Lydia wasn’t so sure about the legalties, but still she made a wide turn into the driveway. There was something sinister about the Fuller house. The closer they got, the stronger the sensation got. Every bone in Lydia’s body was telling her to go back. “This doesn’t feel right.”
“How is it supposed to feel?”
Lydia didn’t answer. She was looking at the large padlock on the metal garage door. The house was isolated. There wasn’t another structure for miles. Large trees forested the areas on either side of the house. The back yard was about fifty feet deep, and beyond that were acres of empty rows waiting for spring planting.
Lydia told Claire, “I have a gun.” As a convicted felon, she could’ve gone to jail for possessing a weapon, but Lydia had been a single mother living in some very sketchy neighborhoods when she’d asked a guy at work to get one for her. “I buried it under my back porch steps when we moved into the house. It should still work. I put it in a Ziploc bag.”
“We don’t have time to go back.” Claire drummed her fingers on her leg as she gave it some thought. “There’s a pharmacy off Lumpkin that sells guns. We could buy one and be back here in thirty minutes.”
“They’ll do a background check.”
“Do you think anyone’s watching background checks? Mass murderers buy machine guns and enough ammo to take down twenty schools and no one bats an eye.”
“Still—”
“Crap, I keep forgetting I’m on parole. I’m sure my PO put my name in the system. Where’s the NRA when you need them?”
Lydia looked at her watch. “You were supposed to meet Nolan over an hour ago. He’s probably put out a BOLO on you.”
“I have to do this before I lose my nerve.” Claire opened the door and got out of the car.
Lydia let out a string of curses. Claire went up the stairs to the front porch. She tried to see between the cracks in the plywood covering the windows. She shook her head at Lydia as she walked back down the steps. Instead of returning to the car, she walked around the back of the house.
“Dammit.” Lydia took her cell phone out of her purse. She should text somebody that they were here. And then what? Rick would panic. She couldn’t get Dee involved. She could post it on the Westerly Academy Parents’ Bulletin Board but Penelope Ward would probably hire a private helicopter and fly down to Athens for the story.
And then Lydia would have to explain why she was sitting in the car like a coward while her baby sister tried to break into her dead husband’s secret house.
She got out of the car. She jogged around the side of the house. Weeds as high as Lydia’s waist had taken over the back yard. The sturdy-looking swingset was covered in moss. The ground crackled under her feet. The storms had not yet made their way over from Atlanta. The vegetation was as dry as kindling.
Claire was standing on the small back porch. She had her foot braced on the side of the house and her fingers curved under the sheet of plywood nailed over the back door. “There’s no basement, just a crawlspace.”
Lydia could see that for herself. Claire had kicked in the access panel to the enclosed area under the house. There was less than two feet between the dirt and the floor joists. “What are you doing?”
“Ruining my manicure. There’s a pry bar in the trunk.”
Lydia didn’t know what to do but go back to the car. She opened the trunk and found what looked like MacGyver’s secret stash. A first-aid kit. Emergency water and food. Two warming blankets. A safety vest. An ice scraper. A small tool kit. Flares. A bag of sand. An empty gas can, though the car was electric. Two reflective roadside warning triangles. A large pry bar that you could probably use to take off someone’s head.
This was a wrecking bar, not a pry bar. One end had a gigantic hammer head and sharp claw. The other end had a curved edge. The thing had a heft to it, solid steel, about two feet long, and easily weighing just shy of ten pounds.
Lydia didn’t stop to consider why Paul would drive around with this kind of thing in his trunk, and as she rounded the corner into the back yard, she tried really hard not