Instinct by Jason Hough (ebook reader web TXT) 📗

a thing or two about instincts and what might affect them.

Later, though. Right now I have a friend to rescue.

“Clara?” I call out. My voice is more tentative than I’d like, and goes unheard above the loud music, which thumps from a surprisingly powerful speaker the size of an egg carton. The device rests atop a cooler nearby. I cross to it and take a moment to find the power switch, then flip it off.

The conversation in the room continues for a few seconds before everyone realizes the music has died. They turn to the speaker almost as one and, seeing me, react. Eyes go wide. One of the young males abruptly stands, as if I’m the ghost of his long-dead grandma.

“Everyone stay calm,” I say in a soothing voice.

“It’s not what it looks like!” the young man says, voice high with panic.

“Stay calm,” I repeat with force. “I don’t care about your drugs, I’m just here for—”

“It’s not drugs,” the boy says. And he is a boy, I think. Sixteen, seventeen tops.

I click my flashlight on and turn it toward him, causing him to throw one arm up to block the glare. “Dude, you think I was born yesterday?” I ask him.

Beside him a woman—scratch that, a girl, she can’t be more than seventeen either—comes to a slow stand, skinny arms outstretched, palms facing me. “It’s true,” she says.

My stance swivels to shine the light on her. “Save it for later. I’m just here for my friend Clara. Dyed hair that’s shaved on one side. Nose ring? Seen her?”

“Oh yeah!” another of them says excitedly. “Clara! She’s cool as hell. Um. She went down into the silo with the others.”

“What others?”

“The rest of the club.” He says this as if it’s patently obvious.

“You’ve got thirty seconds to explain, short stuff, before I let you explain it to a judge.” It’s the oldest empty threat in the police officer’s handbook but hot damn does it work on kids.

Despite his obvious terror, Short Stuff launches into an explanation.

“We’re from Idaho,” he starts.

“No shit. Saw the license plates and, to be honest, I don’t care. Tell me about this club. Then tell me where Clara is.”

He swallows and tries again. “UrbEx,” he says, and immediately registers my confusion at the term. “Urban explorers. We find abandoned places and—”

“—explore them,” I say, finishing his sentence. “Get to the point.”

“Well, we heard about this old missile silo from another club, and convinced James’s brother to bring us here. James is our club president. His brother is Adam, he’s up there partying with all his college friends.”

Urban explorers? That makes a weird kind of sense, I think. “Well, Adam’s not up there anymore,” I tell him. “They all bailed when I showed up. Sorry to say.”

“Bailed?” Skinny Arms asks. “Fuck. How do we get home?”

“We’ll worry about that later,” I tell her. I give myself time to take a deep breath. “Okay, none of this explains the drugs, but you’re kids and I’m not here for—”

“They aren’t, though,” the girl insists again. She kneels beside the center area of the room and gestures, so I swing the flashlight there and take a proper look. “Just some stuff we borrowed from the chem lab at school. To test dust samples.”

Short Stuff is nodding. “For radiation.”

“Radiation?” Suddenly the word “silo” registers in my brain.

He nods even more vigorously. “Rumor has it the air force left a warhead in here somewhere. Another club picked up traces on their Geiger counter but couldn’t pinpoint it. That’s what James said, anyway.”

“Only we don’t have one,” Skinny Arms adds. “A Geiger counter, I mean. So we thought, screw it, we’ll take samples of the dust and—”

“Right,” I say, “Okay. Hold that thought. Honestly it sounds like total horseshit to me—relax, relax. Right now I don’t care. And I don’t have the manpower to figure out if you’ve broken any laws by coming in here, anyway. Probably a dozen of the federal variety, but I’m of a mind right now to ignore all that on the condition that you tell me where to find my friend Clara.”

“I’m here,” a voice says from the darkness beyond the youngsters.

She strolls into the room with a smile on her face, flanked by two college-aged boys. One is quite handsome if you ignore the ravages of acne, and the other a bit overweight and sporting some of the thickest glasses I’ve ever seen. Geeks, I think. Nerds. Incongruous with the partying crowd above. Incongruous with Clara, for that matter. The semihandsome one is staring at her with puppy-dog eyes, I note.

“Heya, Mary,” Clara says, coming over and hugging me. “I see you met the group.”

“You know these kids?”

Clara grins. “No. Well, yes. For a few hours now.”

I take her by the elbow and turn her to face me, making sure I have her full attention. “Everyone’s been worried sick, Clara!”

She seems genuinely shocked to hear this. “Why?”

“You didn’t show up for work, for starters. Your front door was open. This just the morning after someone tried to kill me in my home. All our calls and texts, ignored.”

Frowning, Clara fishes her phone from the pocket of her dusty jeans and shows the black screen to me. “Turned it off.”

“Why?”

“James said it would interfere with their equipment.”

“And you believed him? A kid you just met?”

At this Clara looks almost hurt. The surprise on her face is genuine. “Why would he lie?”

“To lure you into a dark, hidden place where no one would ever find you?”

The boy starts to protest, but I hold up my hand to silence him, my focus never leaving Clara. She scrunches her nose. Her eyes dart left and right several times as she ponders this strange and foreign concept. Except it’s not strange and foreign to her, not in the slightest. Clara’s the survivor of an attempted mugging. She’s wary of strangers. It’s why she spends her time working the grill at the diner instead of waiting tables where the tips are. Hell,