Game (Jasper Dent #2)(74)

The branch was still where she’d jammed it the night before when Connie and Howie arrived once again at the site of the former Dent house. Howie peered around in the bright of day. By daylight, the place was less foreboding. It was also less concealed, despite the trees and hedges. Anyone driving by would see them.

“You think someone’s gonna see us?” Howie asked. “Chase us off?”

Connie shrugged and dropped the tools on the ground. She looked around the perimeter of the former Dent property, at the trees and shrubs. “I don’t think so. But let ’em try. Hopefully we don’t need long.”

They started with a pickax, taking turns breaking through the hard crust of the earth. Howie had swiped the shovel from his own garage, but realized on his way to get Connie that at this time of year, they’d need to break up the frozen topsoil first. So he’d stopped off at a hardware store. (“You owe me twenty bucks, by the way,” he told Connie.)

Within the first five minutes, Howie was exhausted. Connie stripped off her heavy coat and kept swinging the pickax. She tried not to imagine what she would do if it turned out this was a setup or a hoax. She would be getting in a hell of a lot of trouble with her parents for nothing.

“You’re doing great,” Howie cheered from the sidelines. “Look at you go!”

Resisting the urge to bury the pickax in Howie’s head instead of in the ground, Connie flailed away until she’d broken up a patch roughly a foot and a half in every direction. The soil beneath was warmer and looser. She reached for the shovel. Howie helpfully handed it to her.

She dug out a foot or so down before favoring Howie with a deathly glare that got him off his butt and over to the hole. He dug for a while, maintaining a steady patter of complaints, until his phone chirped for his attention.

“It’s Sam,” he said, looking at it. “She needs me.” His voice almost vibrated with pleasure.

“Gramma probably needs her adult diaper changed,” Connie told him.

“But my fingers may gently brush against Sam’s as we change the diaper together,” Howie pointed out.

“Fine. Go. Just remember to come back for me.”

Once Howie left, Connie allowed herself a five-minute break before taking up the shovel and attacking the ground again. She was determined to dig until she found something. A gopher hole. A rabbit warren. A treasure chest full of Spanish doubloons. A pocket of oil that would make her richer than Midas and solve the energy crisis. Something. Even if it took all day and all night.

But it didn’t take that long. It took only another ten minutes.

Bodies, Connie knew, were buried six feet deep, for reasons she couldn’t recall. Something superstitious and ancient and partly forgotten, like so many modern rituals. Something about being certain that the dead person couldn’t get out of the grave…

She didn’t have to dig six feet, thank God, only three.

Only? Ha! Her arms and shoulders ached as her shovel hit something with a CHANNNNG sound. She thought—briefly—of her dream, of finding Jazz buried here, then plunged ahead, spooning out loose dirt and digging around the edges of the thing to find its dimensions. With a few more minutes’ hard digging, she’d managed to clear away its top.

It was a lockbox of some sort, measuring maybe twelve inches by five inches. Connie pried around the edges of it, then lay flat on her belly to reach down and pull it up. It was only a couple of inches deep, and lighter than it appeared; she had no problem hauling it out.

Once it was on the ground next to her, she stared at it for long moments. Gray and dull, with a hinged top and a stout combination lock hanging from a steel loop. She picked it up and tilted it gently from one side to the other. Something inside shifted. Something light, but relatively solid. It didn’t feel fragile. She put the box back down on the ground and stared at it.

Jazz had told her once how to foil a combination lock. She didn’t remember all of the details—something about sensitive fingertips and listening to the tumblers—so she just raised the pickax with the last of her strength, aimed carefully at the lock, and brought it crashing down.

And missed, gouging another new trough into what was left of Billy Dent’s backyard.

Oops. Crunching up the ground with a pickax was one thing, but hitting the small target of a lock was another al-together. Especially since she couldn’t afford to hit the box itself—she didn’t want to damage whatever was inside it.

She took a few deep breaths, yoga breaths, clearing her mind. Then, hearkening back to her acting training to center and relax herself, she swung again with the pickax and thought, Hey, wait, what if Billy left something explosive in that box? But it was too late—she couldn’t halt the momentum of her swing and the sharp, hard blade of the pickax smashed into the combination lock.

Which didn’t break.

Oh, come on! Her shoulders and arms felt like slabs of meat ready for the grill. The lock was dented and twisted, but a few tugs told her that it wasn’t going anywhere.

Could be something explosive in there. Could be anthrax. If Billy Dent left this, it could be just about anything. You should go get Sheriff Tanner and have him tackle this.

Made sense.

But, she countered her own internal logic, if you get the cops, then they’ll be all like, “Why didn’t you call us as soon as you got that first text message?” And you’ll have to put up with all that nonsense. And you might never get to see what’s inside.