Page 44 of Freak Camp (A Monster By Any Other Name #1)

Jake still wouldn’t look at him, his hands moving over his jeans where the gun and the paper used to be, as though he had lost something and wasn’t sure what to do with his hands now that they were gone.

“You gotta tell me first, Rog. What do you think? What do you think now that you know I’m a f-freak lover and I’m getting a monster out of Freak Camp for my own perverted ends, or whatever the fuck you want to say?

’Cause I’m getting Toby out. I’m fucking getting him out and you can’t fucking stop me.

” Jake’s head snapped up, snarling the last few words into Roger’s face.

He resisted the urge to back away from the raw rage and pain on Jake’s face. “That’s going to be hard,” he said at last. “You . . . you got all the paperwork?”

From the look on Jake’s face, he hadn’t expected that. Good. Roger suspected that if he had said anything that Jake had expected, the kid would have gone for his throat, unarmed or not.

Jake took a shuddering breath and collapsed into a chair, the one farthest away from Roger’s shotgun. He put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. The paper crackled under his elbow.

Roger inched closer, like Jake was a wild animal that might bite if startled. He wasn’t going to touch him yet. Not until he knew what the hell was going on.

“Who cut you off, kid?” he asked again, easing down into his chair. He needed the answer to that question. And he needed whiskey. As soon as he got the one, he figured he’d get them both the other.

Jake didn’t look up, and when he spoke, the rage was gone from his voice. Roger hadn’t noticed before how much of what made Jake Jake was his humor, anger, and swagger. Now, with Jake’s voice void of emotion, Roger had to stop his hand from twitching toward the holy water again.

“Who do you think?”

Damn you to hell, Leon , Roger thought. Couldn’t you have just . . . The thought ended there, because he had no idea what Leon could have done differently. Leon could have done so much better, but Roger knew that Leon would have only one response.

“Fuck,” he said. Now it was his turn not to look at Jake.

“But . . . I’m here. I’m not . . .” going to be an asshole like that bastard who calls himself your father , “. . . going to say a damn thing. I mean, I practically . . .” He took a deep breath.

It was a day for breathing carefully. Too many things were too close to shattering.

“It’s good to see you, kid. You’re welcome here, just as you’ve always been. ”

Jake’s shoulders shook, and for a second Roger thought he was crying. Then he realized that it was laughter, the closest thing a Hawthorne could get to weeping on someone else’s patio.

“Thanks,” Jake rasped at last, when he’d stopped shaking and looked up again.

His eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, but Roger couldn’t see any sign of tears.

Jake forced a smile onto his face, and it was one of the most horrible things Roger had seen recently.

Not in his lifetime—demons and werewolves and shifters and ghosts had given him some pretty devastating memories—but perhaps in the last week or so.

“So,” Jake said. “You’re okay with the . . . with Toby. And me. Getting him out, I mean that’s . . .” He shook his head. “I’m all fucked up, Roger. And it’s not Tobias’s fault!”

“Didn’t think it was,” Roger replied. “Yeah, I’m okay with it.” Would I have called you if I didn’t think that kid deserved better?

“Good.” Jake dropped his hands to the paper again, smoothing it over and over.

Roger figured that Jake was going to have to print a new form before he turned it in to anyone.

“Then, would you be okay with . . . I need another couple signatures to say that I’m .

. . sane, and shit like that, and I’m not sure .

. . I mean, there are a few other people, but .

. .” Jake stopped. “If you don’t want to, I’ll understand.

The ASC and the Dixons can be . . . fucked up.

I know that some people don’t want to get on their radar. ”

Like Leon , Roger thought. Yeah, he didn’t want to mess with the ASC either.

But then again, he also wanted to boot them in the ass, so maybe this could count as both .

“Sure. No problem. Hand me a pen.” If I wasn’t such a coward, I would have done this myself when I realized how bad it had gotten.

And when I realized that that kid wasn’t the worst monster in the room. Not even close.

“Good.” Jake nodded, and his expression turned into something closer to an actual smile. “Good.”

He still looked messed up, but he had a bit more sanity in his face, and that made Roger feel easier. Last thing they needed was two crazy Hawthornes. One— fuck you, Leon— was more than enough. “You can stay here, if you want. And pull the Eldorado up. You’ve still got her, right?”

