Null Pointer

JixeWriMo'20: Prompts

JixeWriMo'20 Prompt #12: This had to be illegal. It was completely dark, and he had just climbed over two chain link fences. That's two more than he'd ever climbed over in his life. Surely people only did that on television. But here he was with a flashlight in his hand, following...

JixeWriMo'20 Prompt #13: I was so quiet that nobody even noticed me. They didn’t notice that I was listening to every word they said.

JixeWriMo'20 Prompt #16: She kept pacing the living room, back and forth, not saying a word. It would have been easier if she’d just come out and told us disappointed she was, announced our punishment, and sent us to our rooms. But she wanted us to apologize, or explain, or something. Finally, I couldn’t stand the silence any longer and I ...

JixeWriMo'20 Prompt #17: Yes, he was one of us. But we weren’t going to take the fall for him, not this time. He’d gotten us in trouble before, when...

JixeWriMo'20 Prompt #24: I wanted to believe him. I really did. But I had trusted him before, and it hadn’t worked out that well. So now when he assured me that...

JixeWriMo'20 Prompt #28: It was too quiet, too peaceful to be true. He should have known better. But he was hoping it was over, hoping to return to his everyday routine, instead...

This had to be illegal. It was completely dark, and he had just climbed over two chain link fences. That’s two more than he’d ever climbed over in his life. Surely people only did that on television. But here he was with a flashlight in his hand, following Bobby, of all people, which was another sign that his thought process around this venture was fundamentally flawed. He was the oldest, the responsible one, the boring one. He was supposed to keep his younger siblings out of trouble. That was a full-time job that threatened to leave him with no time for a childhood. And anyway, wasn’t it his parents’ job to parent, not his? He knew it was just his angsty teenage phase, and he certainly didn’t begrudge Jim or Dan the mothering they got from his Moms, but sometimes he wished she’d spend a little less time playing Moms to the entire town a little more time being Moms to her own four children. Maybe if she did, and maybe if his father didn’t have to work all hours at the bank to support a family of six on one income, Brian wouldn’t be climbing over fences in the dark, following his brothers into something monumentally stupid that was likely to land them all in trouble, in a likely failing effort to keep them out of trouble with the law, if not their parents. He’d thought it’d be an easy summer, with Trixie and Honey away at camp. No mysteries. But no, his life was never that simple. Bobby had gone and found himself a conspiracy theory and/or a social justice cause he was passionate about. Brian was out climbing fences to figure out which, he supposed. At the end of this madness, there was either illegal experimentation on animals, or an arrest for trespassing, or, if Brian was truly as unlucky as he was feeling right this moment, both. He could be a hero from a jail cell, right? A convicted criminal could hardly be called boring, right? So, no matter what happened tonight (this morning?) his life was headed in the right direction. Brian laughed under his breath at his own thoughts. His life was a mess, thanks to an impulsive sister, a horrorcane baby brother, and a brother who had swallowed a dictionary that didn’t contain the word “no”. Brian had no idea how anyone could possibly think his life was boring. Just because he liked to relax in the rare down moments they left him before they dragged him into another insane whirlwind didn’t make him boring. Practical, sure, but not boring.

How many damn fences does this place have?! Brian wondered out loud as his flashlight beam caught sight of Bobby all but bouncing up a third chain link fence. Yep, definitely illegal. And yet possibly not immoral.

Mart braced his hands on his knees, half-doubting he would ever breathe normally again. “Alright, Bobster,” Mart said in a harsh whisper, partly because they were sneaking into a compound after dark and some level of discretion or secrecy was warranted, and mostly because he didn’t have the air to yell. “We’ve scaled three fences already, which is at least two more than any sane person ought to do without knowing why. Fess up.”

“I’m telling Trixie you admitted to not being sane,” Bobby replied, ignoring Mart’s request.

Mart crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not going a step further until you tell us what this is all about.”

“Cool. A stationary target will be easier for anyone who gets a sense something is off; you’ll make a good distraction.”

“Bobby,” Mart growled.

“Mart’s right,” Brian agreed. “Tell us what we’re doing here, or we’re all going home. This has to be illegal.”

“So is what they’re doing!”

“Who?”

“The people who own this lab. As if you couldn’t tell,” Bobby sniffed. “Who needs three fences and electronic locks on anything in Sleepyside?”

