The Secret: A Thriller by David Haywood Young Read Free Book Online Page B

midnight—we’d found a manual-wind alarm clock in the Sullivans’ house and were using it to keep track of time.
    She swung her legs off the cot she’d been sleeping on, rubbed her eyes, and came to give me a hug.
    “Anything happen?” she whispered.
    I shook my head, then realized I shouldn’t try to protect her. Especially if I wanted to sleep, myself. “Some screeching earlier. And a weird low moaning. It sounded kind of like a Gregorian chant done by…I don’t know. People who weren’t in key or good at chanting. If they were people. And twice I heard voices talking, but nobody got too close.”
    “Wow.”
    I kissed her forehead. “Yeah. I’m glad we’re here tonight. Instead of the house.”
    Her lips quirked. “We could live here permanently, you know. It’s your family’s land.”
    I figured I was safe enough from that. “Sure, hon. Whatever you say.”
    She pinched my butt. Which, I figured, wasn’t a bad way to end my day. But then Tim groaned and turned over in his sleep. I met Rebecca’s eyes. “Stay safe, hon,” I said. “You and the kids. Stay safe. No matter what happens.”
    She hugged me again. “You too, Ash. You too.”
     

Chapter Five
     
    I ’d been watching my house from the woods for a while. It felt like an hour but might have been ten minutes. Nothing moved. I’d promised Tim’s daughters—he was still snoring when I got up—that I’d check for a note from Susie.
    Anyway I didn’t want Rebecca to worry, so I’d just told her I needed some equipment. Still, she hadn’t wanted me to go alone. And Robbie wanted to come along. But I couldn’t see risking my kid, and neither could his mom. Also, I didn’t want to take the Sullivan girls’ father with me when their mother was missing. And Rebecca didn’t want to leave all the kids with Tim—she wanted to keep an eye on them herself. So it came down to waking Tim up or letting me go by myself.
    So I went. But something about the stillness had spooked me.
    At this point in a horror movie, I figured as I crouched behind a hemlock, I’d be sneering at the screen and saying something like: “Oh, great. You split up. Typical . And only an idiot would go back into that house now. Between the guys with fangs, police looking for Tim, and neighbors who’ve seen a truck full of supplies getting unloaded, nothing good’s gonna happen in there. Moron .”
    And movie-watching me would be right. I drew the .45, and sighed—then had a thought.
    What I really needed was my truck. It seemed to me that if anybody was waiting inside, if I just walked around the house and drove off I’d have a better shot at getting away than I would if I went in. Plus, if I took the truck—well, the house might look abandoned, and it might get ransacked, but it wouldn’t be so obvious we were planning to come back.
    Something about that logic didn’t seem right. But…I wasn’t going to crouch here in the woods with the mosquitos all day.
    After I thought about it a little more, I circled around through the woods so I could approach my house from the front. It meant walking through the Conways’ yard—they were diagonally across the street from us—but they’d been out of town on vacation when this whole thing started. On the off chance anybody watched my approach, I figured there was no point advertising the direction I’d come from.
    But I felt pretty stupid when I got in the truck, started it up, and nobody seemed to care.
    I decided I’d check for Susie’s note later, after anybody watching saw me drive off. And felt even dumber. But I put the truck in gear anyway.
     
    * * *
     
    I saw nobody at all on the way to Rose and Hank’s place. A few damaged houses, a few oddly-parked vehicles. But no people. Once I pulled over and ducked down when I heard a police car nearby—they were still warning us all to stay inside, now with added suggestions about plastic sheeting and duct tape on windows—but it turned onto another