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It’s only been a week. Let’s not get hysterical.
Space Monkey 2347
Come on, man. He posted every day for months and then suddenly he stops. Do the math!
WKWWK
Frodo 14
What did they do with Murdoch’s body?
WKWWK
Patriot Warrior
It wasn’t particularly late when Gus got home, but the house by then was frigid. And quiet. He could see all the lights were on, though the curtains were drawn. That was odd. Theo was a little paranoid about his power bill. There was no sign of Horse in the backyard.
Gus frowned, uneasy. He let himself in. “Theo…? Theo! What the hell?”
His sister met him in the hallway with Horse and armed with a kitchen knife. The dog bowled him over.
“Oh…it’s you.” Theo lowered her weapon, so immensely glad to see him that she could understand Horse’s blind joy.
“Why is it so cold in here?” Gus asked once he’d calmed Horse down.
“The thermostat…I turned it on but—”
“The pilot light’s probably gone out. I’ll go down and relight it.” Gus handed her a bag. “Dinner,” he said. “I’ll just get the heat going before it begins to snow in here. And then you can tell me what’s going on.”
Theo nodded. Shivering, she took the bag to the kitchen while Gus went down to the basement. Returning the knife to the cutlery drawer, she took out plates for the burgers and fries Gus had brought home, wishing she’d thought to make dinner but glad he’d decided to bring it home.
A bang from the basement was loud and sudden, and jolted her back to panic. She screamed. “Gus!” She ran to the stairs. “Gus, are you all right? Gus!”
He looked up. “Of course, I’m all right. I just had to give the furnace a bit of the thump to get it going.” He squinted at her. “What’s made you so jumpy?…Oh, God, don’t start crying. What the hell’s going on?”
Theo told him then about the crime scene and the man with dreadlocks who’d tried to follow her home and the fact that she couldn’t really lock the living room window…not properly. Gus said nothing for a while. He climbed out of the basement and shut the door. “Come on, I’m starving.”
“Why’d you go back to Murdoch’s house, Theo?” he asked when they were back in the kitchen.
Food warmed Theo a little and made her feel steadier.
“I don’t know. I just did. I don’t remember deciding to.”
“This bloke who spoke to you, what precisely did he look like and what exactly did he say?”
“Blond dreadlocks under a bandana. He was wearing a flannel shirt and jeans. There was a cobweb tattoo on his neck. He smelled like fuel and cigarettes.”
Gus’s brow rose. “Bloody risky combination.”
Theo recounted their conversations, both outside Dan Murdoch’s house and when she’d confronted him on the street.
Gus smiled as she explained how she convinced the man to leave. “Good thinking. Hopefully you’ve kept the bastard from working out where you live.”
“Hopefully.”
“What I can’t work out is how he knew you were Australian,” Gus added scowling. “It’s an unusual nationality to guess out of the blue…and, generally speaking, the world doesn’t realize that Australians come in all colors.”
Theo’s brow furrowed. Gus was right. She had taken after their father and was much darker than her brother. People had, in the past, asked her if she was Egyptian, Greek, even Peruvian, but no stranger had guessed Australian before. “The accent, I suppose,” she offered half-heartedly.