“Think we’re actually just over the line in Croton,” Mart corrected.

“Regardless of the geography, what is it you think is happening at this lab, Bobby, and why?”

“So, Larry an’ Terry an’ me—”

“And I,” Mart corrected superiorly.

Bobby rolled his eyes. “We were biking up past here a couple days ago and my tire went flat. The guys went ahead to find us a good place to eat and whatever while I pulled my bike into the parking lot to fix the tire. I was sitting in the grass, so I guess the cars hid me from view and I was so quiet that nobody even noticed me. They didn’t notice that I was listening to every word they said.”

Brian frowned. “Tonight, Bobby. What do you think is happening in this lab?”

“They are experimenting on animals!”

“Bobby, animal research is a fundamental part of the research process, before moving on to human trials. I know it sounds bad, but the experimental subjects are cared for humanely, aside from the experiment parameters, and they are discarded humanely afterwards as well.”

“Not in this lab,” Bobby countered. “I heard them! They were talking about how if anyone found out, and if they couldn’t afford to properly feed and house the mice, it wasn’t a valid trial, and the guy who was objecting, kept going. He said that psychosis wasn’t a side-effect and how’d the other guy expect to get the drug cleared for human trials, let alone to market, with a flaw like that? An’ the other guy, he said the FDA only knows what they’re told, an’ all they’re gonna hear is that the drug cured the disease in the mice. They’re not going to hear it scrambles their brains!”

“Okay, that sounds bad,” Brian agreed, “but why are we infiltrating the lab in the middle of the night rather than going to the police or FDA?”

“Because we’re Beldens?” Mart offered.

Brian scowled.

“You’re not helping,” Bobby accused. “An’ we’re not going to the police or FDA because we’re kids an’ they’ll never believe us and Other Guy will tell them whatever they want to hear. But, if we get in there and liberate some mice, especially the psychotic ones, we’ll slow them down, for one, and they’ll probably report the break in to the police—”

“And that’s the part in your plan where we go to jail,” Brian observed wryly.

“No, that comes later.”

Mart gave a very undignified squeal. “There’s a part of your plan where we go to jail? No, thank you. I’m out.”

Mart started back to the third fence.

Bobby grabbed Mart’s shirt. “Just wait, Mart. Going to jail isn’t part of the plan. At least I hope not. But once a police report gets filed, they’ll have to investigate and they’ll find out what’s going on and we’ll be heroes, which is why we won’t go to jail, even if they figure out that we’re the ones who did it. I hope.”

“Do you understand how bad an idea this is, Bobby? We are far more likely to be the ones in legal trouble for this than they are. We need to go home now, before we get caught.”

“If you’re both going to be sticks-in-the-mud about it, go ahead and leave, but I know what I heard and I have to at least try to do something,” Bobby said firmly, continuing deeper into the lab’s property.

Brian hurried after him, with Mart bringing up a reluctant rear. “Bobby, I’m not saying we go home and forget all about it; I’m saying we go home and do this right. Tell Moms and Dad, and the police, and the FDA, and whoever else we have to until someone digs deep enough to prove or disprove your theory about what’s going on here.”

“Because Moms and Dad and the police and the government listen to Trixie so well when she says bad stuff is going on? We’re teenagers. No one is going to believe me without proof. I’m getting it. I didn’t come this far to just bail.”

By then, they’d reached the walkway at the back of the building and were about to follow it around the corner in search of a door when Mart grabbed them both and pulled them back.

He put a finger to his lips to caution silence before they could protest and pointed to a tree maybe 50 feet straight ahead of them.

Brian felt the blood draining from his face as he eyed the patch of alternating red and blue light reflecting off the trunk of the tree.

“What are we going to do?” Mart hissed.

“If they are here for us, there’s nothing we can do. We’re in deep trouble. If they’re not here for us, we could leave now and hope we can sneak back home with no one the wiser. Or, we try to bluff it. Just walk down the sidewalk like we don’t know we’re doing anything wrong and don’t know they are here. When we get stopped, we say as little as possible without lying, and hope they let us go.”

“Whether they’re here for us or not, no way we’re getting three people over three fences with police on-scene and no one notices. I think we have to bluff it,” Mart replied.

“So, we’re agreed?” Brian asked his brothers. “We say as little as possible. That includes not mentioning your conspiracy theory, Bobby.”

