Free The Games by Ted Kosmatka

critically for a moment. “And whose little red dot is this?”
    “His,” the boy admitted, jamming a thumb in Silas’s direction.
    “It was a joint effort. Eric flanked him.” Silas tousled the boy’s hair again while he tried to pull away.
    Eric snatched the picture back from his mother, kicked off his shoes, and bounded up the stairs by twos. “Hey, Dad. Dad!” He disappeared down the hall.
    Silas followed his sister up the stairs of the split-level house and into the kitchen. The kitchen was the visiting area of the home. It was a familial trait; Silas knew she’d got that social peculiarity from their mother.
    “Coffee?”
    “No, thanks, my stomach,” he explained.
    “Still bothering you?”
    “Only when I eat or drink. And sometimes when I breathe.”
    “Oh, is that all?”
    Silas smiled. “I’ll take some milk, if you’ve got it.” He pulled a chair out from the table and sat.
    She poured him a glass just as her husband, Jeff, appeared from down the hall. “High and to the right,” Silas’s brother-in-law said, holding the picture out in front of him with both hands and shaking his head sadly. “Same old Silas, never could hit something that didn’t have concentric red circles on it.”
    Silas shook hands with his brother-in-law. Jeff had been out of town on business when Silas picked the boy up late last night, so it’d been almost two months since they had last seen each other.
    Jeff was blond to an extent usually reserved for Scandinavian children, but it seemed to fit him—the overlying sense of the man was oneof youthfulness. Silas knew him to be in his late thirties, but Jeff could easily have passed for ten or twelve years younger. Put a ball cap on the guy, shave the chin fuzz, and he’d probably get carded at a bar. He was fine-boned and slender, but that description belied his true nature. Jeff liked his sports and held a second-degree black belt.
    It was somewhat disconcerting for Silas to look at a man more than half a foot shorter and fifty pounds lighter and know that the guy could probably knock his butt through a wall if he wanted to. Silas couldn’t have picked a better guy for his sister. They were a perfect match—both tough as nails in their own way.
    Jeff had a tendency to talk fast, and some people took that for a kind of slickness, but Silas had known him long enough to realize that it was just the speed at which the man functioned. The guy thought fast. A moving target Silas could never quite hit dead-on.
    “So what’s been going on?” Jeff asked.
    “They’re keeping me busy.”
    “I’d guess they are. I saw your picture in the paper the other day. Wasn’t your best side.”
    “That’s my secret; I don’t have a best side.”
    “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
    “What was the article about?”
    “Just a status article, nothing new,” Jeff said. “Letting the world know how the program is advancing. You should really think about changing up your quotes a little, though. Seems like every time I read about you, you’re saying the same catchphrases: ‘right on schedule,’ ‘good progress,’ ‘healthy,’ and such.”
    “They make us say that; it’s in the contract.”
    Jeff chuckled.
    “I’m serious.”
    “Really?” Jeff looked genuinely surprised.
    “Yeah, but I haven’t talked to a newspaper in months. They’re recycling the same old dead interviews.”
    Ashley set a steaming plate of food in front of Silas.
    “What’s this?” he asked.
    “Dinner,” she said, without turning, as she walked back to the stove. “Don’t act like you’re not hungry. Eat. That is, unless your stomach hurts too bad.”
    “Well,” Silas said, picking up a fork, “I can always eat.” He dug into the mashed potatoes, turning his eyes back to Jeff. “So how about you? How are things in the world of high technology?”
    “The newest games are kicking our butts in retail. But we’re making progress in the catalogs. Different demographic.” Jeff was