Being Bad

Chapter 54: He's A Monster

He continues to search. "A particular gadget that will help us."

I turned around, allowing him to continue finding his "gadget" or whatever, and I began looking through my binoculars to see if maybe they were farther away.

But that's when I saw them.

Lina and Dante, walking down the wooden steps just a few feet away from us. Lina was holding a towel with a picnic basket and Dante was carrying a cooler. They both had their swimwear on.

I ducked down, hoping to God that they didn't see me.

"I FOUND IT!" Eli yells excitedly, and I shushed him. He looks at me with a concerned glance and at pointed toward the direction I saw them coming in.

He looked over, and his mouth dropped. He ducked down with me, playing with the square box with an antenna that he had successfully found in his bag.

"First of all, if you want to help me spy, you gotta be more quiet. And second, what the hell is that?" I pointed to the toy he had in his hands.

"This special device allows us to hear conversations as far as three kilometers. Here, let's test it out." He presses the red button in the middle.

"Hey, babe. Do you think anyone would notice if I started jerking o-"

Eli turns the device off, and shudders. I burst out laughing, shaking my head.

"Welp. It definitely works." He said in a disgusted tone.

I stood up from our crouched position behind the wooden railing of the dock, and peered across the beach, finally locking our target.

I pointed to their location on the beach. "I found them."

I put on my binoculars, as did he, and we scoped them out. Anything mysterious or suspicious, we'd be calling Mason in a heartbeat.

However, time seemed to fly by.

We waited, and waited, and waited two hours of them just lying on their towels, and then Dante would occasionally get up for a short swim in the water. That's it.

Nothing suspicious in the slightest.

We watched as they acted like normal teenagers on a Saturday afternoon. I was almost getting bored of how normal they were acting.

Between Eli's crunching every five minutes because of how hungry he would get, to finding out absolutely nothing, I was so close to giving up.

So close.

Why waste an afternoon on them if they looked fine? Sure, Lina had some bruises on her body but that could be anything.

She could've fell down the stairs, slipped in the shower, tripped in fell in school, the possibilities were endless. But...abuse? Maybe that was a bit far-fetched.

Maybe I was taking it a bit too seriously. I mean, Dante and Lina are just two kids having fun their senior year.

I'm probably just overreacting.

I take the binoculars off my face, and I turn to Eli who seems to still be looking.

"Eli, we should just go." I told him, grabbing his arm.

"What? Why?"

"Because we haven't found anything for the past two hours." I pointed out. "Maybe I was just overreacting."

"You're not. There is something going on. I'm not sure what it is, but by the way you described it, something bad is happening. We just need more time." He explained, but I wouldn't turn back from my decision.