The Fort (Aric Davis)

carefully organized shelves, the kind that were carefully placed and could be placed back just as carefully. Scott laid the wrench boxes on the floor of the garage and had one left in his hand when the door from the house slammed shut. It was very loud, and very convincing that things were not going to go well. But Carl’s smile changed things.
    “Hey, liar,” said Carl. “How’s it feel to be a piece of crap?”
    “Not good,” said Scott, grimacing. “Not good at all.”
    “Yeah, I figured you’d be pretty down. That’s why I bought you some free time outside. You can watch and help a little bit if you want, but I can do most of the heavy lifting. You got my wrenches?”
    “Sure, right here,” said Scott, handing the heavy toolbox to Carl. “Why are you being nice to me?”
    Scott regretted the words the instant they came out of his mouth, and his face flushed. Surprisingly, though, Carl didn’t look mad. In fact, he looked like he was remembering an old joke with some fondness. “Before I say anything,” he said, “I want you to know that I’ll deny telling you any of this. Got it?” Scott nodded. “OK. First off, I believe that you and your buddies were telling the truth.”
    “You do?” Scott asked, incredulous. “If you believe us, then why did you punish me?”
    Carl shrugged. “Your mom knew what she wanted to happen, and I didn’t see any way of convincing her otherwise without getting my tail stuck in a crack next to yours. There are a lot of delicate things to consider here, but one of them is that as much as she wanted a man influencing your life, she also still wants to be the one making the majority of the decisions regarding you. She told me what she wanted to happen after talking to Tim’s mom, and I went along for the ride, not that I had much of a choice. I believe your little story, or at least most of it.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Who knows if you actually saw Molly in the woods? The cops seem pretty convinced that they found her body by the drive-in, and they’re usually right about that sort of thing.”
    “But if we saw someone else—”
    “Then maybe someone else was taken. Guys who do this kind of thing usually like the same sort of things every time, so if he took Molly, then he might have taken another girl who looked like Molly. Or you could have really seen her. It’s pretty tough to say until they run her fingerprints or do a dental impression.”
    “What will happen then?”
    “Well, if it turns out not to be her, I imagine you’ll end up with a reduced sentence. Not to mention, the police will look pretty stupid for not acting on a live lead. Of course, the real shame would be for Molly. If you guys did see her, and at least a glimpse of the guy who took her, she might have had a chance of being rescued, and now that chance is gone.” Carl opened the hood of the Oldsmobile and sighed. “Where do we even start?”

    While Tim slaved away and Scott did the same, only more willingly, Luke sat alone with his thoughts in the fort. It wasn’t the most entertaining thing, just staring into the woods, but it was sort of relaxing, and it beat the hell out of being home with his hungover mom and terrible sisters.
    He had seen two people in the woods that afternoon, two boys a couple of years older than he, smoking cigarettes and laughing, passing a few hundred feet from the fort without noticing it. Luke had enjoyed watching them as a hunter, even though they were not prey. There was something to be said for going unnoticed. It was a thrill, even though he was doing nothing more than sitting in a wooden box.
    Luke leaned back against one of the walls. A quick nap wouldn’t hurt anything. He let impossible thoughts take him to slumber. A clean trailer, a sober mother, the heartfelt apology from Van Endel. It was going to be good.
    He slept for a couple of hours, as the calculator watch told him when he finally came to around six o’clock. Had Luke been awake, he might have seen that there was another person in the woods that day, a man carrying binoculars and walking with a limp. Unlike Luke, that man was hunting and was quite sure that he had found out exactly where his quarry had been roosting.

33
    Hooper woke on the couch. Looking back and forth between the clock on the wall and the light coming through the blinds, he finally worked out that he had slept in until nearly three in the afternoon.
    He stood slowly, testing his weak leg, and was shocked