Jake’s mouth quirked. “Yeah, she and I made a fast getaway.” He stood, stretching like he’d been in a cramped position for far too long.

“I’ll bring her around. Then we can start on the paperwork.

Fuck, Roger, you should see the forms I need to fill out.

And I can’t even forge them, because the ASC is going to background check everything. Fucking bureaucracy.”

Roger thought that worrying about a little paperwork was better than Jake thinking about his life crashing down around his ears. And he could remind the kid that he had more people in his life than Leon.

“I’m a big bundle of excitement,” he said dryly. “You can crash in the guest room as long as you want, and I’ll do my best with the paperwork. And if you need more than just my signature, let’s call up Alex Rodriguez. I’m sure she’d . . . understand too.”

Jake looked up, frowning. “Who?”

“An old friend over in Tucson. Another old-school hunter who works part-time like me. She runs an old mission.”

Now that the whole thing was rolling, he was a little nervous thinking about Jake getting a monster out of the camp, taking charge of another life that had been fucked up that much—and might still be dangerous, after all, the kid had been in Freak Camp —but it was too late to retreat now.

He’d do his best to keep everyone sane and off each other’s throats. Oh, he could see fun times in his future.

Maybe he’d finally shoot Leon.

That shouldn’t have sounded as appealing as it did at the moment.

***

C rusher ground Tobias’s face into the wall, twisting his arm behind him, and pushed his hips into Tobias’s ass.

“You think you can disrespect me, freak? I saw that look on your face.”

Tobias felt Crusher’s erection, felt the hand that wasn’t holding him against the wall sliding down his hip, and he wondered, almost idly, when he would have to take the next step and break the guard’s arm.

Not that that was a smart idea, or an idea that would let him live past today, or even an idea that would actually stop anything, but Tobias knew that he wouldn’t be able to control the freewheeling panic spinning under the surface of his careful, blank calm for much longer.

There was no way Tobias would let Crusher be his first. He would, quite literally, rather die.

Crusher’s hand found its goal, clamping around his groin, and Tobias ground his own face into the wall, twisting his cheek against the rough plaster to keep his whimpering under control.

“You know how long I’ve waited for you, Pretty Freak?” Crusher hissed. “For fucking ever . Too goddamn long to fuck open your tight ass.”

It wasn’t like Tobias deserved anything more than this. He simply could not let Crusher do what he wanted without trying to stop it.

He was just about to break, to throw away all hope, to throw away his life in favor of breaking Crusher’s jaw and running into the guards’ bullets, when Karl appeared.

“Crusher!” He smacked his billy club against his palm. The burn scar across his cheek was shiny. “Let the freak go. Save it ‘til the rest of us can watch.”

Crusher eased his hold a little, and Tobias took a shaky breath, feeling a few drops of blood trickle down his cheek.

“You stay the fuck out of this, Karl,” Crusher snarled.

Karl laughed. “You think I want to get between you and that freak’s ass?” He pointed the club at Tobias. “Hawthorne wants him.”

The relief that surged through Tobias almost made him sick.

Forty heartbeats ago he had been ready to die, to take the last miserable step into death.

Now Jake had come, not to save him—Jake had promised, but Tobias knew how hard it would be to get a monster out, knew that even if Jake tried it probably wouldn’t work—but just for those brief moments of kindness, of gentle touches, of casual conversation that didn’t end in pain.

He almost ran to Reception, Jake’s name a promise of salvation, if only for an afternoon.

The new guard, Charlie, nodded toward Room Four, and Tobias burst through, smiling involuntarily, knowing that Jake liked to see him smile.

Leon Hawthorne turned to face him.

Tobias’s back hit the door hard. The cold metal cut through the blind panic—and the instinct to deny that this was happening, to insist that Jake had to be there—but he was still shaking, trapped, terrified.

He closed his eyes, fighting hard to bring back that blank emptiness, prepared to submit to any blow or order without a flicker of reaction.

After all, Leon Hawthorne was a hunter. That was what hunters wanted.

That was what hunters— not Jake— demanded, and he had always been able to give it to them before, like a good little monster.