Bobby and Mart nodded solemnly. If he was getting arrested for this, Bobby had intended it to happen after he was inside the building, where the police would be able to see for themselves the truth of his words. Right now, he still had no proof of anything and they wouldn’t have any reason to believe him.

Brian took a deep breath and then, as casually as possible, led the way around the edge of the building. They made it almost all the way down the side of the building, reaching the edge of the parking lot, before they were spotted.

“Hey, you there. Where’d you kids come from?”

“The woods back that way,” Brian answered, waving a hand.

“Camping, hunh? I remember loving that as boy,” the officer reminisced. Brian didn’t correct him. “Ground’s not too damp from the rain we keep having?”

Brian shrugged. He didn’t know. “We’re rethinking our plans,” he offered.

“Well, this is private property, and we’ve got a police situation here tonight, so I’m going to need you three to steer clear of this area.”

“Is it about the animal drug testing?” Bobby blurted out.

The officer looked wary. “What about it?”

Bobby’s story spilled out, about the bike ride and the flat tire, and what he’d overheard, though he, thankfully, stopped talking before admitting to tonight’s plot.

“Honestly, I hoped it was just youthful imagination,” Mart offered.

“I can’t say,” the officer admitted. “We’ve only just begun our investigation. It’s dark out; I can have an officer give you all a lift home.”

“No, that’s okay. Our mother would have our hides before we even had a chance to explain, if we show up at this hour of the night in a squad car,” Brian refused politely.

The officer smiled. “I hear that, but you’ll need to go on up to the road, and, like I said, steer clear of this area the rest of the night.”

“We’ll do that, Officer,” Brian agreed.

It took all of their self-control to resume their casual pace and none of them hardly dared to breathe until they reached the road. When they were well out of sight of the lab, they stopped, laughing breathlessly.

“Jeepers, Bri, I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“I did not say a single thing that wasn’t true. I just let the officer fill in his own blanks.”

“Good thing Mr. Honorable wasn’t with us. I don’t think Jim could have stood for letting the man believe what he wanted, knowing it was all wrong.”

“You might be surprised. I’d bet he had to be a little creative with the truth when he ran away from Jonesy,” Brian pointed out. “But that’s irrelevant. What is relevant is us finding a way back home without getting lost that doesn’t take us through the lab’s property. Or any other private property of people we don’t know. And gets us home before anyone notices we’re gone and—”

“Moms has our hide before we even have a chance to explain,” Mart finished for him.

Brian breathed a sigh of relief when he caught sight of the warm glow of the Farm’s porch light through the trees. He’d gotten both of his brothers home without anyone getting hurt or arrested. He did feel a little guilty about not correcting the officer’s incorrect assumptions, but sometimes less was more, as the saying went.

Mart deftly opened the screen door, edging it open silently, a feat Brian hadn’t thought possible.

The trio moved inside, quickly patting Reddy on the head so he wouldn’t bark when he came to investigate. His tail wagged happily and he turned and trotted into the living room with the boys on his tail.

“Traitor,” Mart muttered at the happy-go-lucky dog, who had given them no warning that Moms stood in the living room, awaiting their arrival.

“You’re blaming Reddy for the trouble we’re in?” Brian asked with a raised eyebrow.

Mart frowned. “No, I am blaming him for not warning us that we were walking into a parental unit.”

“You were hoping to not get caught?” Moms inquired blandly. “But that would imply you knew better.”

None of the boys said anything. How could they? They had known they’d be in trouble if they got caught, but admitting to that could only dig their hole deeper.

She kept pacing the living room, back and forth, not saying a word. It would have been easier if she’d just come out and told us how disappointed she was, announced our punishment, and sent us to our rooms. But she wanted us to apologize, or explain, or something. Finally, I couldn’t stand the silence any longer and I blurted out, “I actually did it!”

“You accidentally did it?” Moms clarified, since I’d constantly mixed up the two words when I was younger.

“No, well, yes, that, too, but I meant what I said. I did it.”

My oldest brother looked disappointed that I’d caved so easily, and his look of disappointment was almost worse than Moms’ pacing.

My next oldest brother looked betrayed. We’d had a plan, an agreement about how we were going to present a united front, and here I was breaking ranks.

“Do you have anything else you’d like to say for yourself?” Moms asked, a bit of ice sliding into her normally warm voice. “Any of you?”

