There was true empathy in her eyes, and it softened something inside him. “Thanks for trying to help.” He paused, thinking of all the warnings about trusting the Merricks. Thinking of the folders upstairs. He pushed the hair back from his face and sighed. “Maybe later I could get your opinion on something—”
A hand shoved him back, and Chris said, “Maybe later you could remember that she’s not your girlfriend.”
“Hey,” Becca started. “It’s fine.”
Hunter smiled, but there was nothing friendly about it. Chris’s aggression made his decision about Kate much easier to consider. “Maybe later you could remember that Becca has a mind of her own.”
Chris gave him another shove, a little more violently. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing here—”
“Hey!” said James, his little boy voice carrying over everything else. “Use words, not hands.” Then he glanced at Hannah.
“Right, Mom?”
“Absolutely right,” she said, completely unfazed, pulling another piece of chicken from a bucket.
But Chris backed off.
Hunter smiled more broadly. “Funny. I can think of two words right off.” But Becca was already pulling Chris to the other side of the table.
“Words, not hands,” said Layne. She poked Gabriel with her fork. “I think you need a T-shirt that says that.”
He leaned in close. “Give me five minutes and I bet I can change your mind.”
“Ugh,” said Quinn, spearing a piece of chicken with her fork. “Spare us.”
Michael glanced over at Hannah. “I told you you’d regret staying for dinner.”
“Are you kidding? You should see dinner at the firehouse.”
Hunter grabbed a paper plate and a piece of chicken, then dropped into one of the folding chairs that had been added to make enough seats. He was smashed between Nick and Simon and barely had enough room to put his plate down.
Chris was still glaring at him. “So what did you want to show Becca later?”
Becca was glaring at Chris now. “Leave him alone.”
“No way,” said Chris. “If it was so innocent, he can tell everyone.”
Hunter pulled the skin off his chicken and fed it to Casper, well aware that everyone at the table was looking at him now.
He was spinning his wheels trying to think of something innocuous to say, but he was coming up with nothing. He was tempted to keep everything secret, to hand over the files to Kate to see what they could come up with together.
But he didn’t know who all those people were, and the Merricks might.
The gun was a solid weight at the small of his back, like a heavy steel security blanket.
“I went through the things my mom packed up,” he said slowly, looking at the chicken on his plate. He wasn’t sure how many people at the table knew about Elementals, so he chose his words carefully. “She included my dad’s files.”
“Files files?” said Gabriel.
Hunter nodded.
“Anything interesting?” said Nick.
“They’re old.” Hunter paused. “But yeah.”
“What kind of files?” said Hannah.
“Later,” said Michael. He gave Hannah a crooked glance. “Maybe when the daughter of the county fire marshal isn’t sitting at the table.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll get the secrets out of you later.”
“Trust me,” said Michael. “You don’t want these secrets.”
Hunter kind of agreed with him.
Later, when Hannah and James were gone, and Quinn had driven home with Becca, Hunter brought the files downstairs and dumped them out on the table.
He’d been doubtful about Layne and Simon, but Gabriel said, “They can stay. They’re good at secrets.”
Hunter watched as the Merrick brothers went through their own files first.
Michael blew out a long whistle. “Your dad had a lot of information.”
Layne poked Gabriel’s cheek. “Did you always look surly? How old are you in that picture?”
Gabriel was staring at the grainy reproduced photograph. “Twelve? Thirteen? I don’t know.” He glanced up at Michael.
“There’s notes in here about Mom and Dad. The Guides knew what happened with Tyler’s sister, and Seth’s parents.”
Nick looked at Hunter. “Why didn’t your dad come after us then?”
“I don’t know.” He hesitated, remembering his father’s caution when discussing the Merricks a few days before he died. Hunter strongly suspected that the four of them together were more intimidating than they even realized.
It reminded him of the conversation with Kate in the field, about his presence in the house making them more formidable instead of less, no matter which side he was on.
Hunter shoved the thought out of his head and pulled more files from the Pendaflex. “There are notes about Seth and Tyler, too.” He slid them onto the table. “And a bunch of people I don’t know.”
They quickly discarded the files about Seth and Tyler. When they got to the first one Hunter didn’t recognize, Nick said, “Jeff Bluster. He was a year ahead of us. His folks were friends with Tyler’s. They were in on the deal.”
“What happened to them?” said Hunter.
Chris shrugged. “They moved away a few years ago.”
Hunter turned to the next file, on Noah Dean. “This is the kid who was with Calla when they trashed my house. She never said she had a younger brother, but maybe this is her cousin? She lives with her aunt and uncle.” Hunter hesitated, then said more softly, “Lived.”Simon leaned forward and looked at the picture. He turned to Layne and signed something.
“I remember this kid, too,” said Layne. “He’s in eighth grade, a year behind Simon.” Her younger brother signed some more, and she kept translating. “He wasn’t a troublemaker. Had a lot of friends.” She glanced up. “Probably still does.”
