Instinct Jason Hough (best mobile ebook reader .txt) 📖

happened in the last few days, I’m certainly not going to rule out another strange occurrence in Silvertown. But I don’t exactly need the townspeople freaking out, either. I try for a reassuring smile. “Everyone go back to your drinks. I’ll head over there and find her.”

Kyle opens his mouth, but I shake him off and start walking back to my car.

As I open the car door, Kyle calls out to me. He’s on the sidewalk in front of O’Doh’s, across the street. “Mary, what the hell?”

With one foot in the car, I turn to him. “Dude, relax. The wind blew her front door open.”

“It’s just—” He starts, pauses to gather himself, and tries again. “This is what I was talking about earlier. It’s not like you to go it alone.”

“Um, newsflash? Greg’s out of town. I am alone.”

“You’re not, though.” He takes a few steps into the street. “We’re all happy to help.”

“Help with what? Look, I know the last few days have been insane, even by Silvertown standards, but that doesn’t mean I need to get a posse together every time someone forgets to lock their door.”

He’s crossed the street now and stands just a foot away from me. “Why are you shutting me out all the sudden? Shutting all of us out. Ever since that creep last night—”

“Um, weren’t you and I having sex just a few hours ago?”

“You know what I mean, Mary.”

“Okay,” I say, “okay. Truth is I’m trying to prove myself to this town. That I can handle things without Greg.” I can see he’s not buying this, so I place a hand on his chest. “Go back inside. We’ll talk about it later. Right now I need to check on Clara.”

Kyle nods, at first skeptically but then with more conviction. “Call if you need backup. Deputize me if you have to.”

“I will,” I say, though I don’t believe my own words.

He steps back and waits there in the lot, watching me drive off.

I round the corner and accelerate past the gas station. Kyle’s words rattle around in my head, partly because they so closely match what Clara said to me outside the diner earlier, but more than that they’re an echo of my own thoughts only minutes before. And yet here I’ve done it again. Gone solo without even considering the alternative. I told everyone else to stay put while I handle things myself. Completely contrary to the “typical Mary Whittaker team operation,” as he so aptly put it. Ever since I killed that biker it’s like I’ve lost my instinct to build a team around me, or join up with—

My instinct.

I slam on the brakes. The cruiser skids to a halt in the middle of the main drag. Luckily the street is otherwise empty. For a minute I sit there, listening to the thoughts swirling in my head.

This tornado of memories all spiral around a single idea, one that I couldn’t see before simply because I wasn’t looking at myself.

Ever since we found the hiker I knew this had something to do with instincts. But I’d been so fixated on the fight-or-flight idea that I never really paid much attention to what Doc had said regarding primal behaviors. “There are many others.”

Instead of running for his life, the hiker just sat there and let the bear attack him. But what if it wasn’t a malfunction of his fight or flight response? Katherine Pascoe had said he hated animals as a general principle. He was intensely afraid of them. Wanted nothing to do with them to the point where he waited in the car to pick her up rather than have to be near the roommate’s dog. Then, suddenly, here in Silvertown, that’s flipped around completely, and at the worst possible moment.

Then there’s Sally Jones, helping out some nobody in total opposition to her intensely strong maternal instinct to care for her own damn children.

Willy Jupitas, stepping in front of my car the other day like there was no danger in it at all. Easy at the time to chalk it up to his age or my distractedness. Now, though…

Let’s not forget me. My natural drive to become part of a team, or form one when none exists. That’s been me all my life. And now, ever since that prick tried to kill me, I’ve been doing the polar opposite. Striking out on my own with no support.

“Oh my God,” I say to the dashboard, as other such cases flash through my mind. One in particular escapes my lips, “Johnny Rogers. Holy fucking shit.”

The dead teenager. A homebody. A gamer who detested the outdoors. Suddenly he’s hiking, alone in the wilderness with no skill for survival, leading to a fall that ended his life.

What’s the connection? I rack my brain. We’re all on the same mountain. Bombarded by radiation from the new cell tower? Drinking the same water? What?

I cast about, trying to think of other examples that might help. Everything out of the ordinary that’s happened recently. The woman in the bar playing pool. Her husband had tossed the chalk to her and watched it smack straight into her face. I remember her shock. As if she was surprised that she could do nothing but take the hit.

And what about the lawyer-biker? I rack my mind, trying to make that fit. But no, I think he was something else entirely. A different kind of insane. I can’t see how his behavior fits. Even his crash on the road earlier that day lacked the kind of weirdness the rest of us are experiencing. He’d been upset about his Harley, sure, but was that really so strange? The thing must have been one of his most prized possessions. So maybe he was what he appeared to be: a creep.

There was his broken nose, though. And what he’d said as he attacked me. That was odd.

“Still,” I say aloud, “doesn’t fit.” I drop him into a different mental room for later processing. That douchebag isn’t