Project Hyperion (A Kaiju Thriller) (Kaiju #4)

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“Well, for starters you drive like you were raised in a Fast and the Furious movie. You can shoot as well as anyone I’ve ever seen, including big-ass machine guns. You’ve got solid investigative skills, killer instincts and you can fight like a son-of-a-bitch. I would normally say that you’re just a Daddy’s girl that didn’t want to venture too far from town, but you’re not from Maine. Or even New England. You are from Georgia right?”

No reply.

“So the real question is, who are you hiding from?”

We take another corner, a little faster than the last. When we straighten out, my head clunks against the door window. Looks like I struck a nerve, though that was not my intention.

“I have a question for you,” she says, a little snippy.

Thinking that she’s going to ask something tough, maybe about FC-P or my relaxed nature, or maybe make fun of my receding hairline, in exchange for her reply, I say, “Shoot.”

“It’s twenty minutes to Ashton.” She glances at me, eyes dead serious. “Can you try not to talk to me until we get there?”

Really struck a nerve. As I fall silent, we pick up speed, and I think I’ve just doubled my chances of not surviving the next hour.





24



Trevor Reed didn’t much like parades. The average pomp of the town’s 4th of July parade was bad enough, but this farmer’s nonsense, which had begun long before he became mayor, also smelled like warm shit. And that wasn’t an insult to the farmers, because many of them actually carted warm shit through the center of town to sell at the farmer’s market as manure.

Reed catered to the town’s farmers. They were a part of the economy for now and were well-liked. So he put on a smile, joined the motorcade along with the town’s three police officers and waved to his constituents like he cared. But he didn’t. Not really. What he cared about was zoning, land laws and minimum lot sizes for new development.

By the time he retired, he planned to have turned the town into the place in Northern Maine to buy a modern, affordable home. Times were tough for the farmers, and as they went out of business, he bought up the land and leased it back to “ease the burden.” By the time his current term was up, he would own half the land in town, and most of it was already clear-cut, level farmland. He would save a bundle on deforestation, and the fertile soil would grow grass so green that commuters to Portland or Lewiston wouldn’t be able to resist.

Reed cringed in the back seat of the convertible he rode in as the marching band leading the way reached a crescendo that made his spine compress. He never stopped smiling, though. He could hold the practiced expression for hours.

Between beats of the bass drum, he heard a shrill chirp. What kind of an instrument is that, he wondered. Then it repeated, and he saw the police chief, an overweight man named Mitchell Schwartz, pick up his phone and answer it.

The man’s face contorted with confusion for a moment as he blocked his other ear with his finger. “What’s that, Josie? I can’t make out a word!” He listened again, shaking his head in frustration.

The police chief made it just one step away from the car when Reed leaned out and grabbed his arm. “Whatever it is,” the mayor said, “it can wait.”

“It might be important,” Schwartz replied, speaking loudly over the band.

“If I have to endure this hell, so do you,” Reed said. “No one is going to like the new zoning laws, which you’ll be supporting. We both need to make a good impression or things are going to get difficult.”

Reed had made sure that every person in town who held a position of actual power would benefit from the changes he was making. He called it “oiling the gears,” but he knew it was closer to bribery. And once someone was complicit, they were his. The police chief would get a new house out of the deal and a good sized chunk of change. All technically legal, but shady enough to scare him. Reed sometimes thought he could probably murder someone and get away with it.

He winced as the crowds lining the sidewalks cheered. Kids screamed as clowns tossed candy. Horses brayed. Some moron was honking an air horn. And far ahead, at the front of the parade, the fire department let their single engine’s siren wail. It was sensory chaos.

His smile wavered.

Schwartz saw it and knew what it meant. He shouted into the phone, “I’ll call you back, Josie!” Then he hung up.

Reed sat back down on the slippery white leather seat and twisted his lips back up. Schwartz, who was walking next to the car, tried to smile, too, but it wasn’t nearly as convincing.