“I don’t know him,” said Michael. “His family wasn’t in on the deal—my parents probably never knew they were Elementals.”
Hunter grabbed the next folder. This one and the rest were labeled POTENTIAL THREAT. “How about this girl?”
The Merricks all shook their heads, but Layne leaned over. “Alison Merryman. I know her. She’s a freshman. Quiet. Sweet.”
Next folder. Another seventh grader. And another one. Then an eighth grader.
Simon signed quickly. Layne leaned over. “I know him, too. He’s a jerk.” She glanced at Gabriel as Simon kept signing. “He’s one of the ones who was hassling Simon at the carnival.”
“He ran when I showed up,” said Gabriel. “I just thought he was running from a fight.”
Layne’s brother looked pissed at the memory.
Hunter glanced at him. “I could help you with that,” he said.
Simon’s eyes widened in surprise.
Hunter shrugged. He remembered what it felt like to walk through school hallways and wonder when the next idiot was going to slam you into a locker. “If you want,” he said.
Simon nodded.
“No wonder they’re not getting into it with us at school,” said Gabriel.
“They’re all kids,” said Nick. “They probably just figured out what they are.”
That meant they weren’t under heavy surveillance—yet. “Were they injured in the fire?” said Hunter. “Is there a list on one of the news websites or anything?”
Michael got his laptop and they checked. None of the names matched the list of the missing.
But Hunter noticed something else: Calla Dean was listed as missing, not one of the confirmed dead.
Did that mean something? He’d seen her fall.
Then he dismissed it. The Guide—Silver—wouldn’t have left her lying in the middle of the carnival.
“Well,” said Gabriel, “no one is stopping us from going over there to see.”
“Going over where?” said Michael.
“The middle school.”
Middle school. Nick was right—they were all kids. It was a new wrinkle.
Hunter had been ready to hand these files over to Kate, thinking it would be so easy to solve this problem, to redeem himself in his father’s memory.
But they were kids.
He thought about Calla in the middle of the fairgrounds. She’d been too young to die, for sure, but she’d known what she was doing.
Had she organized the next group of Elementals into something they weren’t ready for?
He needed to talk to these middle schoolers, to figure out which side they were on.
And he needed to do it without the Merricks.
“Let’s not be stupid about this,” said Michael. “There’s a Guide in town. If we figured out these kids were working with Calla, then he will, too. We need to stay the hell away from them.”
“No way,” said Gabriel.
“I agree with Michael,” said Hunter.
They all looked at him in surprise. He shrugged and lied through his teeth. “Well, I think we should give it a few days. Calla was obviously the ring leader. Let’s see if they make another move.”
Hunter glanced at Simon, a kid who was bullied mercilessly. Hunter knew what the Merricks had gone through for years. He wondered if these new Elementals were going through the same thing.
And he wondered if it would have been easy, too easy, for Calla to convince them to rebel.
CHAPTER 20
While they shared a campus, the middle school and high school had different hours. Hunter and the Merricks had to be at school early, the middle schoolers didn’t start until after nine. He couldn’t exactly skip class to stake out seventh and eighth graders—that would probably draw attention.
Instead, he decided to head over at the end of the day, to watch the younger students as they bolted for the buses to go home.
But that meant Hunter had seven hours of class time to kill.
Other students spent that time building locker shrines to the students who’d lost their lives. Hunter spent most of it feeling like he could have stopped the whole thing.
Or like he was betraying the Merricks somehow.
He tried to talk himself out of that feeling. He wasn’t planning to feed Kate information about them. And what were they doing for him anyway? Letting him live in their house until they decided to pack up and leave town? Michael had made a comment this morning that he was going to figure out how much money they had to work with. There was talk about leases and walking away from the business and—Hunter had to leave the room, because it all pointed toward leaving him here to deal with this mess.
And even after reading through all the files, he had no idea where his mother stood on everything. She wasn’t a Guide—unless she’d also hidden that from his father. Hunter had run all kinds of scenarios through his head, but he couldn’t make any of them work at all. Did she approve of his father’s profession? Of Hunter continuing his mission? If she didn’t, she sure wouldn’t have left him with weapons hidden among his things.
To say nothing of his father’s old files. Did she know about the Merricks? Those files had been held together by an ancient rubber band; he didn’t get the impression anyone had read through them recently.
He wanted to call her, to confront her and demand answers.
But maybe she didn’t have answers. She’d hidden those things when she could have come right out and given them to him.
Not to mention that he’d spent months grieving for his father and wondering how anyone would ever understand him again. She’d known. All this time—she’d known.
His thoughts were spinning out, not finding traction anywhere. Hunter actually looked forward to fourth period, when he could see Kate and tell her what he’d learned, what he’d planned.