If I Should Die_ A Novel of Suspense - Allison Brennan [99]
“Bobbie said she would pay for everything, Mom’s treatment, our house, anything we needed. I thought she was an angel. And Mom told her no, said she was a monster.”
Now the tears came and he couldn’t stop them.
“Bobbie was furious. I thought she was going to hit Mom, so I stood between them. I would have killed her if she’d touched my mom, and I wouldn’t have felt guilty.”
“I would have done the same thing.”
Emboldened, Ricky finished. “Bobbie said Mom would be dead within the year and I would be living with her in New York. Her exact words: ‘I’ll teach Rick the Swain family business like his father never had the balls to do.’ I didn’t realize until after she left that she’d stolen two hundred thousand dollars that my dad had hidden to take care of my mom.”
He turned his head, hating the tears of rage that ate him up inside. Against his father for sheltering him so much that he didn’t know what to do when threatened.
“How old were you?”
“Eleven. Mom died nearly a year later. We couldn’t afford anything. Even my mom’s inheritance from her parents—it wasn’t big, but it would have paid for another round of chemo—the fucking FBI took it. After my mom … died … and my uncle Jimmy was my guardian. And for a while, it was okay.
“But after Joe died,” he glanced at Adam, “Reverend Browne said I could hang out with him. I didn’t know what he had planned. He’s the one who wanted me to sabotage your place.”
“Why did you run from Sean yesterday?”
“I didn’t know why he would help me. Usually when someone offers to help you, they want to use you. But after I saw the reverend with Bobbie at the church, I was scared.”
“So you went into hiding.”
“I went to see Jon Callahan. My mom told me in an emergency I could go to Jon and he would help. But even Jon has changed.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me to hide out at the Fosters’ place and not leave until he came for me on Sunday. But I had to get out for a while.”
“That’s a good place to hide out. I’m going to let Sean and Tim know that I found you and we’ll hang together until all this shit goes down. I don’t want to be in the middle of it.”
Neither did Ricky.
The Kelley Mine’s field office was built up against the hillside, and though boarded up and abandoned for decades, it had been shielded from the worst of the weather and remained standing. It would be a good place to hide out—in fact, it looked like a good place for teenagers to party. Tim noted that some of the boards had been replaced within the last year or two, being far less weathered than others. But he didn’t find any sign of Ricky here.
He approached the building cautiously, though he heard nothing except bird calls and the scurrying of rodents. He tried the boards. Most were firmly in place, but a few were loose, and he noticed one that appeared nailed in was actually on a hook.
His phone vibrated. He glanced down, and read a message sent simultaneously to him and Sean from Adam that he’d found Ricky and they were going to lay low at the Fosters’.
Tim responded that he’d meet them there, then pocketed the phone and assessed the building.
He carefully removed the large board, revealing a brand-new door with a padlock. Who would go to this trouble? There were plenty of abandoned buildings and houses in Spruce Lake. Why use this relatively insecure location?
He couldn’t break the lock, so he tried the other boards. The plywood blocking the windows of the locked room had been nailed from the inside, so he couldn’t get to those.
On the far side, where the building abutted the hillside, a two-by-four over one of the windows looked different than the others. Tim got out his Swiss Army knife and pried out the nails. He wouldn’t be able to fit in through the opening, but he could see what was inside.
Tim shined his flashlight inside and his stomach turned sour.
An open box of C-4 explosives