surprise across his face. Jake didn’t drop his hand, still frowning after the guard. “They’re assholes, aren’t they?”

Tobias made a soft sound, almost like a sneeze. Startled, Jake lowered his head to get a glimpse of Toby’s face, but if it had been a laugh, there was no trace of it now.

***

J ake opened the door expecting pizza and got Child Protective Services.

He saw the cop first and grinned at him automatically. Some kids smiled at their grandmothers for a little extra cash, others knew when to drop a compliment, but Jake knew that around cops it was best to look cheerful, easy. Nothing to hide here, officer.

“Can I help you?” he asked, trying to remember if the guns were visible from the door or if he had moved them into the bedroom to clean them.

The cop smiled back. “Hello. I’m Officer Elden, this is Miss Donatelli. Is your father home?”

Dad was working a nasty case one town over. He’d been gone three days. Two more to go before Jake had permission to worry. “Sorry, no, he just stepped out.”

“Your mother?”

He’d stopped telling the truth after he realized that it got a stronger reaction than any lie he could invent. “Divorced,” he said.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Jake.” He racked his brain for the last name Dad had on the credit card. It had started with an H, of course. Holly? Harold?

“Your father is Larry Hayes? This man?” The cop flashed a picture too fast for Jake to see, but it was probably Dad.

“Yeah.”

The cop stepped closer. “Can we come in, son?”

“What division does she work for?” Jake asked, nodding at the thin, dark-haired woman, Miss Donatelli, behind Officer Elden.

“Protective Services,” she said.

Jake knew what that meant. He looked old for thirteen, but that still barely put him at driving age. “No,” he said, and slammed the door hard enough to push the cop’s foot back over the threshold. He locked, bolted, and put the stupid little chain on the door.

“Jake! Jake, open the door! We just want to talk.”

Jake ran to the single battered telephone in the room and stumbled over the number for Dad’s new mobile phone. It rang, a counterpoint to his racing heart and the pounding on the door. “Pick up, pick up, pick up,” he muttered under his breath.

The second he heard the click of the phone answering, he started talking. “Dad, it’s CPS, they’re—”

“Jake, you know fucking better than this,” Dad’s voice snapped over him. Jake could hear screaming in the background, the sound of a shotgun being reloaded.

“I know, but they’re at the door, and I—”

Something crashed in the background, something snarled. “They’re just fucking human, Jake. Run, I don’t know, I don’t have time for this right now. Deal with it!”

Then the phone went dead.

“Okay,” Jake said. “I’ll deal with it.”

He pushed the rickety table against the front door, threw into his duffel his sawed-off shotgun and Dad’s box of fake IDs and credit cards, and climbed out through the bathroom window before the super could arrive to unlock the door.

***

W hen Roger Harper picked up the phone and heard Leon’s voice, he checked his pulse to make sure he was still alive.

He was fairly sure that the last time they had talked, the conversation had ended with Leon promising to see him next when he spat on his grave, and with Roger kicking his ass out of the house with a shotgun pointed at Leon’s head.

“Roger,” Leon said, hoarse enough that Roger had to strain to hear. “I can’t find him.”

Roger froze. There were only two him s in Leon Hawthorne’s life. One was the nebulous enemy that Leon blamed for Sally’s death, the epitome of all monsters—a damn crack dream, Roger had told him more than once, not that he expected Hawthorne to listen —and the other was Jake.

“Something got Jake? Fuck, what grabbed him and how ? Your boy is damned careful.”

Leon made a sound through the phone that sounded like he was choking on blood, half rasp, half wet. Roger paused. “Leon, it got you too?”