If I Should Die_ A Novel of Suspense - Allison Brennan [53]
Then he died. A heart attack, Doc Griffin said. Ricky had found Joe on the kitchen floor when he’d come by the first Saturday in March, over a year ago. After that, he started doing odd jobs for Reverend Browne.
“I’ll help make this right. I mean what I say.”
Ricky felt queasy as he remembered Rogan’s words. Why would a stranger offer to help him? Rogan was a friend of Tim Hendrickson, which meant he was one of them. And even if he tried to help, what could he do? Ricky just needed to lay low, stay out of Rogan’s sight, and eventually the dude would go home. The resort wouldn’t open, and everyone would finally relax. Get back to business as usual. It was the whole resort thing that made everyone crazy. And while Ricky understood the resort wouldn’t be good for the town’s illegal business, he didn’t understand why everyone was so freaked out.
He turned down a long, bumpy street that bordered the so-called town of Spruce Lake. The potholes were so bad he had to work on his alignment damn near every month. The sad houses mirrored their occupants—tired, sagging, appearing older than their years. Everyone had big lots filled with cars and junk. The skinny Doberman across the street from his house barked at Ricky, teeth bared. The chain-link fence didn’t keep the attack dog in the yard, but the rope he was tethered to did. Ricky suspected that one day, the dog would bust the rope and rip out someone’s throat.
He pulled into the carport, relieved Uncle Jimmy wasn’t home yet. He worked a three days on, three days off schedule at the fire station. Ricky went in through the side door, dumped his backpack on the kitchen table, and opened the refrigerator. Nearly empty, but at least the milk was fresh. He took the container, drank half from the bottle, and put it back.
As he closed the refrigerator door, his peripheral vision caught movement to his right. He glanced around, looking for something to defend himself with, when he recognized the intruder.
“Hello,” Sean Rogan said. “Now, why don’t you tell me why you tried to kill me? Spare no details. I’ve got all the time in the world.”
EIGHTEEN
Sean stared the kid in the eye. First reactions tended to be the most honest.
The kid was scared, but ready to defend himself. A survivor. Cocky and cautious, a familiar combination. So much like the young Sean Rogan that he could have been looking at himself in a mirror fifteen years ago.
Still, because he, too, was a survivor, Sean watched the kid’s body language for signs that he had a hidden weapon. Sean didn’t think so—but there could be a gun under a table or cabinet.
“I could kill you for breaking into my house,” he said.
“So James Benson is your dad? He seems kind of young to father a teenager, but anything’s possible.”
The kid couldn’t hide his surprise. “You followed me?”
“I thought you’d spotted me at the school, but I didn’t need to follow you,” Sean replied. “I tagged the license plate number, ran it, found the registered owner was James Benson at this address.”
Benson lived in town, one of the few side streets off the main road that intersected the highway two miles west. About half the nearly four hundred residents lived in the one-mile-square “town” on large parcels with small, ramshackle homes where the “newer” houses, like Benson’s, were still more than fifty years old. The rest of the town lived in the “country” on acreage, but most of the houses were just as rundown.
“I didn’t want to follow you,” Sean continued. “Didn’t want you to do something stupid like drive off the road trying to get away. This way, I could do a little research. Like figure out that James Benson is an employee of Fire and Rescue. And he’s one of the few residents here who still owns his house. Very interesting to me, since Jon Callahan owns seventy percent of the properties in Spruce Lake. Been buying them up for the last couple years.”
At the mention of Callahan, the kid tensed.