This time we all held our tongues. What was there to say? What we’d done was stupid (fun, but stupid) and we couldn’t claim we hadn’t known better or couldn’t have predicted the outcome.

“Brian, Mart, you are both grounded for two weeks. Do I need to explain why?”

“No, Moms,” they both replied, subdued. Brian handed over the keys to the jalopy when Moms held her hand out. I winced, knowing that was the real punishment for Brian.

“Bobby, I appreciate you taking some responsibility for your part in this, but that does not negate that you should have known better than to actually or accidentally do it. You are grounded until the Monday after next.”

A week and a day. Mostly a week and the weekend(s) attached to it. “What about the scrimmage?” It was next Saturday, part practice, part game, part try out. It wasn’t mandatory, and Coach said no decisions would be made regarding positions for next season after the scrimmage, but surely more time showcasing skills in front of the coaches could only help an athlete hoping to make the starting lineup.

“Perhaps you should have thought about that sooner,” Moms replied.

That was...fair, as much as I wanted to throw a tantrum, declare it anything but, and consider my life ruined, but that would be channeling my inner big Sis, and it was a moment of weakness and channeling my inner Trixie, that got me into this situation in the first place.

As we trudged up to our rooms, thoroughly chastised, even though Moms had never given a lecture, I heard her mutter to herself, “If they all make it to 18 without getting arrested, it’ll be a miracle.”

Which goes to show that Trixie, Mart, and I come by our overdramatic tendencies honestly, but is also not untrue. We really do push the limits sometimes, always with the best of intentions, but not the most rational thinking. I suppose I should work on that.

“Okay, explain to me again how we’re grounded for two weeks, and Bobby, the mastermind behind this whole debacle, only gets 10 days?”

“Those days include the first major practice of the season,” Brian reminded his brother. “Trust me, he’s hurting as much as you are. And he got early release because he confessed. We didn’t. Moms even gave us a second chance to do so, and we didn’t.” The sentence was entirely reasonable, in Brian’s opinion, which is why he’d taken it without complaint.

“And why didn’t we confess, too?” Mart asked. “I mean, I know we had a plan, but then Bobby went off-script. Why did we stick to the silence is golden script?”

Brian shrugged. “I can’t tell you why you did anything you did tonight. Bobby’s confession got him a reduced sentence because his actions were misguided at best, but his intentions were good, and Moms has been letting Trixie, not to mention the rest of us, off the hook in those scenarios for years. Coming down hard on Bobby would have been a double standard. However, my confession—and yours, for that matter—would have required us to confess to further offenses that would have increased the sentence, not reduced it. I exerted my constitutional right not to dig my hole any deeper.”

“If Bobby’s actions were misguided but well-intentioned, how were ours anything different?”

“Because we didn’t have good intentions,” Brian replied, closing their shared bedroom door, lest his explanation make its way to his parents’ ears, and ruin what he’d accomplished by holding his tongue downstairs. “Bobby snuck out of the house and you caught him and basically said, ‘where are you going without me?’ and tagged along over three fences before you even bothered to ask what we were doing or why. I maybe get a pass for the bit between the house and the first fence, because I went after the two of you to try and keep you out of trouble, but really, as the responsible one, I was supposed to stop you from leaving in the first place, not go along with another crazy plot. And after we scaled that first fence, with no noble intention of saving the poor mice or the potential human clinical trial participants, all we have to say for ourselves is that we knowingly trespassed, broke curfew, set a bad example for our young sibling(s), didn’t look out for said younger sibs, for absolutely no reason. There is no redeeming motive for our actions. Better not to confess to that, don’t you think?”

I figured a week was long enough for the guilt to eat at my studiously responsible firstborn. Once Bobby was holed up in his room with his music and Mart was outside, tending to his chores, I sat down at the kitchen table, where Brian was scanning the newspaper.

“Are you ready to tell me what you boys were up to last Friday night, sneaking out of the house like that?”

Brian shrugged. “Nothing much happened, honest, Moms. Mart saw Bobby slipping out from our window and went after him. Since he hadn’t confirmed he was going after him to bring him back inside, I followed. Figured it was on me to try to keep them out of trouble.”

I wanted to believe him. I really did. But I had trusted him before, and it hadn’t worked out that well. So now when he assured me that nothing had happened, I couldn’t just let it go. “And?”

