Killer Thrillers Box Set: 3 Techno-Thriller, Action/Adventure Science Fiction Thrillers (94 page)

“No idea. I hadn’t spoken to her in over a decade. She was never the secretive type, so I imagine she’d be open to working with someone else.”
 

Julie took in the information, and both lay silent for a few minutes.
 

“Okay, well, I need to get some sleep,” she said. “I’ve got my phone on, in case Randy calls. We can figure out anything we can from whoever might be around here, then I’ll get us some plane tickets back to Billings for tomorrow night.”
 

Ben shook his head. “I’ll take the rental back. You go ahead.”
 

“You won’t fly?”
 

“No.”
 

“Why?”
 

“I just won’t. I don’t like it.”
 

“Come on, it’s perfectly safe. It’ll be much quick—”
 

“I’m not going to fly, Julie.”
 

“Ben, what’s the big deal? You won’t —”
 

“Knock it off, alright? I already told you, end of story. Drop it.” The words came out harsh, stressed. He regretted it, but the damage was done.
 

“What the hell, Bennett? Why the attitude?”

He didn’t respond.
 

“Seriously, Ben, what’s up? Why are you like this?”

“Julie…”
 

“No, I’ve had it. You barely speak to anyone, you treated me like dirt, and you’ve been off the grid for ten years. What is it about you that makes you so
cold
?”
 

Ben looked up sharply. He thought he could see Julie’s eyes welling up.

He didn’t know what to say. Didn’t
want
to say anything.
Hell, what am I doing here?
he thought.
 

He stood up from the bed and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Julie remained, a shocked expression on her face.
 

30

THEY WERE THE ONLY PATRONS in the restaurant.
Le Petit Paris
was frequented only by guests of the lodge, and this particular week was a very slow one for the hotel.
 

Ben and Julie sat at the corner booth, enjoying a platter of waffles, sausage, bacon, eggs, and toast. Apparently the restaurant leaned heavily on the American part of “French-American cuisine.”
 

“Sorry about last night.” Ben said the words slowly, meticulously, speaking through a mouth full of breakfast food.
 

“Don’t worry about it,” Julie said. “I went too far. I shouldn’t have —”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Ben said, stopping her. “I’m uncomfortable around people, if you haven’t already guessed. I don’t do well with confrontation and, well, feelings in general.”
 

Julie laughed. “You wish you were a robot?”
 

Ben thought for a moment and grinned. “Yeah, kinda. That would be okay.”
 

“Really? No tasting food, no feeling joy, no, uh,
more pleasurable
emotions?”
 

“No feeling pain, either.”
 

“Pain’s not a bad thing, Ben. It makes the good stuff that much better.”
 

He scoffed and grabbed another waffle. “Ever eat these with peanut butter?”

“Gross. Are you serious?”
 

“Oh yeah. You have no idea. It’s the
only
way to eat them. My dad —”

He caught himself, choosing to take an extra-large bite instead.

“Your dad what?” Julie pressed.

“Nothing. He, just, liked it. I must have gotten it from him.”
 

Julie swallowed. “Can I ask you something?”
 

Ben looked at her. “Maybe.”

“What would you be doing if this bomb hadn’t gone off? If there was no virus, and it was just you, at Yellowstone?”
 

“You mean besides hauling nuisance bears around the park?”
 

“Yeah, I mean
after
work. What does Harvey Bennett do in his spare time?”
 

Ben considered the question. “Well, I’ve been working on buying a place of my own, actually.”
 

“Yeah?”
 

“Yeah. Some land way up in Alaska. I want to build a cabin on it someday. I’m in the last stages of the deal, but I’ve been waiting for the bank to finalize things.”
 

“Wow — Alaska?”
 

“I’ve actually never even been there.” He laughed. “I saw the land online, saw what they were asking for it, and called them that afternoon. It was dirt cheap because of its location. Used to be owned by a trapper who passed away a few years ago. The land went up for auction and a local bank bought it, hoping to turn a profit.”
 

