TPG by Unknown Read Free Book Online

Spider-Man T-shirt with sweat stains at the underarms. He
had on oversized khaki shorts and Birkenstock sandals, revealing gnarled,
overgrown toenails.
    Kyle didn’t need
the introduction to know exactly who it was.
    It was Allie’s
uncle, Liam Murdock.

 
 
 
    CHAPTER NINE

 
 
    “I’m serious,” Liam said as he
entered Kyle’s office. “They look like they’re wearing less than they’d be if
they were at the beach.”
    The comment
immediately caused Kyle’s antenna to spring up. Was Liam trying to catch him in
some sort of trap? Trying to get him to admit that, yes, his eyes wandered and
that, yes, some of the shorts his students wore had less material than the
underwear underneath (for those even wearing underwear) and the cleavage
spilling out of their skintight shirts demanded that anyone with a penis (and
even those without) take a long hard gaze? Was he trying to see if Kyle was
some kind of pervert who preyed upon his students?
    Kyle couldn’t tell
as he stood to greet the man, looking his disheveled appearance up and down.
    And Liam didn’t
give anything away. He simply flashed a wide smile and returned Kyle’s greeting
with a hearty handshake.
    “I’m sorry about
what happened to your niece,” Kyle said.
    “Allie’s a good
kid,” Liam said as he took a seat in the wobbly chair across from Kyle’s desk.
“The best.”
    “I didn’t know her
well, but she definitely had a—”
    “ Didn’t? ”Liam interrupted, his puffy eyes narrowing a bit. “She’s not dead,
you know.”
    “I … I know,”
Kyle stammered. “I was just saying that before this happened I didn’t know her well.”
    “Well, you’ll get
your opportunity,” Liam said. “Because she’s gonna come out of it and be fine.
And whoever did this to her is gonna pay.”
    Kyle took a seat.
“You mentioned that on the phone,” he said. “That she was attacked. And I have
to be honest, I still don’t get what you’re saying. How could she have been
attacked? Do you think there was a noxious gas or something?”
    “A gas? No,” Liam
said, looking Kyle straight in the eyes, a mask of seriousness covering his
fleshy forty-two-year-old face. “And I can’t take credit for the theory on my
own. One of the Crusaders told me to check her phone, and that’s when I came up
with the texts between the two of you and saw the one about Sheldrake.”
    “What’s a
Crusader?” Kyle asked, his nerves on edge as Liam spoke about checking Allie’s
phone, thinking Liam had to know
about the erased texts, but wondering why he wasn’t saying anything about them,
wondering what his angle was.
    “A Crusader of the
Cape,” Liam answered.
    “Cape? Like Cape
Cod?”
    “No. Cape like one
you wear. It’s a play on words. You know, like Batman, the Caped Crusader. We
call ourselves the Crusaders of the Cape.”
    “Who’s we? ”
    “Just some of us
randoms.”
    “Random what?”
    “Comic book store
owners.”
    Kyle nodded, not
sure whether to be put at ease that Liam’s cohorts were comic shop owners, or
on higher alert because they were also probably tech geeks. But he played
along. “So what is it then? What do you think attacked her?”
    “Who, not what. Who .”
    “Okay, who attacked her, and what did they
attack her with?”
    Liam leaned back
in the wobbly chair. “Not sure who yet.”
    Kyle swallowed
back his frustration and pursed his lips, feeling as if he’d been transported
into an Abbott and Costello routine. “Okay, then what was she attacked with?” Which is what I just asked .
    “Energy transfer.
Or, in this case I guess, energy disruption.”
    Kyle stared at
him, waiting for more. But there wasn’t any. “I’m not following.”
    “It goes back to
Sheldrake,” Liam said. “The man who discovered morphic fields and proved that
the energy our minds create extends beyond the confines of our skull.”
    “I’m not really
sure Sheldrake provedanything, but
even so, how could a morphic field have caused