Return to The Quarry

Chapter Twenty-six

In the orange flickering glow of the idling flamethrower, Ryan's eyes searched the dark-clad figure for any recognition of his friend from summers past. Somehow, the memories he had of Caleb Hackett and his sister Kaylee, of sneaking around with them after dark to prank the other counselors or daring each other to demonstrate bravery with tests of courage, did not jive with the sinister man who stood before him. Where was that lanky, carefree kid he used to pal around with?

"Caleb?" he said, the hurt as vivid as the pilot light. "What are you doing? We could have been killed!"

Caleb looked at Ryan with an uncanny flatness in his eyes. "Ding ding ding," he intoned bitterly. "You go on to the lightning round."

Abi shook her head in disbelief. "I-I thought you were in jail. I thought all of-"

"Us Hacketts were?" He laughed bitterly. "My poor grandparents are. Uncle Bobby is." Caleb cast a dark look at everyone. "You don't go to prison if you act crazy enough, like I did. You get sent to the mental hospital, where if you're smart enough, you can fake your own death and get away."

Kaitlyn glared at him. "You escaped from that Meadowlark place."

Caleb nodded.

"What about your uncle Travis?" asked Laura. She had a very bad feeling in the pit of her stomach just uttering a sound in Caleb's presence.

Caleb smiled coldly. "Stuck some bullshit deal with the feds. Avoided jail time if he turned on all of us, not that it did him any good." He sniffed. "You saw him, you know. On the boardwalk."

A chill ran through Jacob. "That body was . . ."

Caleb shrugged as casually as he would if he were explaining the process of changing his car's oil. "Got a hold of him about two weeks back, lured him here, shovel to the head. Took him out of the hotel freezer about four days ago." The mischievous look in his eyes was ghastly as he smiled. "Thawed just in time to swap outfits and have a date with the ol' sledge."

Grace and Anton exchanged a nauseated look, remembering the freezer door ajar and imagining it being left that way as Caleb labored with a frozen corpse.

Kaitlyn shuddered. "You did all this just so you could orchestrate us coming

back here?"

"You're goddamn right. It was a lot of work. Hacking whole computer systems. Monitoring emails, learning that there was a plan to hire a psychologist. Canceling the real psychologist and sending out letters to all of you. Seems all you have to do is use the office computers to make a fake ID." He chuckled bitterly. "Lawyers are so full of themselves, they don't notice the little people. A little shave, a haircut, and they don't even realize they're talking to the security guard that let them in a day or two ago with the insurance adjusters."

"W-why?" Abi stammered.

With a sneer, Caleb regarded his old camp chums one by one, the disgust burning in his eyes as the rough stone of the tunnel's floor crunched beneath his boots. They could feel the heat from his flame thrower on their faces and squinted in its glare. He turned to Laura and Max, his eyes stabbing into theirs.

"Well," he began dryly, "you two couldn't do what you were fucking told, got infected, and as a result, got the summer off to a great start, wouldn't you say?" Something in the way Caleb's teeth stayed clenched together as he spat his words spoke of a rage that was dangerously near the boiling point. His eyes snapped to the others. "As for the rest of you, if you had only done what Dad said, if you had stayed in the goddamn Lodge . . ." Caleb looked back and forth between Laura and Ryan. ". . . the two of you wouldn't be a couple of fucking murderers, now would you?"