“You strike me as the kind of person who needs to be around a lot of people and live in a city, probably in a high-rise.”
 

“Yeah?” Ben smiled. “Seems like me.”
 

Julie paused to take a few bites, and Ben sipped his coffee. He knew what was coming next. Julie deserved the truth.
 

“Your mom. Diana Torres. You didn’t tell me she was your mom, and you called her ‘Diana Torres.’ Why?”
 

He shrugged. “We got in a fight a long time ago. She never really forgave me. I guess we both never forgave each other.”
 

“What happened?”
 

Julie wasn’t one to waste time. Ben liked that about her, but it terrified him all the same.
 

“It was the same time I ran away from it all. Thirteen years ago, right before I started at the park. I was camping with my dad and my kid brother. He was nine at the time, and he wandered out of camp and got stuck between a bear and her cub. My dad went to get him, and the bear attacked him.”
 

Julie covered her mouth with a hand.
 

“He got hit, hard, and went unconscious. My brother was pretty scraped up, but okay. My dad was airlifted out and spent a few months in a coma, then died.”

“God, Ben, I’m sorry.”
 

He waved it off. “My mom — as tough as she was — she never really forgave me. It was really Dad, though, I think she was mad at, for letting it happen. But she couldn’t express that, you know? And she tried to forget about it, I think. She changed her name back to her maiden name, Torres. We sort of walked on eggshells for a while afterwards, until I gave up. I got some odd jobs, finished school, and just… left.”
 

“I had no idea,” Julie said. She was tearing up again.

“Why would you? I don’t talk about it for a reason, Julie. It ain’t something I’m proud of, and I don’t particularly like thinking about it.”
 

“So why Yellowstone?”
 

“Makes sense, for a guy like me. No education, loves being outside, and hates people. Seemed like the logical thing, really. It’s a great organization, too, so I actually enjoy the people there.”
 

Enjoyed
, he thought. He looked up and saw that Julie was shaking her head.
 

“What is it?” he asked.
 

“It’s — it’s just that I still don’t get you. I am sorry, I truly am, but you don’t
really
hate people. You just said it, you know? You like those guys you work with, and you know it. You care for them, but you won’t let them in. Right?”
 

Ben felt again, for the third time in many years, his face redden. “Yeah, I get it. Listen, Julie, here’s what people like you — people who have that weird
hope
in humanity — don’t get. You know what causes pain? True,
real
pain? People do. You get rid of people, you get rid of pain.”
 

“That’s stupid.”
 

“Stop thinking that the world works some other way, Julie. Stop trying to make it work the way you want it to.”
 

The waitress came around and refilled their coffee, while Julie and Ben sat silently at the small table. Julie held back tears as she gazed out the window. Ben simply faced straight ahead, not making eye contact with the waitress.
 

When he finally looked up, he found the woman staring down at him knowingly, eyeing him strangely. “Let me know if you two need anything,” she whispered. Ben nodded.
 

“Come on, Julie, what’s wrong?”
 

Julie turned her head. “You need to grow up, Ben.”
 

He frowned.
 

“People care about you. People
love
you, and you push them away because you got hurt once. I get it, but you’ve got to let it go.”
 

He stood up to leave, but she reached out and grabbed his arm. “Stop. Don’t walk away again, Ben. You need to hear this, talk through it.”
 

He wanted badly to continue, to walk out of the room. Then keep walking.
 

But he didn’t. He wasn’t sure why, but he agreed with her. He needed her to call him out. Or was it more than that?
 

Before he could consider an answer, Julie’s phone rang. She held it up and read off the name: Randall Brown.
 

31

“DAD! BREAKFAST IS READY!”
 

RANDALL Brown heard his son yell from the dining room. His wife had clearly told their son to get him for breakfast, and this was his interpretation. Seconds later he heard his wife, Amanda, yell back to Drew.
 

“Come on, Drew,
get
him. I could have done that myself.”
 

