Hotbloods (Hotbloods #1)(8)

“What’s going on?” Mrs. Churnley emerged wearing a cotton nightie, her hair in curlers.

“Someone broke in,” I breathed. “We need to stay quiet.”

“Riley?” Angie whispered from behind me. She and Lauren were standing in our doorway, looking pale and utterly terrified.

“J-Just stay where you are,” I repeated, barely daring to breathe as I inched toward the staircase, a shaken Mr. Churnley following me.

“What the devil,” he cursed beneath his breath. “My guns are downstairs.”

I prayed none of the floorboards creaked too loudly beneath my feet as I lowered myself and craned my neck to look down in between the banisters, trying to catch a glimpse of what the intruder was doing.

From my mostly obscured view of the kitchen, I caught a blur of black sweeping past the edge of the dining table—heard rapid footsteps pounding across the floorboards, and then, to my confusion… head outside. The gate groaned seconds later.

My heart was in my throat, and I stayed frozen in my position for several moments, wondering what on earth had just happened. Had I heard what I thought I’d heard? Had the intruder seriously already left? It remained quiet downstairs—save for the barking of the dogs—so I could only conclude he had.

“I think he’s gone,” I managed, my voice raspy as I rose to my feet. My knees felt shaky from the shock and the adrenaline still coursing through me, so I kept gripping the banister for support.

“Maybe he heard us wake up,” Lauren said, her voice uneven.

Swallowing hard, I proceeded down the staircase, and the others followed. Arriving in the kitchen/dining area, we analyzed the room, looking for signs of disruption and anything that might be missing.

Nothing looked immediately out of place. The chairs were still drawn neatly around the table; all the kitchen cupboards and drawers were closed. He’d been down here for barely a minute, and clearly hadn’t had time for any rummaging around.

Then what had he been—

“He took the wing!” Mrs. Churnley suddenly exclaimed.

Everyone stilled, scanning each corner of the room.

Indeed. The wing was gone.





Chapter Four





We barely slept two hours that night. We sat around the table, fruitlessly trying to make sense of the situation. The most absurd suggestion came from Mrs. Churnley: “Maybe it was someone’s homemade Halloween prop that they’d left curing in the river, so they just came in to take it back.”

To be fair to her, the suggestion was made at about seven in the morning, by which time we were all complete zombies. And it wasn’t like we’d come up with any better alternatives—or really any alternatives at all. We went around in circles until I couldn’t take it anymore and slumped my head down on the table.

After a bit of sleep, we all felt more human. We showered, and I was expecting the Churnleys to want to get in touch with the police as soon as possible, but Mr. Churnley decided to head out and talk to their closest neighbor, Mr. Doherty, instead.

“It’s not like the man took anything that was ours, anyway,” Mrs. Churnley said as she bustled around the kitchen cooking us all a late breakfast. “He clearly didn’t mean any harm. Just took what was… apparently his, and left.”

Angie, Lauren, and I argued against it, saying that there was no harm in calling the police—since we’d had a break-in after all, and they might be able to get to the bottom of the mystery—but it seemed that the morning had brought newfound confidence to the old lady, and she wasn’t having any of it.

“We’ve lived here for decades without needing help from the police, and we don’t need it now—whoever it was won’t come back. Just don’t go picking up any foreign objects and bringing them home!”

I knew it was futile to argue. Even if her stubbornness sprung from nothing but prejudice against relying on “the system,”, this was her home, so the decision was entirely hers to make.

She offered to have Mr. Churnley drive us in the truck to the nearest town so we could talk to our parents about what had happened, if we wanted, but ultimately we decided not to. I didn’t want to worry Jean and Roger, and Angie and Lauren felt the same about their folks. What was the point? Mrs. Churnley was right, in the sense that the intruder was highly unlikely to come back. It was clear he’d visited for one thing and one thing only; otherwise, if he was a petty thief, why go for such a weird, heavy object, out of all the other knickknacks in the kitchen he could have swiped?

As we ate breakfast, my mind wandered back to that journey home through the woods… that sensation I’d felt of eyes watching me. I shuddered. Had there been someone watching us? Who?

Mr. Churnley strolled into the house just as we were finishing our meal, clad in blue dungarees, sweat staining the pits of his shirt. He dabbed a napkin to his forehead and sat down in a chair with a creak, while his wife hurried to prepare a plate of food for him.

“I’m not ready to eat yet, Nora,” he said, helping himself to a glass of water. “Just a few minutes and I’m off again.”

Mrs. Churnley swiveled around from the kitchen counter to look at him. “Hm? What do you mean? How did it go with Brendon?”

Mr. Churnley laughed dryly. “He’s no police sergeant. Was as clueless as us. But he did serve me a grand portion of his wife’s hash browns…which is one reason I’m not ready for your lovely cooking just yet.” He gave us three girls a wink. “But on my way back, I noticed someone’s building a fence on the other side of the cornfields.”