Gem Stone (3 page)

Glaring at her, Gem mumbled, "I'm hungry." Swallowing hard, she scooped up a large forkful of potato and popped it into her mouth and chewed. Then she shrugged and confessed, "I don't know. Maybe I'm growing again."

"You'd better not be," Misty warned her.

As if Gem could do anything about it.

"Guys don't like tall girls."

"Since when?" Gem countered. "I doubt runway models go without dates."

Misty grinned. "True enough. But you, my friend, are not runway-model material."

The plate full of food lost some of its appeal. "True enough."

"I didn't mean that in a bad way, but your face is quite angular, you know."

Angular
. Was that another word for a broad forehead and a big strong jaw? Not to mention the slight indent in her chin, like men had. Yeah, she was a long way away from being a model. She brightened. So she might as well not starve herself. She attacked her plate again, half wishing her fair-weather friend would go away and let her eat.

"What were you taking pictures of outside today? You were so intense…"

With a forkful halfway to her mouth, Gem paused briefly to consider Creeper's warning, and the curious look on Misty's face. Misty's curiosity won out. "Some guys skulking around. I don't know. Remember the other night at dinner, when I told you about the green stuff on the stream?" At Misty's blank look, Gem shrugged. "Whatever. But that's why I went to take pictures."

"
One guy? Two?
What were they doing? Poaching?" Misty leaned forward, her face alight with interest.

Gemma's mouth was full so she shrugged.

"
Maybe they're convicts?"
Misty leaned even closer, her face alive with imagination.

"Yeah. Like that would be hard to find around here." Gem rolled her eyes.

Misty giggled. "Wouldn't that be awesome if you had stumbled on a crime, in progress?"

"No. Not really." Gem shook her head. Misty was simple, given to a wild imagination. That's all there was to it. No. Figuring out the crime and catching a criminal would be dangerous. And Gem, wasn't into heroics. She wanted an education and a future. And each of those things needed the other.

And she wanted to reinvent herself. Her juvie records could disappear after some stupid, but simple, legal process and as long as she stayed trouble-free after that, she'd have a chance.

That's all she wanted – a chance. She could do this. And here, in this place, it was easier.

She stared down at her empty plate. She hadn't eaten it all.
Had she?

With a snicker and a nudge at Gem's empty plate, Misty said, "Man, you have got to be full now."

"I guess so." Gem stood up while grabbing her plate and cutlery. There were rules here and cleaning up was everyone's responsibility.

Ten minutes later, they were done. Gem hung up the wet dishtowel, bent down to scratch Major, the old beagle of Doris's. Then she headed back to her room. She pulled out her camera to study the last bunch of photos.

Misty bounced at her side like a happy puppy.

"So now what? TV? There might be one of your favorite cop shows on? Foosball? Read another mystery or what?"

It was impossible to stay mad at Misty for long. Gem grinned.

"Basketball?"

Misty rolled her eyes. "Not again. Why are you so basketball crazy?"

"Why are you so boy crazy?" countered Gem, fiddling with the display screen on the back of her camera. Turning it sideways, she checked out a couple of photos and deleted both. That was the joy of digital. She could pick and choose with the click of a button. She clicked forward to her last series of pictures.
There.
That one was too fuzzy. That one was dark. That one… She stopped. Something about it made her look more closely. That one needed to be seen on a full-size screen.

"I'm going to the computers," she said leaving Misty standing in the middle of Gem's bedroom.

"Great. Can I come?"

While they walked, Gemma tracked through the photos on the camera she'd picked up from a pawn shop a few weeks earlier. Most pictures weren't good enough to keep. There were a couple that might be clear enough to see details if she had the right software. She really needed to update her old laptop.

Once they reached the huge recreation room, set up with video games, table games and a computer center, she headed for her favorite computer and plugged in the USB to her camera. Misty grabbed the computer next to Gem's. Reid and Stephen were on two other computers, too engrossed to speak to them. Gemma looked around. There was no sign of Mark.

All the kids came here in the evenings. If not for video games, then computer games. John had scrounged a bunch of older pieces of equipment and turned the basement into a kids' room. With limited Internet service, getting on and staying on had become a challenge. Because there were only five kids at the home now, it wasn't so much of a problem, but if new kids were coming next week…it could be a different story. Heavier demand meant less time for each.

Reid, their techno kid, had done wonders with the four shared units. Maybe between the two of them, they could get her laptop up to speed too. It had serious problems right now.

Gem started the file transfer, then brought up the first images. With a practiced eye, she deleted everything but the best, then flicked through the six pictures she'd kept.

Misty leaned forward. "What is that?"

Gem couldn't quite see the details but there was a profile of a face hidden in the shadows of the picture. She twiddled with the software settings, cropping around the spot in question and enlarging the image.

Yes.
That was definitely a nose and chin. A big chin. Chubby cheeks. Strange. Perched on a large rock, he reminded her of the character Humpty Dumpty without his wall. The domed bald head definitely clinched the image. He wasn't so much fat, just big…and eggshaped…especially at the belly. There'd been two men out there, so she dubbed this guy Dumpty and his slightly taller slimmer partner Humpty. Was Dumpty the man that had turned and looked straight at her? She hadn't gotten a clear enough view to know for sure. Still....

She bent closer to the picture. She hated how blurry pictures looked when they were enlarged so she took it one step further and used imaging software to clean it up a little more.