Randy smiled, knowing the exchange between his family members all too well. He knew what was next: “Then why didn’t you?” Drew asked.
 

He shook his head, knowing that Amanda would now
really
be upset at the disrespectful comment. She would probably revoke his rifle-shooting privileges, or worse.
 

When do they grow out of it?
he wondered. Drew was a good kid, but Randy was regularly surprised by the fleeting attitudes and phases of teenage boys. Drew kept them on their toes, and Randy was positive that Drew was the cause of the majority of the gray hairs on his head.
 

“I’ll be right there!” he called back. Surprisingly, he didn’t hear his wife reprimand their son. She must have decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. Still smiling, he turned back to his cellphone and dialed Julie’s number.
 

It rang three times before she picked up. “Hello?”
 

“Hey, Julie, it’s me — Randy.”
 

“Hey, Randy, good to hear from you. We’re just finishing up breakfast. Anything good?”

“Might be helpful, but I don’t know if it’s
good
.”
 

“We’ll take anything you’ve got, Randy.”
 

“By the way, who’s we? You working with Stephens on this one?”

“Uh, no, a guy I met at Yellowstone actually. Stephens is back home. What did you find?”
 

Randy considered this for a moment.
Some guy?
Julie wasn’t careless, and she certainly wasn’t promiscuous, but he didn’t question her. “Oh, uh, I found her — Diana’s — assistant. Charlie Furmann, lives in Mud Lake, Idaho with his parents and has an apartment in Twin Falls.”
 

Julie paused a moment, and he assumed she was taking notes. “Mud Lake? Is that a real place?”
 

“It is. Town of about four hundred people from what I gather. Shouldn’t have much trouble finding him there.”

“Ok, great. Anything else on him?”
 

“Not much. He was a PhD candidate in something called ‘molecular modeling’ and worked with Diana as a sort of work-study.”

Again, a pause.

“Listen, Julie. I really need to go.” He thought about his son in the dining room, waiting with Amanda to start breakfast.
Amanda
. She was already upset that he was gone for a few hours yesterday, and she wouldn’t be happy with him for this, either. At the very least he could tell her what had happened at Yellowstone and hope that it explained why he had been absent.
 

“Right, yeah, sorry. Randy, thanks for this. Seriously.”
 

“No problem.” He began to hang up, but heard Julie’s voice again from the small speaker.
 

“Oh, hey. Have you heard anything from Stephens?”
 

Randy frowned, but placed the phone back up to his ear. “Stephens? No, why?”
 

It wasn’t abnormal for Randy to not be in contact with Benjamin Stephens. Randy was the office IT specialist, not a regular team member. Most of the time he was in charge of setting up and maintaining the company’s intranet server, SecuNet, and setting up email addresses and providing other IT support. In some cases, he had played a more active role by providing on-the-fly information updates and logistics, but his was mainly a hands-off job.
 

“I just haven’t heard anything from him either, and he’s usually inundating me with emails and keeping me in the loop with things. I figured that with a case like this, my inbox would have four hundred emails in it from him.”
 

“Weird. No, I haven’t heard anything.”
 

“Okay. Is the server up? Any major downtime?”
 

Randy was almost insulted. “Of course not. Why would there be? You know I’ve got 24/7 alerts that would get to me even if I was in an Afghani cave.”

“Woah, chill. I figured, just couldn’t hurt to ask,” Julie said. “Sorry — I know you’re on top of it. It’s just weird that Stephens hasn’t tried to email me.”
 

“Yeah, it is. Give me a minute. I’ll remote in and see if there’s anything wonky going on. I’ll text you in five.”
 

“Thanks, Randy. I owe you one.”
 

“Buy me a beer sometime, and we’re even.” He clicked off the phone and walked out to the dining room. “Amanda, Drew. Yesterday a bomb went off at Yellowstone. Something was released into the air there at the same time, and no one knows what it is, but it’s killing people.”