Off the Grid by P. J. Tracy Read Free Book Online Page A

day you’d stand in front of an open door like this one, knowing in your gut that something real bad was on the other side, and you took that first step inside anyway.
    The interior of the house was dark, but you could still see the lifeless bodies slumped on the floor in front of a debilitated sofa. Bully aimed a flashlight at the human wreckage. Two young Somali men, each with a single bullet hole in the forehead. He squatted down, felt the carotids to make sure they were dead, then pushed himself to his feet. “Call it in, Brady. Then we’ve got to clear the house.”
    Adrenaline had a way of warping your sense of time and space, and even though the house was little more than a small box, it seemed to Bully that he and Brady had been walking for hours back-to-back, through a never-ending maze of rooms with ominously closed doors that could conceal any number of deadly threats. The one he worried about most was a hidden perp who would have nothing to lose by killing a couple cops in order to flee the scene.
    As they methodically cleared each room, Bully felt sweat bursting from every pore in his body, dripping down his torso and soaking his uniform. He didn’t know what kind of shape his heart was in, and didn’t much care to know, but right now, it felt like a wolverine was trying to claw its way out of his chest.
    Don’t die of a heart attack now, you fat fuck. One last room, one last closed door. It’ll be over soon. And maybe you’re not so ready to die after all.
    He signaled Brady, and they flanked the door, guns drawn. “Minneapolis Police!”
    They waited, listening for movement, their chests heaving in fearful synchronicity. After a few moments of silence, Bully finally nodded and Brady tried the knob. He shook his head.
    Shit.
Bully banged his fist on the door, announced himself again, but still no sound. It was time to go in.
    In the split second it took for him to take a step back, rotate his shoulder, and shift his weight to turn his body into a battering ram, happy memories from his childhood he hadn’t recalled in years suddenly came flooding back: catching his first walleye on Elbow Lake; his first wild rice harvest; the elaborate regalia of the jingle dancers, and the hypnotic rhythm of drums and chants at his first powwow. He had a fleeting thought that this was a premonition of his impending death, the last gift of his own history before he took his final breath, and suddenly his fear left him. He didn’t know what was on the other side of that door, but the moment his shoulder hit, he felt the calming sense that he was ready for it.
    But he’d been dead wrong about that, because crashing through that door was a stunner, the kind of moment that hammered into your soul and captured your breath; the kind of moment that would eventually coalesce into the most pivotal, important memory you’d ever keep. Life, not death, was on the other side, and it was so unexpected, Bully thought he might pass out.
    He moved his flashlight beam across the small, putrid space where four little girls sat clustered together on the floor, barefoot, hands bound, hair matted. Their brown eyes squinted up toward the light, disoriented and terrified.
    “We need two buses, Brady. Fast,” he whispered over his shoulder, then walked into the room with the flashlight trained more on his own face than the girls’, so they could see he wasn’t a faceless monster behind a blinding light—they’d seen enough monsters in this past week.
    “Hello. My name is Bully. I’m a police officer and everything’s going to be all right.” He crouched down in front of one of the girls, a child, really, and gave her a gentle smile. “What’s your name?”
    The girl recoiled a little, but some of the white around her eyes receded.
    “Can I take these plastic ties off your wrists?”
    She nodded warily, then started to cry. Bully’s throat tightened and he swallowed hard as he used his pocketknife to cut the stiff white bonds