What she cant see, p.1
What She Can't See, page 1
What She Can't See
...is hiding in plain sight...
by
Hunter Morgan
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www.epublishingworks.com
ISBN: 978-1-947833-72-2
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Meet the Author
Prologue
Drew ripped into the China Garden parking lot, hit his brakes hard, and slid into a parking space marked handicapped parking only. "Okay, cough it up if you're eating." He threw his arm over the seat and opened his hand. "I bought the case."
His best buddy and a fellow frat brother, Pete, was sitting next to him and slapped an empty beer bottle into his hand. The two other guys from the Delta Chi house in the backseat broke up laughing.
Drew glanced in the rearview mirror, tossing the empty at Pete's sneakers. "Come on, you guys. I'm serious. I'm not paying. You want to eat, you flash the cash."
All three guys pushed warm bills into his hand, and Drew climbed out of the car, breathing in the hot, humid night air. "Whoa." He leaned against the Jeep, catching himself as the pavement beneath him tilted. He had a seriously decent beer buzz going.
"Easy there," one of the stooges in the backseat called. Someone laughed.
Drew adjusted the brim of his green Chesapeake Bay College ballcap and slammed the front driver's-side door of the Jeep as he slipped the money into the front pocket of his cargo shorts. The fresh air sobered him up a little, and he headed across the parking lot toward the blinking neon chopsticks in the window.
The place was mad crazy inside; most of the tables were occupied by students returning for the fall semester at Chesapeake Bay. Classes started in two days, so students were out, getting a head start on their partying before reading assignments, research papers, and labs got in the way. There were people from the town, too. Just regular types: a campus security guy, a couple of bluehairs, a motorcycle dude and this tongue-pierced, big-titty biker chick.
"Drew." A frat brother sitting at one of the tables offered a hand.
"Kyle." Drew pumped it, turning around to talk to him, backing up toward the take-out counter. "We're headed over to Fedder Park to have a few brewskies. You in?"
Kyle lifted a dark eyebrow, taking the eyebrow ring with it. "Looks like you already had a few." He laughed. "Nah, can't." He eyed the fifty-something couple across the table from him.
Rents still in town. What a drug, Drew thought. Good thing the senator and his lovely new wife were too busy to bring him to school. He'd just thrown his shit in the back of the Jeep, taken the three hundred dollars his father had left on the dining room table and another sixty-two-fifty he'd found in the housekeeper's petty-cash cookie jar, and headed out. "Catch you back at the house later, maybe," he said, still backing up. His stomach rumbled. He didn't feel quite as good as he had, but f-o-o-d would fix that.
Kyle turned away just as Drew backed into some pimple-faced jerk carrying a tray of egg-drop soup and tea. The bowls and teapot clattered to the stained green-carpeted floor, throwing hot broth and egg slime across Drew's bare arm and down his t-shirt. "Hey, faggot," he said, giving the gook waiter a push. He recognized the four-eyed jerk from his biology class last semester.
"So sorry. My apology," the waiter groaned, falling to one knee to scoop up the bowls. Yellow egg goop ran in rivulets down his white apron.
Drew guessed this wasn't the first time the fairy had had egg-drop soup down the front of him. One of the waitresses started hollering in Chinese and came out from behind the counter, waving handfuls of paper towels.
"Watch where you're going next time, will you?" Drew spun around, looking at his arm and the egg shit running down it. "Excuse me," he said, pushing through the line of people waiting for their takeout. They were mostly business people from town—a guy in khakis and a flowered shirt, a woman in a suit, another guy in khakis, a professor from the college, and a mother with a whining kid in her arms. "Excuse me. I'm not trying to butt, just get some napkins." Someone stepped back to let him pass. He grabbed a handful of white napkins adorned with red chopsticks and wiped off his arm, stepping back into his place in line.
At the counter a few minutes later, Drew tossed the dirty napkins in the wastebasket and picked up the order. "Tell your boss they ought to get rid of that moron waiting on tables."
The woman at the cash register just smiled, bobbing her head, and handed him his change. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum in the backseat of the Jeep had given him too much money. Drew pocketed the extra five.
In the parking lot, he jumped into the Jeep, handing the bags back. "Don't open it until we get there," he ordered, starting the engine and throwing the shift into reverse. "I don't want that shit smelling up the car."
Out of the corner of his eye, Drew caught Pete wrinkling his nose and pulling back. "Smells like you've already been sampling."
Drew popped the Jeep into drive and squealed out of the parking lot, pulling a nice fishtail under the street lamp. "This fag waiter spilled soup all over me. Should sue. Make a fortune so I don't have to get an education." He mimicked the senator, laughing because he did it so well.
