Tooth and Nail by Sara Lunsford

Author:Sara Lunsford [Lunsford, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Corvus Corax LLC
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

When we were close, I had him park at the gas station up the highway. It wouldn’t be far as the crow flies to come around the house from the back.

The root cellar was separate from the house, like a lot of houses in Kansas. One of the doors was still open, and there was blood on the stairs.

The sun lit the passageway down, and I navigated the stairs carefully.

The small dugout concrete space was sparsely furnished. There was a small generator, some blankets, bottles of water, and a radio. All must-haves in tornado-ville. Creeping around to the side of the poured concrete stairs, shelves had been anchored there and were stocked with all kinds of canned goods. Peaches, apples, green beans, pickled pig’s feet, and various other down-home country goods meant to see the owner through the winter, or an apocalypse. Whichever came first.

On the other side was another set of shelves. This one held holiday decorations and mementos of various shapes and sizes. A box of quilts. Pictures, but they all seemed more than a hundred years old. There was an empty space, and it had been recently tampered with.

There was dust on everything, except that empty slot.

Jacob had been here.

I didn’t know if it had been when he’d killed her, or he’d been back. He’d been smart enough to take whatever was in that box. Now, it was somewhere in my house. Or wherever he was keeping his kit.

He had to have somewhere that…

As did the Vigilante.

“Was whatever was in that space what you were looking for?”

“Maybe. We still need to go in the house. It looks like there’s an attic.”

He rattled the small kit. “That’s what this is for.”

The door to the back porch was open, and we found ourselves in a mud room. A pair of gardening boots, still muddy, sat by the door.

Before I even opened the door, I could smell that same vanilla scent. I would never associate it with good things again. It would always be the flavor of this woman’s fear. Because when I smelled it, I remembered her. I remembered how scared she’d been. How afraid she’d been of her own son.

I was doubly glad I’d not gotten pregnant.

As it turned out, we didn’t need the lockpick and we’d taken a mighty chance that the security system had been disabled. The door was open. Jacob had left it that way for himself when he returned, just like I’d counted on.

I’d make sure to set the security system back on before we left. Leave him a nice little present. He’d know someone had been here, but he wouldn’t know who.

That would drive him crazy.

There was macaroni and cheese on the stove, still in the pan. Thankfully, the vanilla scent still overpowered the scent of day-old food. I looked around for any signs of Jacob, though I doubted I’d find any.

“What are we looking for?” Christian asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Helpful.”

I moved forward through the house and headed toward the bedrooms. Helen’s room was the first one.

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