There.

The last image showed a hand carrying some kind of small canister. She couldn't see any details.

What would they be doing with that at the creek? Testing the water? Dumping something into it? Or were they just sitting there, having their lunch, enjoying the scenery? Somehow she doubted that was the case cause they weren't lounging around in t-shirts and shorts. They were being secretive. As if trying to hide what they were doing. Besides they'd worn gloves.

The question was why? She couldn't even begin to formulate an explanation.

Then again, maybe they were smoking stupid cigars and hiding it from wives or girlfriends. She shrugged. Who knew?

Clicking back through older pictures, she found the same area in daylight. The creek drifted through the back of the image. She frowned. There was nothing in that area but a field. A few treed areas, clumps of bushes and the creek. The creek meant life and that was why she'd wondered about the green stuff that had floated on the creek's surface the last time she'd been there.
What had happened?
Was it something dangerous or something natural for this time of year? She'd have to go back tomorrow and take another look.

***

The older brother sat in the front of the black suburban, and pondered the problem.

"How much could they have seen?" he asked. He couldn't shake the idea that the girls posed a problem. Not that they'd been very close. Still, they couldn't take any chances. He had to tell the boss, get orders on how to proceed. They were being paid to keep watch after all. This mess was almost cleaned up. A few more days…

They didn't need anyone getting in the way now.

His kid brother grumbled beside him. Dressed in denim from top to bottom, he shifted his huge belly over his belt and snickered, "Nothing. I already told you that."

Turning his cold glare on his brother, he snapped, "Really, and how's that?"

"They'd have come back if they'd seen anything suspicious, wouldn't they?"

Ass.
He considered the issue. "Maybe, they haven't had a chance, yet."

"I guess we'll have to wait and see."

Comfortable silence settled between them.

"I wonder what that thing was in the one girl's hand," He said thoughtfully.

"A camera maybe?" His brother suggested, "Or a cell phone?"

It was his turn to snort. "Not likely a cell. Look at the crappy service they have in this hick town. We can barely get our phones to work. They're probably inmates at the kid's jail… You know they have one around here. And juvie in the next town. Hell…this whole area is probably full of hoodlums and thieves."

"Eleanor would love it here."

What had his idiot brother said?
He spun around inside the truck cab to stare at him in shock. "What the hell?
Eleanor? You mean your cat?"

"Yeah, my cat. So?" the younger man spluttered. "She's a hell of a thief. She'd steal the dinner off your plate if she could."

He rolled his eyes. Talk about time to refocus the conversation. This was their first job like this. So easy and so lucrative. He didn't want to screw it up. This could lead to more good things if they did it right. There was good money here. No snoopy kids were allowed to interfere.

"Well, keep an eye out for the girls, just in case."

"So what if one of them does come back? It's not like there's anything left to see now. We fixed it already, days ago." He cast a last glance to where they'd seen the girls. "Besides they're just kids. What would they care about a couple of strangers down by the creek?"

"We've
probably
fixed it. We have to get this last water sample tested, to be sure. That doesn't mean they weren't exposed in the first few days. This area was supposed to be deserted but it's not." With a grim smile, and glaring into his younger brother's eyes, he said, "If they were here a few days ago, when it happened, they could still show some of those symptoms he told us about.... Skin rashes, hell, even internal bleeding if they'd swallowed any of the water with those damn chemicals in it. We cleaned up what we could, but…What do we know? The scientists said a few more days, so a few more days it is."

"The area was supposed to be deserted in the first place. So we can't trust our source," the kid brother snapped.

"Remember, no one knows about this spill. It's our job to make sure no one ever does. We don't want anything to lead back to the company." He shot his younger brother a dark look before checking for the arrival of their cohorts. "We do have to tell the boss about them snooping around."

And the boss, their cousin, wouldn't be happy at all. All big businesses, doing shady deals, hated it when things went wrong. Secrecy was everything to them. The girls nosing about down here could be bad news…and the boss was paranoid to begin with. He and his brother were supposed to keep an eye on the creek every day. And they had. But they had to eat and sleep sometime. So far everything had gone smoothly. They'd seen no one…until today.

The girls had better stay away.

He didn't want to hurt them, but…the money was too damn good to pass up.

***

Gemma attached her pictures to an email then sent them to herself at a second email address for safekeeping and so she could access them from her laptop. Her other photos didn't matter. She also cleared her camera and transferred the images to her flash drive then closed down the computer.

Checking her watch, she realized a full hour had passed and she hadn't even finished her homework. She was distracted by what was going on down by the creek and knew she couldn't get down to studying until she'd found out.
Damn.
Glancing around quickly, she considered squeezing in a quick trip outside. She still had a few minutes until curfew.

The sun had lowered enough for the heat to dissipate. The coolness of the evening air would be welcome. She decided to slip out of the property then head back where the stone wall around the property had crumpled into ruin. All the kids used it as a quick exit when necessary.

"Are you ready to go upstairs? It's almost curfew. You know John made it earlier to encourage us to go to bed sooner." Misty stood in front of her.

Gemma pondered the question. Misty was usually up for a slip-out-the-back kind of adventure. "I was considering snapping a few more pictures. There could be some interesting light going on out there." Not that she was planning to bring her flash. Pictures were just her excuse.