Something of a Kind - By Miranda Wheeler Page 0,57

mind, but like Greg, she wasn't in the business of telling anyone what they needed to hear.

"That's disrespectful," he said, sounding unsure of himself.

"Something like that," she agreed, observing the hot red mark burning down the center of his forehead. He couldn't meet her gaze. She wouldn't make him.

"Alyson, you're under my roof. I'm with you constantly. I'm standing right here. I'm obviously listening," he pleaded, desperately.

She smiled at the thought of pointing upwards at the cove lights and the waterlogged, tiled ceiling and muttering, ‘Office's roof.' Still, she felt the taught weakness. "Yes, I see that."

"Don't be sarcastic," he snapped. "Look, why I'm trying to say is you have my attention."

"That's all, then?"

"Damn it!" he yelled, turning heads and luring alarmed stares. Lowering his voice, he leaned down to her seated eye level, shaking his finger in her face as though she was a misbehaving toddler. He dropped a file on her lap, scattering pictures across her knees. "This acting out, these false reports. It needs to stop right now. What the hell are you doing, Alyson?"

She clenched her jaw, her eyes squinting into an angry glare.

"I'm not a child. I'm not attempting to entertain you and whatever sick fancy you have with that animal. I told you what happened. I was with my friends, completely independent from you and thoughts of you and your sick need to mess with people, and we saw something. The next day we returned and we found evidence. I reported it. I offered what we had to the proper authority on oddities in the woods. That's what people do when they discover something they can't identify." Her voice was dark, a tone deeper, angered. She curled each syllable in her mouth, a foreign menace, speaking each selected word with the cold execution of scolding.

He stood back and pinched the bridge of his nose, taking deep breaths and swallowing repeatedly.

"This is my job. My life's work. I know that doesn't mean anything to you, but it's my everything. This is a cut-throat field, and if you insist you’re not a child, then you should comprehend how negative it is to be made a fool by one."

"You're making a fool of yourself," she snapped, scooping photographs back into the manila folder and waving it in front of his face. "This is the evidence that you actually have. Pure proof that you aren't a completely lunatic, and because you're so arrogant, you won't even consider it."

"Of course I consider it!" Greg spat, ripping it from her hands. "Don't you think it's a little odd that you have been in Alaska less than a week and you have found more 'evidence' than most of our organization in as long as you've been alive? Or how about the fact that trained scientists, Ph. D. level field biologists, have deduced it as a hoax. Even our internist thinks it's fake. In science, there's something called too good to be true, you ever heard of it? Maybe next time you and whatever the hell you call friends pull something you won't go so overboard. Maybe try a little more vague, huh? Leave something to the damn imagination."

"Noah, Luke, and Owen are all natives from this res and-"

"Res? Res? You have their slang now? That isn’t even factitiously accurate-"

"Shut up for one second," she demanded. "Their ancestors have been reporting this stuff for over a century. An elder actually told us where it would be. Somewhere, according to you, you don't even go because it's unlikely."

"You've been hanging out with Locklear, huh? That's really funny, no seriously, you have me laughing." Throwing the folder into the trash, he splattered yogurt and used tissues. "Did he happen to tell you that his brothers were caught altering the results of a quarantined investigation?"

She paused, attempting to gauge the legitimacy of his words. She felt her lips move slowly, unable to slam a response. Her words stumbled as she replied, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"We have them on motion-signaled cameras, Alyson. The elders and the organization have been trying to mend ties for months because of what those boys did. We've been working with those ancestors for decades. You've known that child for less than a week, and the boy already has you out of your mind. I'm not the one 'messing' with people, Alyson. Three teenage boys? They probably think it's the funniest damn thing in the world. The Locklears are a bunch of hooligan drunks, and Noah's no exception. You