“I guess Bobby overheard something at that pharmaceutical research plant just over the line in Croton while he was fixing a flat tire on his bike during that ride he and Larry and Terry took up to the park. He got in his head that they were up to some pretty shady stuff, and, given what’s been coming out in the papers all week, he probably did overhear some things.”

“Should Bobby be making a statement to the police investigating the company?”

Brian frowned. “Again, from the news reports, I doubt they need him, and he’s not going to be eager to do that unless you offer him immunity.”

I raised an eyebrow. The kids thought I hadn’t ever heard them call it the Moms look. I didn’t care what they called it as long as they crumpled under that look and told me what I needed to know about what shenanigans they’d been up to. “I take it ten days and missing the first major workout of the season was too mild a sentence.”

“For what he actually did, it’s fine. Consistent with what you’ve done for the rest of us when we snuck out after curfew. He was planning to investigate. You know how he idolizes Trixie. He wanted to find proof, solve the mystery, be the hero.”

“Get himself in a world of danger and trouble, just like his sister. I’ve probably been too soft on her; I’m just usually so glad she’s home safe….”

“We all are,” Brian agreed.

“But I haven’t set a good precedent for Bobby, to make him understand that the reckless things Trixie does when she’s investigating a mystery are unacceptable. The things the rest of you follow her into doing are unacceptable. And now Bobby’s taking after her.”

“What are you going to do? Trixie’s going to investigate. She can’t help it, and she really is a good detective, recklessness aside. Bobby just wants so bad to not be the baby any more, and he always will be, because no matter how old he gets, we’ll always be older. He’s going to push back against that, probably his whole life. Come down too hard, he’ll split and never come back.”

I had an uncomfortable feeling he was right, and I didn’t like the idea that my children saw what our family needed more clearly that I did. It was my job to know how to nurture them to grow properly. Unfortunately, it was far easier to coax a seedling to sink deep roots and spread out wide leaves and petals than it was to convince children to do the same. Feeling defensive, which was admittedly unfair to Brian, since I’d all but asked him to share his thoughts on the matter, I said, “You’re really too young to be reading sociology texts. You should probably stick to the biology until you’re actually in a pre-med program.”

Brian, probably deducing all of my thoughts from his observations, my response, and his reading of the aforementioned sociology and psychology texts, merely shrugged. “Familiarity with the basic concepts should give me a leg up in what will be highly competitive programs, and I’ll need all the help I can get because I’m not highly competitive by nature. But, if you think the topic’s too advanced, of course, I can curtail my studies.”

And wasn’t that just the politest way of making me feel like a monster, because his voice was nothing but earnest honesty. One word from me, and he really would stop reading up on sociology. “No,” I sighed. “You’re right. I shouldn’t impede you from pursuing your passions. Within reason, of course,” I added as an after thought before he could comment on Trixie’s pursuit of her passions, which seemed to almost get her killed on a monthly basis.

As soon as we arrived for the scrimmage, Coach frowned. “Where’s Belden? He usually runs with you two, doesn’t he?”

“He’s grounded, Coach, through the weekend,” Terry explained.

“Do I even want to know what he did this time?”

I shook my head. “Probably not,” I replied, though really, it was more that I didn’t want anyone to ask me too many questions about the incident, because eventually the part Terry and I played in it might come out. Yes, he was one of us. But we weren’t going to take the fall for him, not this time. For one, we weren’t really involved. We were just the people he was biking with when he got the flat that put him in position to hear the fateful conversation. We didn’t even hear it for ourselves. For two, he went off in the middle of the night to rescue the lab mice, and have a grand adventure and he didn’t invite us. It’d be one thing to share the blame if we got to share the action! For three, he’d gotten us in trouble before, when he got ideas for “adventures”. Over the past decade, we’d been in trouble for everything from capsizing/baptizing the cat (we were six; don’t judge!) to breaking curfew in order to play a prank on the female Bob-Whites’ sleepover. Bobby had gotten himself into this mess all by himself; he was going to have to get himself out all by himself.

Plus (and okay, I know it’s selfish of me), with Bobby missing the scrimmage, Terry and I both have a better chance of making the starting lineup on the team. Don’t tell him I said so, but he’s the better athlete of the three of us. Terry might be next, but I will go to my grave before I admit any such thing where my twin might find out about it, so I never admitted any such thing and you better not tell him otherwise! I need every advantage I can get, especially when half the school, including the coaches, consider the three of essential interchangeable parts of one single unit.

