And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(2)

He labored up the first three steps, pausing on each one to talk himself out of turning around and making a run for it.

He turned one last time toward the dark room in the corner and thought about the stained mattress and the door with no handle.

Someone stepped on the broken glass by the basement door.

Jesse crouched and froze like a rabbit with no cover. The refrigerator door was still open, spilling light into the room. Behind it he saw a dark silhouette through the window in the basement door. The shape paused with one foot on the broken glass, then took another step into the room.

Jenny.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Jesse hissed. He took out the penlight and flashed it at her so she could see where he was standing against the wall on the stairs.

“I got worried,” she whispered.

Jenny was much less wet than Jesse was, thanks to the oversize letter jacket with sleeves that went down past her fingertips and made her look like she had no shoulders. In the dark he couldn’t see her freckles, or her green eyes, or the eye tooth with the twist to it, the imperfection that made every one of her smiles perfect.

“Where’s the car?”

“I moved it a little closer. I have the keys.”

She came over and stood by his side at the bottom of the stairs. They both looked up at the door overhead. “We shouldn’t be here,” she said.

“I don’t have any choice. He’s threatening my family.”

“We can figure out something else.”

“No, we can’t. He doesn’t want money. It’s this or something bad happens to my sister.”

“Jesse, come on. He’s messing with you. If you go back and say—”

The floor creaked over their heads.

They stared at each other, wide-eyed, frozen. One second passed. Another. There was only the sound of the furnace blower and the drum of the rain, coming down hard again at the open basement door.

Jenny put a hand on Jesse’s arm and eased him a step backward.

The door at the top of the stairs crashed inward with enough force that it hit the wall and tried to bang shut again. The double-barreled shotgun leveled down at them kept it from closing all the way.

Jenny screamed and ducked behind Jesse. Jesse raised his hands in a pleading gesture. He waved the penlight at the fat, naked man standing above them with the shotgun and an oxygen mask over his mouth.

“Hold on, hold on! We made a mistake. We were just leaving,” Jesse pleaded. He felt Jenny’s body small and hard against his back, her hand tight around his arm.

The shotgun boomed like the end of the world. The light went out and fell from Jesse’s hand. Jenny screamed again when Jesse crumpled without a sound, all his weight falling back against her. They went backward down the steps, Jesse on top of her. Jenny hit her head on the concrete with the bright crack of a glass jar breaking.

The fat, naked man stepped down through the cloud of burning gunpowder and fired the second barrel.





Chapter Two


7:00 a.m.

The call about the bear came over the radio as Ben Packard was on his way to see the sheriff. He listened as dispatch directed it to another deputy on duty. “Caller says she and her husband were walking their dog when a large black bear came out of the trees and charged their animal. Her husband grabbed the bear around the neck to make it let go of the dog. The husband has a bite or a scratch on his belly. He’s bleeding but not seriously wounded.”

Packard picked up the mic. “This is 217.”

Dispatch came back. “Go ahead, 217.”

“I’m 10–8. I can take the bear.”

“You’re not on the schedule, 217.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m suited up and nearby. Let me take it.”

“Copy, 217.”

The bear was gone by the time Packard arrived at the address. The house was a boxy, manufactured home on a grassy lot with a ring of ornamental grass surrounding a flagpole. Packard stood with an elderly man and his wife in a kitchen that smelled like lemon dish soap and coffee, waiting for the ambulance to arrive. The old man had taken his shirt off and was holding a wet paper towel to his wound.

The wife looked in the fridge and asked Packard, “Can I make you a breakfast sandwich? Eggs and bacon on a biscuit. I could wrap it up and you could take it with.”

Packard said, “No thank you. That’s very kind of you to offer.”

“You can make me a breakfast sandwich,” the old man said.

“Hush. You’ll get your sandwich after the ambulance looks at you.”

“They better not think they’re taking me to the hospital.” The old man pulled the pink paper towel away from his sunken chest to look, then put it back. “There’s nothing wrong with me. They’ll do a bunch of tests and send in three doctors to ask me questions so each one can bill me. That’s how they fund Obamacare. Charging guys like me three times.”

Packard hmmed, trying to sound sympathetic. “How’s your dog?”

The wife turned from the fridge, put the tips of her fingers over her mouth, and shook her head. The old man stared out the window over the sink and kept blinking.

“I’m sorry,” Packard said. “I know how hard it is to lose your dog.”

After that, the wife continued her verbal inventory of the fridge. He politely declined a slice of pie, a piece of fruit, and a cup of coffee to go—she had real cream if that’s how he took it.