Mariel slowly came up from beneath the water in the bath. She waited a few long moments before taking a breath. Tom had advised her to test her breathing limits, to stay under for as long as possible; but apparently patience wasn't a thing these upgrades were adorned with. She'd been lying there for an hour and a half and had almost drifted off to sleep.
It was late in the afternoon and Tom had said they'd need all the sleep they could get for tomorrow. No one had mentioned the incident out in the garden and Tom had warned the boys and girl to stay away.
She felt around the bath for a towel and, when she found one, clambered out. As she dried off she heard noises in the hall. Jesse and Rose were talking. Mariel agreed with Kira though of course they'd said nothing. The way she'd told Kira the night before about what had happened with Jesse, Tom, and Dave on the beach had proven that Tom hadn't told her the full story either.
On her way back to Jesse she'd felt the boot of the Sheriff car. They must have been down there for at least an hour for the engine to get that cold. It didn't take an hour to get a boy who was already leaving the beach.
There was also that comment at breakfast that Tom made about opening up his wounds by jumping around on the beach. That had been careless of him, if he hadn't meant for her to figure out that he and Jesse must have gotten into a fight. She couldn't for one minute believe that Tom would attack Jesse, but in the state he was in, she could well believe that Jesse would attack Tom. She couldn't ask either of them of course. They'd just say the other started it and they couldn't both be right.
She heard Jesse walk out of the hall and a few second later a door slamming. Thankfully it was inside the house. She doubted Tom and Dave would go and look for him again if he took off. Tom would if she asked him to but, with those wounds, she never would. They would probably be healed by morning but if Jesse decided to attack him again she didn't know if Tom could win.
And then there was Russell sitting tied up down in the basement. Her ex-husband had gone into the water, been changed, lost his wife and his baby, come into the house, found them all laughing and attacked Tom. It was a bit much to get her head around right now. She could see where Russell's anger was coming from concerning them as a whole. When he came home to find them all sitting around the table having bacon and eggs, laughing, she couldn't really blame him for getting angry. The kids were no excuse to not start looking the night before.
But even though Tom had told them not to it was true that they would have found nothing out in the dark. When she'd been driving along the roads looking for Jesse she could hardly see through a couple of trees and the beach was even darker. It had surprised her that there were no lights shining from the water. They seemed to have all gone elsewhere, perhaps to where Tom said they hid; below the waves.
She wrapped the towel securely around her chest and started drying her hair.
What she didn't understand was the anger directed at Tom. No, she did understand. Russ had to blame someone for losing his wife and baby and Tom was who everyone was blaming right now. And by the look in Tom's eyes he'd been expecting it. They were resigned and if she and Jesse hadn't stepped into help she didn't know what would have happened. Would Russell have killed Tom? Russell believes that Tom killed his wife and
unborn child, and anyone would take revenge for that.
Tom didn't directly deny killing Larkin but the look in his eyes when Russell said she was dead spoke volumes. There was shock, rage and… fear. Maybe he was truly scared that Russell would succeed in killing him. There's still hope though. While Larkin's body is missing Russell can have hope. And so can Tom.
"Hi Mare."
It was Tom. Mariel watched him walk past her and begin to clean his teeth.
"Hi. We don't still have to do that, do we?" She gestured to the toothbrush.
He smiled at her. "Fraid so."
"Why didn't you take the three teenagers down to the station?" Mariel asked, turning back to the mirror.
"They would have just been released like Szura."
"But won't they just come back?"
"No." The word was final and decisive and Mariel knew that they wouldn't. Tom must have put the fear of god into them, she thought with a smile. Anything to stop them coming after their family.
Tom finished, and moved till he was standing behind her. He put his arms around her waist and pulled her close "How you doing?"
"What do you mean?"
He sighed and turned Mariel so she was facing him. "That's your ex-husband down in the basement.""I know, but he tried to kill you."
"I… I don't think… I didn't know about Larkin."
She nodded. "I know. I believe you." She hugged him close.
"Thank you."
It was genuine thanks, she thought. That, of course, wasn't strange in itself but he must have believed that she'd choose Russell over him. All he needed to do was look at who she was married to right now and who she wasn't to figure out whose side she'd be on.
He smiled at her one last time and turned to leave. At the door he turned back. "Coming to bed?"
She threw her hairbrush at him and laughed. She could worry about Russell in the morning.
It was around midnight. Tom was sitting down in the basement with a still unconscious Russell. There was a quiet knock at the door.
"Yeah?"
Dave sidled in. "Hi, thought you might like some company."
Tom sighed and turned away. "Yeah." He knew that the only reason that Dave would leave a nice warm bed with probably a stash of beer under it by now would be that he had questions only Tom could answer.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, Dave turned to him. "Tom?"
"Dave."
"When you were still recovering from the fight in the water and you were in your room you said something about Russell believing he'd come back. What did you mean?"
Tom glanced down at Russell and seemed to think before replying. "Russell wasn't exactly normal to begin with."
"What?" The tiredness in Dave's voice was plain.
"Had enough of us aliens?" Tom smiled at him.
Dave returned the weary smile. "Never. And don't try to change the subject."
"Russell lost his parents when he was ten years old. Correct?"
"Yeah."
"And he murdered his uncle?"
"Yeah, which makes me very scared for my life seeing as I have a nephew and two nieces. What's the point?"
"The point… is that the military will want him."
"Why would the military want him?"
"A man capable of murder would make a far better soldier than one who's never known what it feels like to kill."
"But this must have happened to killers before. They don't exactly choose the best citizens."
Tom glanced at him and raised his eyebrows but didn't comment. "The military have never got a killer for themselves before. One's never been captured."
"But we're not going to just turn him over. No one will let you do that!"
Tom shook his head at the anger in Dave's voice. "I or anyone else won't have to. They've tagged him and now that he's changed…"
"But why have they been keeping tags on him and no one else."
"He's the only killer they're interested in here."
"You mean there are more?"
"We're all capable of killing Dave. And…" Tom stood. "Whoever is with this man will be taken along with him. So the worst place he can be right now for us is with us. So we either leave him behind, or we all spend the rest of our lives trapped in a basement being experimented on. I won't do that to my kids."
As Tom walked off around the corner and Dave followed Russell's eyes flickered open.
A lot of people were pretending to sleep that night.
