“Yes, you were. You had that face thing happening.” Harry rolled his eyes dramatically.
“What face thing?”
“When you get all frowny and think I’m messing around when I’m not.”
I nodded a little. “Oh, that face.”
God, I loved Harry. He was my everything, the best part of me, the reason I wanted to make this hotel work long enough to give him a safe place. I felt like a failure that we might lose it all, but I had ways of stuffing that emotion down so far that I forgot it. He looked more and more like me every day, but he had Sadie’s laugh and her sense of humor; he was the best part of both of us.
“Me too,” Marco added and pulled me out of my musing.
“You too, what?” I asked.
“I’ve done my homework.”
They seemed so serious as they lied to my face about their homework, which was probably lying discarded under an issue of Spiderman. It was too hot to argue. It was Saturday, their day off, and bless Harry, but he was still handling reception so I could work, even if we didn’t have any guests right now, nor were we expecting anyone soon. Worry poked at the edges of my thoughts, and I ruthlessly pushed them away. Maybe the hand would encourage another influx of journalists? Not that I wanted those bottom feeders in my place, but at least they paid the bills. Or at least some of them did.
Anyway, I liked that Harry was smiling with Marco and the on/off grumpiness he’d been exhibiting the past few weeks had vanished for a few moments. Today I refused to worry because tomorrow was a new day, and everything would work out, particularly if I was successful with the new hacking job. Then we’d be set for the winter events in town, have money left over for advertising, and everything would be okay. With renewed enthusiasm for life, I grinned at them both.
“Ice cream, anyone?”
I’d never seen two boys move so fast.
Three
Lucas
“Former military could mean traps,” Logan warned as he checked around the gate. “Mines, tripwires, this is Conspiracy Central, so we need to take things carefully.” We went in a few steps, and I held my breath as the stench of decay hit me. The smell was overwhelming, large oil barrels filled with god knows what, old food, decaying and rotting in the heat, tires discarded, old bits of machinery. It was an assault course to get any deeper into the tangle of forest, and we split up so we could walk single file, taking positions on the only ingress that looked as if it could be a trail. Logan was ahead, taking things slow, Sawyer behind him and to the left. Both had their weapons out, as did I, and Drew was behind me. A severed hand wasn’t an exact indication of someone down here armed with a blade and waiting for us to arrive, but who knew?
We stayed quiet, taking each step with consideration, and I cataloged more waste as we moved through sacks of garbage, years of trash thrown into the woods. Some of it had split open. I could see empty cans of peaches, beans, and soup, labels faded from exposure to the sun, along with rags and glass bottles. Some of them had shattered. Others were intact and green with growth inside, and some held tiny skeletons of animals that had crawled in and had not made it out. This was a hermit’s lair, the place where a person could hide away and never see another living person. Logan stopped abruptly, holding up a fist and indicating we all stop as well. Then he went to a crouch and gestured for us to check what he’d found.
At worst, I imagined a body, at best another bag of garbage, but what I saw in the mess of undergrowth was the remains of a dog. Maggots crawled over the carcass, flies buzzing around their dinner, and it was bloated with heat, a Dalmatian maybe?
“I can't tell if this is one of the dogs from the day I was down here,” Logan said.
My stomach rebelled when I leaned closer, and the scent of decaying flesh hit me, so I stepped back and away.
At least it’s not human, I told myself, but I loved dogs, and to see one like this was terrible.