"Maybe he likes you, Drew," Tweedle Dum said.
Tweedle Dee cackled.
They sped out of town, making a left onto Old Marlboro Road, a back way into the state park that officially closed at dusk. It was one of the Kappa Gamma guys' favorite hangouts. On weekends they played on the Frisbee golf course there, nights it was a secluded place to party. Not that they couldn't party at the frat house, but a change of scenery was always nice.
Drew clicked on his high beams. Old Marlboro was a county road that twisted along the bay, through the pine trees and big soybean and cornfields. It had a couple of seriously sharp curves. Last year a bunch of girls from the campus had run off the same road; one had been in a coma for like a week or something. The road made a sharp bend to the right and the back tires squealed as he maneuvered through it.
"Hey, man, you got to change that CD," one of the guys in the back called. "I'm sick of this old Pink Floyd crap."
Drew punched the "eject" button and when the CD didn't immediately pop out, he slammed the CD player with his fist. "Piece of shit," he muttered, hitting the interior light switch overhead.
"I thought the senator was going to get you a new stereo."
"You want to walk home?" Drew glanced at Pete in the dim light, giving the CD player another smack. "Because if you—"
"Look out!"
Drew heard one of the guys in the backseat call out. He looked up in time to see that he was traveling too fast to negotiate the turn. He didn't even have time to get his other hand on the wheel. The tires screeched beneath them and the smell of rubber and shrimp chow mein filled his nostrils. The red Jeep his father had given him for high-school graduation seemed almost to be flying. It happened so fast, and yet time seemed to drag... snag. It took forever for the car to careen off the road and there wasn't a damned thing Drew was going to be able to do to stop it.
There was a slight bump as one of the front tires hit a drainage ditch, and at the same time he heard a big pop and something white flew up in front of him, slamming him backward into the seat. Suddenly shit was flying all over: beer bottles, the Chinese takeout bags and cartons, CDs. The next thing he knew, he was upside down. But the car was still rolling. He was upright, then upside down, and then upright again before the car finally slammed down on all f
For a second Drew couldn't move. Pete moaned in the seat beside him, and he turned his head slowly to look at him. For some reason the interior light was on. Drew could see Pete was leaning forward caught in the seat belt, a big gash across his forehead and down his ear. His earlobe was hanging funny. Drew didn't remember hearing glass shatter but it was everywhere, all crackly and sticky.
He leaned back in his seat, feeling like he was going to be sick. His chest hurt like hell where he had made contact with the seat belt when he'd been thrown forward; he stared at the white fabric draped over the wheel. It took a minute for it to register that it was the airbag.
Something smelled awful, something vaguely familiar. "Jud? Derrick?" he called. He tried to turn his head to look into the backseat but his neck hurt like hell. He was surprised to find that his ballcap was still on his head and he adjusted the brim, pulling it down farther on his head.
There was no answer from the back.
"Shit," Drew whispered. "Shit." He lowered his right arm that hurt, too, and pressed his thumb on the seat belt release. It wouldn't give.
He looked up to see smoke pouring from under the hood. One headlight was still on, illuminating the soybean field they'd plowed through. Somehow the car had ended up facing the way they'd come. Shit, had they somehow flipped over sideways, then end to end, or had the car spun? He vaguely remembered a pole coming at them. Had they hit that, too?
Pete moaned again, and Drew looked over at his friend. The head cut was really bleeding... and that smell. He knew that smell.
For some reason he thought about mowing the lawn. He'd always hated doing it and had been glad when the senator had finally started hiring someone. It wasn't the smell of fresh grass in the car, though. It was... gasoline.
"Shit," Drew muttered again, his chest fluttering with fear. He clicked the seat belt latch over and over again. "Pete, Jud, Derrick. Come on guys, you got to wake up. We got to get out of here."
There was a flash of headlights in the darkness. Drew stared at the bloody dashboard Pete must have slammed into; no airbag on his side. "It... it's okay, man." He squeezed his buddy's arm and wiped at his eyes that were watering. "Someone's coming, Pete. Guys. We'll get some help."
Drew turned his head to look out through his door. The glass was gone from it, too. He watched as a figure came toward him through the darkness from the car parked up on the road. A beam of light appeared. A flashlight. "Man, thank God," he hollered out. "My buddies are unconscious, and I can't get out of my seat belt." He clicked it again frantically.
As the figure walked up to the car, Drew thought he recognized the person from somewhere. "Can you help us get out of here?"
The stranger shined the beam inside the car, and Drew squinted. He couldn't see shit now. "I smell gas. I think the tank must have ruptured." He took a whiff of his damp shoulder and jerked back. "It's all over us. I don't know how it got inside the car, but—"
"You say you can't get out?" The stranger leaned closer, shining the flashlight right in Drew's face.
