Page 32 of Desert Wind

“There’s no food,” said Titus, opening the other cabinets. “When they left, they took all the food or threw it away but left the dishes behind.”

“Maybe they thought they’d rent the place to someone,” said Max.

“Who? I don’t know anyone that would rent this place.”

“Brother, I think we’ve been living the good life too long. You and I both know a helluva lot of people who would love to rent a place like this.”

“You’re right,” nodded Titus. “I forget sometimes how fortunate we’ve all been.”

“Take the back bedrooms. I’ll look in the master,” said Max.

Max rifled through the dresser drawers and keepsake boxes lining the shelves of the dusty bedroom. The heat was stifling, so he opened the windows to allow air in, only to be met by more stifling heat coming at him at thirty miles per hour. Dust flew through the windows and off the furniture, but it was actually better than the intense heat of the closed home.

He opened the keepsake boxes, each one labeled with a girl’s name on it. Three boxes. Not four. There wasn’t one for Jenna. The other three girls all had their own box filled with school papers, artwork, letters, photos, and precious memories of childhood.

Why wouldn’t they have a box for Jenna?

Clothing still hung in the closet. Others were neatly folded in the dressers. Again, why leave these things behind?

“They were running,” muttered Max to himself. “They didn’t have time to take these things.”

Kneeling beside the bed, he carefully shone his flashlight beneath the bed and surprisingly found nothing. He pushed the mattress aside to check between the mattress and box springs but once again found nothing.

Max walked to the back of the home, finding Titus on his knees doing exactly what he’d done. Looking beneath the bed.

“Find the boogie man?”

“I was expecting to, but no. Anything in the master?”

“Yeah. Keepsake boxes for the other three girls but not Jenna. Artwork, report cards, photos, all of it. But not one damn thing for her.”

“Same here. High school yearbooks, class photos, keepsakes from dances, hell, even their dresses are still hanging in the closet.”

“Yeah. Same as the master,” frowned Max.

He stepped back into the hallway and winced as the floor creaked beneath his weight. It wasn’t unusual. Max was a very big man. So was Titus. Floors always creaked beneath their weight.

When he moved to go down the hallway, he found it odd that the floor stopped creaking then started again. Turning, Titus was staring at him with a raised brow. He knelt down and pulled the carpet from the wall. Dust and who the hell knew what else flew in his face.

“Great. I’ll pay for that,” frowned Titus. He continued to pull on the carpet and then leaned back on his heels. “We’ve got ourselves a safe.”

“Then we need to get that damn thing out of there,” said Max. The winds outside were picking up with ferocity, the poorly constructed modular home rocking on its foundation.

Leaving Max to guard their find, Titus sped to the hardware store for the tools he would need. He wasn’t worried about breaking into the safe. Someone back home would do that. What he needed was to get that safe out of the floor.

Forty-five minutes later, the two men had it out of the floor but not without considerable effort.

“That was a fucking bitch,” gasped Titus.

“I think we’re just getting old,” grinned Max. “Let’s load it up and get the hell out of here.”

After securing the safe, Max and Titus stopped at their hotel for a quick shower, grabbed their luggage, and got on the road to head for home. The dust, wind, and funnel clouds of dirt made driving nearly impossible. If they could just get another fifty miles under their belts, they’d be out of the path of the winds.

“Max! Titus! Are you there?”asked Code.

“Yeah, we’re here. What’s wrong? We’re driving home,” said Titus.

“Shit. The winds are causing some issues with comms. We lost your tracking for a few minutes, and it coincided with an unexplained explosion at the house. Someone blew it to shit.”

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