Devil’s Wake Read Online Free Page A

crime!
    “No, you boys have done enough,” Molly said. “Thanks, but it’s all right. If I need anything, I’ll let you know.”
    She put an arm around Vern’s wide waist and led him up the half-dozen wooden steps to the weathered wood-frame main house, which they called the Palace. Their dog, Hipshot, a friendly and territorial black retriever mix, approached Vern with a feverishly wagging tail. At first. But instead of doing his happy dance and pawing Vern’s thigh, Hippy whined and backed away, his tail curled between his legs.
    Weird. So weird, in fact, that Terry and Piranha exchanged a look. That dog worshipped Vern. Would drink his piss out of a Dixie cup. What did Hipshot know that the rest of them didn’t?
    If only they’d had a clue.
    The staff lounge was drab wood-plank walls except for its picture windows; the walls were decorated with huge mounted fish someone had caught, or bought, over the years. The Red Hot Chili Peppers were piping from the old CD player; not Terry’s favorite group, but he’d take any music over the news. The room smelled like mildewed carpet and simmering soup. Home sweet home.
    Terry never thought he’d get sick of pine trees, fresh air, and sunshine, but sometimes prison only looked like paradise. Round Meadows—or as Terry liked to call it, Alcatraz North—was a tiny chunk of the six-hundred-thousand-acre Olympic wilderness area, flat land between two jagged hemlock-and-red-cedar-covered ridges near Mount Washington. It was federal land, leased to the state and rentedto church and youth groups for summer camp. Nursemaiding brats at summer camp was the last way Terry wanted to spend the summer before senior year in high school. And if he hadn’t used the nail gun on stepdad Marty, he wouldn’t be in this jam—that and a couple of other incidents where he had given people who desperately needed a black eye or busted lip their heart’s secret desire. It wasn’t his fault: his fist was merely the instrument of their deliverance.
    Terry had almost chosen juvie over summer camp duty, but his sister had begged him not to punish himself for what Marty had done to her. Lisa had been through enough. Between his sister’s pleas and the promise of fresh air, he’d signed up. In the old days, guys went to war to avoid jail. Terry figured this wasn’t much better.
    The Indian Twins, Dean Kitsap and Darius Phillips, were back from whatever gentler errands they’d been assigned, sitting with their feet up on the ends of the sagging couch, as they always did. They weren’t really twins, or brothers at all; actually, they were distant cousins. And Dean didn’t even have to be in Round Meadows—he just hung around to amuse himself. Both Darius and Dean were Suquamish Indians, but Darius’s mother had left Bainbridge Island as a teenager and married a Red Lobster crew chief over in Seattle.
    One day, car-thieving Darius had gone to the trading post in Sequim to buy supplies and ran into his doppelgänger. The way they looked, everyone assumed they were brothers, so they let campers and parents believe it. Dean had hung around so much, and had such a wide cross-section of useful skills, that Vern had hired him for the summer. Their olive skin and long black hair reinforced the image they liked to project: Plains warriors trapped in the wrong century. They both loved cherry-red motorcycles: Dean’s was a Honda Interceptor, Darius’s a Kawasaki Ninja 250R, and the brrrr of the engines could be heard around the camp at the oddest places and hours. Brothers from other mothers.
    Sonia Petansu was also lounging, doing a Sudoku puzzle at the wobbly pinewood table. She was the only female in their group, tallish with a sinewy body, straight black hair with a streak of white, and a fondness for shoplifting. She’d taken her cooking rotation last night, and despite her abundance of attitude, actually served a mean marinara. Tonight, Darius was making some kind of stew.
    Hipshot’s nails