"Yeah, man. I have no idea where my cell is." He used his arm to block the bright bream. "Can you call 911? I think my buddies here might be hurt."
"I heard what you said at the restaurant."
"What?" Drew squinted.
"I heard what you called that boy. That wasn't very nice."
"What the hell—"
"You called him a faggot," the voice said, snatching his ballcap off his head.
Drew suddenly felt weird, like maybe he was dreaming. The voice was so bizarre that he wondered if he was dead. Was this, like, God, or something in the bright light, come to take him to heaven?
The stranger leaned into the car and plucked something from Drew's pocket. Drew stared at it for a second, confused. It was his lighter. What did—
The stranger flicked the Bic and a little blue flame shot up.
Drew stared at the flame, then into the flashlight beam. "Hey, that isn't funny!"
"You shouldn't have called that boy a faggot," the voice repeated in the same eerie tone. "You have no idea how harmful such actions can be, the length and breadth of the ramifications."
Drew watched the flame move toward him and he was in such shock, such disbelief, that he didn't even scream, not until the sleeve of his t-shirt burst into flames...
Then he screamed.
* * *
I can't catch my breath. The sounds of the young man screaming, the roar of the flames. It is such a shot of adrenaline.
I slide into the front seat of my car and grip the steering wheel, the green ballcap still in my hand, my fingers trembling. I hear him scream again. I can smell the heady scent of ignited gasoline and heavy smoke mingling with more subtle perfumes of burning leather, clothing, flesh...
"What have I done?" I whisper aloud. I am shocked by what I have done. I have many faults, but impulsiveness has never been one of them. To kill unplanned—it is so unlike me. In the past I have always been so careful, so protective of the life I've built for myself out of the ashes.
But the obnoxious college student, what he said, pushed me over the edge. I lean forward, pressing my forehead to the steering wheel, fighting the tightness in my chest. I realize now this had been building for days... weeks, maybe. It is that damned reality TV show the college is allowing to be broadcast from their local access cable channel. Fraternity Row. Everyone loves it, not just on campus but the locals, too. They are all talking about it at the quaint coffee shops, in the bars and pubs, in line at the Wawa minimart, even on the local talk radio station. Everyone loves it—that is, except me.
The sound of an emergency vehicle siren makes me lift my head from the steering wheel, my chest suddenly fluttering with panic. I can't be found here, of course.
I take a deep, cleansing breath, exhaling and opening my eyes. I stare at the ballcap in my hand for a moment. I know that I should not take it. I should throw it out the window. Instead, I lay it carefully on the seat beside me. I start the engine, buckle my seat belt, and pull away from the burning car, leaving the dead and dying young men to their just desserts.
Chapter 1
Adam rapped his knuckles on the glass door of his supervisor's office and walked in. "You rang, Cap-i-tan?" In the two weeks he'd been in the new field office, he'd learned that the captain didn't appreciate humor of any sort, but it never hurt to give it a whirl. Over the years, humor had gotten him out of some pretty tight places.
When Crackhow didn't respond, Adam glanced at the petite woman in the dark suit seated stiffly in front of the desk. He'd caught a couple of glimpses of her in the bullpen where most of the field agents worked. She had that freshly scrubbed, slightly spooked look of a new academy graduate, but she was older than most.
She was maybe thirty, hard to tell for sure. She wore no makeup, and her brown hair was cut short. No jewelry except for a watch, and a tiny gold crucifix and medallion around her neck. The whole look screamed lesbian, but Adam didn't think she was. His guess was an overachiever, a firstborn just like himself. She was a smart, petite woman with a chip on her shoulder the size of Montana, trying to make her way in the macho man's FBI world.
Crackhow frowned from the other side of his desk that was piled high with manila file folders that all appeared to be identical. "We talked last week about office attire, Special Agent Thomas."
So it was the polo shirt creating the crow's feet at the corners of the boss's eyes, not a lack of bran muffins on the coffee cart this morning.
"I had an interview." Adam took the other chair in front of the desk, running his hand over his pressed khakis—he thought he had dressed for the office. He'd left the Hawaiian shirt, his typical workday uniform in California, in the drawer. "Dockworkers. Suits scare these guys, Captain."
Marvin Crackhow continued to frown, looking over the rims of his frameless reading glasses. The poor balding guy looked like he was about to be engulfed by the files heaped on his desk. "Special Agent M.K. Shaughnessy." He lifted his pointed chin in the direction of the woman. It was his idea of an introduction. "Special Agent Adam Thomas."
