Page 98 of Our Little Secret

Pulse pounding, Brooke drove the Ford into its bay. “Go into the house,” she ordered, then switched off the engine and was out of the SUV in an instant. “Close the garage door. Lock it!”

Running, she rounded the corner to the backyard and to the short fence where she’d seen whatever it was disappear. The gate was ajar and she slipped through, squinting against the rain as she scanned the uneven yard, the grass in tufts, the old broken fountain. But no movement. No dark figure scuttling near the fence line or around the corner of the house.

Something rustled in the shrubs near the deck and she whirled to face the noise, only to spy a shaggy raccoon squeezing beneath the fence.

Above, on the deck, the French doors flew open. “Mom!” Marilee ran across the deck, her footsteps overhead quick and light. She leaned over the rail. “Is Shep with you?”

Brooke held up a hand to shield her eyes from the rain. “What? Shep? No!” She was shaking her head, feeling cold drops on her cheeks as she squinted upward.

“He’s not in the house.”

“No. He’s not in the yard,” she said nervously. “Look again. He probably got locked in a closet or something.”

“Wouldn’t he bark?”

Yes.“I don’t know.”

But a new fear was growing within Brooke.

“I’m telling you, he’s not here!” Marilee’s voice was high and panicked.

“He’s got to be!”

This couldn’t be happening; she couldn’t lose her kid and her dog in one night!

Leah appeared on the deck next to Marilee. She held a jacket over her head and looked frantic. “I swear, Shep was here earlier. I saw him, but now we can’t find him.”

“No one let him out?” Why? Why was the dog missing? Brooke scanned the yard again. Dawn was breaking, the cloud-covered sky offering some pale illumination, rain pouring and running noisily down the gutters. “You’re sure?”

“Yes!” Marilee yelled, obviously near tears again.

“Okay, okay! Let’s not panic,” she said, though she already felt her pulse quickening. “I’ll check out here.”

She saw Leah try to urge Marilee inside, but the girl remained at the rail, her head swiveling slowly as her eyes searched the sodden shrubbery and lawn.

“Shep!” Marilee yelled. “Shep. Come!”

Brooke too walked the perimeter and called for the dog. Using the flashlight app on her phone, she scoured the dripping rhododendrons and hydrangeas, then searched through a hedgerow of arborvitae and a small pile of forgotten pots near the corner of the house. “Shep!”

But no wet, bedraggled dog lumbered out from a hiding spot. As she traveled along the fence line, rain running down her neck, her shoes sinking into the bark dust, mud, and weeds, she saw no sign of him.

The gate to the alley where they kept their garbage cans was unlatched and hanging open.

Why?

They never unlocked it.

This was wrong. “Shep!” she yelled as she stepped into the alley, her voice ringing down the empty lane. “Damn it.” Then, more loudly, “Shep! Come, boy!”

A startled, bedraggled cat leaped from a trash bin to run along the fence before climbing into the overhanging branches of the neighbor’s lilac tree.

But there was no sign of their shaggy retriever.

First the kid went missing.

Now the dog.

Could the morning get any worse?

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