Read Online Creatures of the Storm by Brad Munson - Free Book Online Page A

trespassing? No property destruction? No
assault?”
    “ No. It was nothing. Now will you
look?”
    She put her hands up. “Fine. Fine.” She bent
over the microscope and looked through the eyepiece, adjusting it
automatically. “You know I’m not going to see anything worth… wait
a minute. Wait a minute.”
    She bent over more intensely and finely
adjusted the focus. “Did you see the striations on the side
here?”
    “Where? Which ones?”
    “These, these here. Complex. Delicate. Almost
like…like writing. My God, Michael, look at this. It says “MADE …
IN … JAPA–”
    He shoved her away from the microscope and
got in front of it, as if protecting his precious discoveries.
    “You’re a fucking moron,” he said. “A fucking
idiot. I give you the find of the fucking century, and you ridicule
it like everything else.”
    Lucy wanted to rip his
greasy little head right off his shoulders. Where was that
celestial Frannie-voice now, she wondered. And would it say, Walk away, walk away or do it do it DO IT!
    She clenched her fists so tightly she could
feel her stubby nails digging into her palms. “I told you never to
take the ATV again. I told you it was a terminatable offense. And
not one week later, as soon as my back is turned–”
    “Fine,” he said. “Fine,
fire me. You’ll be the laughingstock of the field, of the world when I release
this information, when everybody sees–”
    Her cell phone rang. Michael stopped short
and stared at it, offended that anything, even an inanimate object,
would dare to interrupt him. He tried again.
    “I mean it,” he said. “I dare you to–”
    It rang again.
    She gave him a perfectly bland smile. “Pardon
me,” she said. “Important call.” She plucked up the phone and
clicked it on. “Yes?”
    “Fair warning,” Rebecca Falmouth-Hanson
whispered in her ear. “The cops are here.”
    “Here?”
    “Right outside. I saw the flashers.”
    “Is Fender still here?”
    “Afraid so. At least it looks like just one
guy, kind of big and handsome in an old sort of way.”
    Sheriff Peck. She’d bet a buck on it.
“Thanks,” she said, and turned back to the moist and arrogant
scientist. “Well, congratulations, Michael. You’ve managed to bring
the cops down on us again.”
    “What?” he said, still sounding offended.
“Where?”
    “In the lobby. Come on.” She turned without
waiting for a response and was halfway through the door before she
turned back to look at him. She was secretly rather pleased with
how he looked: like a small, hairless animal caught in a trap. “Oh,
and before we go,” she held out her hand, “the keys.”
    His hand went involuntarily to the pocket of
his lab jacket; his jaw started to tighten.
    “Don’t argue about it, Michael. Just give me
the keys to the ATV.”
    For one moment she didn’t think he was going
to do it. Then, almost in slow motion, he pulled the keys from his
pocket and handed them over.
    “Thank you. And Michael,
please, please keep this in mind. If you give me one ounce of shit about
this, ever, I will gladly have that police officer take you out
back and shoot you into tiny little pieces. Are we
clear?”
    His back straightened at that. He stripped
off his flesh-colored latex gloves and joined her in the hallway.
They didn’t speak a word to each other as they walked back to the
lobby.
    Sheriff Peck was already having a low,
intense conversation with Cindy and Fender. Cindy was wringing her
hands and ready to cry; Fender was goggling. Rebecca, meanwhile,
stood well to one side, leaning in the doorway that led to the
Admin wing and watching the cop with an expression made up of equal
parts wariness and disdain. It was an expression that Lucy had seen
before, and not only on Rebecca, but on black men and women of all
ages, whenever there was a cop in sight.
    “…meeting tonight?” Peck was saying to Cindy
as they entered from the laboratory wing.
    “Yes,” she said. “You bet.”
    “’Cause you