Page 88 of Threat of Danger
“A couple of hours ago. He had a massive stroke at the hospital.”
Zak gaped, his eyes filling with tears. “I can’t believe it. What can I do? Do you want me to pass the word?”
“If you don’t mind.” Jess probably should be doing that, but she wanted to be with Kaylee and Zelda. And what else should she say—No, keep it a secret? There’d be others coming and going from the sugar shack. Whether she wanted it to or not, the news would spread. Most of Taylorville would know in an hour.
She’d send an employee e-mail tonight, something official. When she had the funeral details, she’d call the obituary into theTaylorville Times. Pain cut through her.Oh God, Chuck.
“Did he suffer?” Zak asked, pale.
“He died in an instant.”
Zak asked a few more questions, about how Zelda was doing, about what he could do to help with the sugaring. He kept trailing off, dazed, kept shaking his head, as if he couldn’t believe or accept the sad news. Finally, he collapsed onto a plastic chair.
“Thank you for holding down the fort, Zak.” Jess put a hand on his shoulder before going through the back door after Kaylee. The temperature was dropping outside. She wanted to make sure that Kaylee wasn’t freezing out there.
Except, Kaylee wasn’t sitting on the loading dock.
Jess scrutinized the woods on the left and the fallow field on the right. The log home Chuck had built four decades ago stood on the other side of the fields. For the first years he’d worked for Taylor’s Sugar House, he’d made a deal with Jess’s grandfather to take less money, but put his pay toward a piece of land.
Jess had been over there a million times when she’d been a kid. Back then, Chuck used to breed terriers as a hobby. He’d almost always had puppies, a source of endless fascination for Jess and Derek.
Maybe they could adopt a puppy for Kaylee, Jess thought as she walked.A terrier in honor of her grandfather.
The lights were off in the house. The door wasn’t locked. Nobody around these parts bothered.
Jess knocked before she stepped inside, expecting to find Kaylee sitting, crying in the dark, but the living room stood empty. “Kaylee?”
Jess walked into the kitchen. She even checked the laundry and bathroom. The house was a little messy, but not bad—about what you’d expect from a place where a bachelor and a teenager lived. Piles of magazines and junk mail towered here and there, some dirty dishes in the sink, too many shoes by the front door instead of put away.
“Kaylee?” Jess called up the stairs.
When no response came, she ran up. She stopped in front of the girl’s closed bedroom door and leaned her forehead against the wood. “Hey. Let’s go back. Zelda’s a mess. We should all be together. Derek’s calling his lawyer. You’re not going anywhere, I swear. We wouldn’t let you. You think some little old CPS lady can get through Derek? No way.”
She told Kaylee how it would be, tried to paint a picture of how they would be a family. She would be loved, Jess promised. But Kaylee wouldn’t talk to her.
Jess knocked on the door, then pushed it open. “Hey.” But she was talking to the empty bed. Kaylee wasn’t in there.
Probably in her grandfather’s room.
Jess checked.Nothing.The guest room and the bathroom also stood empty.
She heard a noise downstairs, so she went back down. “Kaylee. Let’s talk.”
Nobody responded. Jess stood still in the middle of the living room for a couple of seconds. The house felt unoccupied. Kaylee hadn’t come home.
Where did she go?
Jess opened the front door and looked toward the trees. Had Kaylee, in her grief, run blindly into the woods?
The crows were back in the trees. A gust of wind blew over the open field, making Jess shiver. The threat of danger hung in the air, almost like a physical presence.
Jess shook off the fantastical thought and focused on the practical. Did Kaylee have her gloves and hat in her pockets? She hadn’t been wearing them earlier. But the weather outside was too cold to be out there too long without full protection.
As Jess stepped forward, a scrap of paper half tucked under the doormat caught her eye.That wasn’t there earlier.Her instincts prickled. The little hairs stood up at the back of her neck. Nothing about the white scrap was in any way threatening, but unease filled her as she bent down, reluctant to touch the little slip.
She picked up the piece of paper and unfolded it. The single sentence—in the angular handwriting of a man, all capital letters—had the power to stop her heart.
LET’S TALK ABOUT THE GIRL.
