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Chapter 22 - Evidence Gathering (2)

He wakes up just before dawn and finds himself once again under three warm bodies.

With an aggrieved sigh, he gently pushes them all off, trying to avoid waking them. Then, carefully, he grabs one of the glowsticks.

For ease of use, he usually carries UV glowsticks, though flashlights tend to be stronger. For this, he isn't looking for spirits. He doesn't need anything stronger than a small reveal.

With the cover of the barely lightening dark, he uses the glowstick to exit. The light passes over the cooler, the chairs, and he observes the path to the toilet. Under the guise of picking things up, he observes every item they have out and starts picking it all up.

He finds no fingerprints or handprints out of the normal... but he does find some missing.

Gotcha.

The tent door should have a handprint right next to the zipper. Just in case someone picked up on what he was doing, he put one uncleaned hand on the door as he entered. In doing so, if someone cleaned up any prints they left behind, they'd be incredibly likely to accidentally erase the mark. With how clean everything is, he can guess that whoever moved about their camp took great care.

Whoever these soldiers are, they aren't as innocently dutiful as they might act. They clearly were the only ones around, and keeping watch all night. If someone else came around, the soldiers would see and stop them. If the soldiers did it, they would be smart enough to pay attention from the start.

Because of that, he hurries to finish packing.

When the kids get up, they look over towards the other camp for a moment, then glance towards Tussle for guidance. After all, he was the one who put the traps out.

"Hurry up, big day ahead of us. Thrash, think you can go grab some ingredients?" He nods his head at the Door.

That seems to communicate well enough, as they hurry to help take down and put away everything. Thrash goes in the Door, then promptly comes out a minute later with an excuse that he lost the pepper shaker. Given his pointed look at Snow, Snow comments that he thinks he used it when driving, for those boiled eggs they had.

They did not have boiled eggs, nor would it make sense for Snow to try and put pepper on food while having two hands on the wheel.

Not to mention the kids have been insisting Tussle get more practice and therefore more turns driving. Which, of course, means that whenever Snow drives, he does everything perfectly in line with rules and regulations, because Tussle only knows the basics.

And also has a habit of taking hands off the wheel and glancing around a lot.

Thrash goes straight to the front of the van, the door open but the chef-intern all the way inside, as though rummaging about. Snow sighs, and goes around to the other side, hopping in and loudly complaining about the fact that it shouldn't be that hard to find a pepper shaker!

When it's just the two of them, Sparky looks over curiously.

"Museum today?"

"Probably, yeah. I don't actually know where it is, but I'm sure I can figure it out. That or this lot has a map. You hop in and get things a bit more organized, I'll check on the boys."

He waits for her to go through the Door, walking to Thrash's side of the van. He finds the two pretending to be rummaging, but the keys are in the ignition and every knob and button and stick has been adjusted to precisely what it needs to be for a quick-paced start.

He starts tugging Thrasher out, shoving the other towards the back.

"Go back and get the other stuff. Sparky's organizing, so grab it quick." He turns away and then back quickly, as though tacking on a last thought. "And don't touch the button!"

Laughter follows, bright and genuine, which is great. He hops in, closing the door and gesturing for Snow to buckle.

Three...

Two...

One...

The light that indicates the ramp goes off. The button has been pressed.

He starts the car, yanks it into drive, and hits the gas.

"HIGH SPEED GETAWAY!" Snow shouts, cranking on the radio. It ends up on some random (very loud) drum-based style, which suits them just fine, and Tussle throws a thumbs-up as he drives in a zigzag around.

The mirrors show that, indeed, the soldiers rushed to follow. He smirks.

He turns them sharply to the east, heading further into the city. Only when he's certain he's well out of sight and sound does he turn the music off, make another sharp turn, and head straight back towards where he found the interns a week ago.

He travels all the way back, turns to the west, and speeds off that way.

[Kids, get ready to rumble, we're goin' in to fight some ghosties!]

He gets three cheers, all crackling as Snow makes sure the others can hear him, too.

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