Show Me (Thomas Prescott 4), Nick Pirog [classic children's novels .TXT] 📗

Big Biotech.” She scrunched her nose. “What have they got to do with anything?”

“I think they were behind your dad’s murder.”

She cocked her head to the side.

“Come with me,” I said, pushing myself up. I held out my hand to her. She glanced at it for a moment, uncertain, as if by taking my hand she was giving credence to the ridiculous statement I just uttered.

She ignored my hand and pushed herself up. “Follow you where?”

“To the bedroom.”

She cut her eyes at me.

“Not like that.”

Unless.

Wheeler followed me up to the bedroom, and I flipped on the lights. Her eyes found the far wall, where I’d taped all the pictures I’d drawn. “What is that?” she asked.

“That’s my investigation.”

She took a couple steps forward and said, “Your investigation looks like the wall of a kindergarten classroom.”

“Oh, come on, they aren’t that bad.”

“Uh, they’re pretty bad.”

I smirked.

Then I tapped the picture of Neil Felding and said, “It starts with him.”

It took me twenty minutes to run Wheeler through everything I knew so far. At first, she seemed reluctant to believe a word out of my mouth, but inch-by-inch, the way a glacier etches a canyon out of rock, I could tell she was coming around.

She said, “So Lowry getting his revenge against Odell was just a cover?”

“I think so. I think the Lunhill guys got to Lowry. I think they paid him to make it look like a revenge killing when Neil Felding was the target all along.”

“Because Neil Felding was going to blow the whistle on something big at Lunhill.”

“That’s my theory.”

“But Lunhill couldn’t risk Lowry getting caught and they killed him in his car and made it look like a suicide.”

“Right.”

I could see her running everything over in her head. This didn’t change the fact her father was still in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it did change who was responsible, or at least partly responsible, for his murder.

Wheeler’s next words would say a lot about who she was.

She said, “We need to find out what Neil Felding knew.”

I tried to fight back a smile.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing. I just like your spunk.”

This made her blush.

There was a loud crack and the two of us darted to the window and peered through.

“The barn,” Wheeler said. “It’s crumbling.”

The two of us ran outside.

We slowly made our way closer to the barn until we reached the point of being singed by the flames.

Maybe it was the fire’s destructive power, its absolute disregard for anything but oxygen and fuel, but it made me think about Lunhill. They were just like fire. They didn’t care who they hurt—people, animals, the planet—as long as the flames continued to burn.

“We’re gonna bring them down,” I said.

Wheeler turned.

I could see a crack in her veneer. Her eyes were moist, her breath caught in her throat.

I wondered what she was thinking about. Her father? Lowry? Lunhill?

Our hands were hanging a couple inches apart. Her fingers grazed mine, touched, fled, touched, fled. Then slowly her fingers climbed into mine. Her fingers were soft but strong.

She tilted her head upward just slightly. This time there was no questioning what she wanted.

Me.

I closed the distance between us, my lips brushing lightly against hers.

There was a loud whoof as the barn collapsed. Dust and ash swept over us and we covered our heads.

A moment later, we walked back to the farmhouse. I thought about grabbing her hand, pulling her to me, but like the barn, the moment was gone.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I was exhausted. I spent the entire night awake checking on May every twenty minutes to make sure her breathing was regular. Finally around 5:00 in the morning, I decided she was okay and that I could get some shuteye.

That’s when I first heard it.

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!

I sat up in bed.

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!

What the?

The piglets remained undisturbed by the sound, and I crept to the window. I pulled the curtains apart. The sun was just beginning to wake. I squinted in the direction of the chicken coop, and low and behold, standing on the outside fence just like in the picture hanging on the fridge, was a rooster.

Randall must have dropped him off at some point after we’d finished up for the day.

I shook my head.

If I had access to a time machine and I only had one thing to change about my past thirty-five years, I would travel back to when I asked Randall to acquire a rooster and hit myself in the face with a sledge hammer.

I ambled back to the bed and flopped down between Harold and May.

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!

“Shut up!” I screamed. “Shut the fuck up!”

He didn’t.

I slept fitfully for a few hours, then finally gave up. I pushed myself out of bed. I threw on some clothes, fed the piglets, ate, then made my way outside.

The sun had risen a couple inches on the horizon, showering the rooster in an aura of yellow.

I was already plotting ways to kill him.

My eyes traveled from the rooster to the still smoldering pile of rubble that had once been the barn.

The previous night, I’d been too worried about May to concentrate on anger. But not now. My fists flexed into knuckled balls of white. My teeth gnashed together, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if droplets of venom began to squirt from my canines.

A moment later, I felt a sharp pain in the back of my mouth and cringed.

“How did you do this?” Donald Roberts DDS asked.

I debated telling him the truth, how I’d been so angry I bit down and cracked my molar in half or how the tooth had first been loosened by a spinning round kick to the side of my face. But that would lead to a series of other questions or a series of awkward silences, neither of which I was in the mood to deal with.

“Just eating cereal this morning,” I lied. I’d actually eaten three waffles, Chocolate Chip Eggos, which were now being carried at the Harvest Food and Market thanks to my