It's sort of the same as the Bob-Whites, but at least that’s a plural—everyone knows when someone’s talking about them that they’re a them and not an it. Us? Somehow, we got dubbed the BLT. Singular, and yes, like the sandwich. I’d blame Mart, because if anyone would name a group after food, he’s the one, but he’s also fairly in tune with the intricacies of the English language, so I don’t see him making such an obvious mistake as giving a group of people a nickname that reduces them to a singular, non-group word. Like it’s fine when Di tells our folks that the bevvy’s meeting, because bevvy means a group of Bob-Whites. But BLT doesn’t mean a group of anything, not even a food group. You’ve got a protein, and a vegetable, and fruit, or so the gardening types tell me. I’m still not sure I buy the notion of tomatoes as a fruit, but that’s really Terry’s problem, anyway. Me, I got stuck being the lettuce in our sandwich. Like who even likes lettuce, other than rabbits? It’s the thing you eat because it makes all the other stuff you want to eat seem healthier. Is that what I am in this group, too? The one no one actually likes, but just includes because it makes the overall thing look better?

I know, you probably think I’m overreacting, making a mountain out of a molehill, and, sure, I probably am. But I could be not, too, you know? I mean, Terry’s my twin. It’s not like he’s really going to say “go away, no one wants you around” when we’ve grown up as a matched set. With the twinnies, I used to kind of feel bad for Di sometimes, not having the other half of her set around. But the older I get, the more I envy her. She gets to just be Diana, not Di&. I wonder what that’d be like, to be just Larry, not Larry of Larry & Terry. And Bobby… he’s our best friend. But if he really only likes Terry, or likes Terry best, he wouldn’t be a very good best friend to Terry if he told Terry he only wanted to hang out with him and not someone he thinks Terry likes bestest in the whole wide world. So, really, there’s no telling, whether everyone’s just being polite, and including me because it’s the right thing to do, or if they actually like me. If they actually even know me, and not just Larry of Larry & Terry, or Larry of the BLT.

Moping, aside, don’t say anything about this to my teammates, either, will you? Otherwise my nickname this season is going to be “Lettuce”, and let’s just agree right now that nobody wants that, most especially me.

Bobby was nearly free; a mere half a day left before he became ungrounded again. He’d missed the first team workout, so he called Larry and Terry to see how it had gone. They told him the coach had asked for him by name. That was a good sign, he figured. They assured him they’d explained about how he was grounded, which meant Coach knew he’d wanted to be at the workout. That was a good sign, too, he figured.

It was too quiet, too peaceful to be true. He should have known better. But he was hoping it was over, hoping to return to his everyday routine, instead, as he finished up his conversation with his best friends, two police cars pulled into the Crabapple Farm driveway; he could see them from his bedroom window. One was a Sleepyside Police Department cruiser, but the other was a Croton cruiser, the final nail in the coffin he should have known was inescapable.

With Trixie out of town at camp, there was no way two different departments were showing up in their driveway and they weren’t there for him. He hung up on the Lynch twins without many pleasantries and headed down the stairs. “Wendell, what can I do for you?” He could hear his father was asking as he crept down the stairs.

“You’ve seen about the investigation into Winston Pharmaceutical Research Lab in the news by now, I trust.” Bobby assumed his father nodded, because Sergeant Molinson continued, “One of the employees is talking, looking a deal, but as a co-conspirator, his testimony needs to be corroborated. Based on what he’s said, and the recollections of one of the officers during the raid, our brothers in the Croton PD believe one of your sons may have overheard an incriminating conversation.”

“My boys,” Peter echoed slowly. “Trixie’s not even in town. Thought we were going to have a quiet summer.”

“So did we, Pete.”

“So, which of my sons is taking up the mantle in his sister’s absence.”

“We’re not sure. Mart or Bobby, based on what the Croton officers have shared. Either of them go up Croton way about two weeks back?”

“That’d be Bobby. He and the twins took a bike ride up to the point.”

“You wouldn’t mind if we come in and talk to him?” The Croton officer spoke for the first time.

Peter nodded. “Robert, stop eavesdropping and get in here,” he ordered without turning away from the door. Bobby gulped but obeyed. There was no avoiding his fate any longer.