Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 79850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
There was a boom then, and up in the sky, a shower of sparkling lights from the firework that went off over the lake.
“I’ll take care of it, Chris,” Gale said, then looked at the woman, who resembled a goddess standing there in the moonlight with her pale skin and fiery-red curls that fell all around her to the middle of her back, like a veil.
“Siobhan,” Gale said curtly.
“I have a bat,” she told him. “I can take care of it myself, but my husband said no, call Gale, it’ll be fine.”
“I––”
“Hi,” I said, greeting her, understanding at once what I was supposed to do. “We came as soon as we heard, and I didn’t have time to take my dog home.”
“Oh,” Siobhan said, surprised. “You were on a date and you came right over?”
“Yes,” Gale said quickly, following my lead.
“Could you watch him?” I asked her, passing her the leash.
“Of course,” she said, bending down to pick him up.
Misha wriggled in her arms, licked her face, and then started grunting and yipping at her.
“Oh, I see,” she told him, turning for her house. “And what else went on?”
Chris was smiling. “That was brilliant,” he told me, then to Gale, “Get it shut down, Deputy, before she takes the adorable dog with her to kick some ass.”
Gale and I took off toward the party, and as soon as people saw him, they began to leave the front yard. There were people across the street yelling, and the woman next door on the left was on her porch with her three German shepherds. When she saw Gale striding toward the front door, she went inside with the dogs. If people felt that shit was going to get done when they saw Gale, that was a good sign.
Inside, the music hit me like a wall of sound. It was hard to move through the thick crowd. Gale leaned close, told me he would find the homeowner if I could start asking people to exit.
I nodded, and he pointed out that Tan was in an opposite corner yelling at someone. When Gale left, I made it to the open back door, where I saw Woosley down at the lake with the guy with the fireworks.
Turning back around, because it was an open floor plan, I could see everyone at once: the people congregated in the large kitchen, those playing video games in the living room, splayed out on couches and chairs, those sitting around the dining-room table, and those just milling around. Moving to the entertainment center, I got around the back and unplugged everything, the music dying instantly. That was good because the bass was so loud, I could feel it in my chest.
“The hell are you doing, man?” a guy roared before charging me.
“Greg Snyder!” Gale yelled, and the man stopped midstep and spun around to face Gale, who was suddenly there, in front of him. “You’re in violation of a noise ordinance, and you have someone on your property setting off illegal fireworks.”
“Everyone clear out,” I ordered, and between my tone and the posture I adopted when I was threatening people, they all started to move.
It probably would have gone smoothly, as Woosley was writing the guy a ticket for the fireworks and Tan was directing everyone out through the front door, but a woman came charging up to Gale, shrieking about her daughter.
Apparently, Mr. Snyder had been downstairs with his friends, playing video games, and Mrs. Snyder was on the back deck having a drink with hers. Both of them thought their daughter was in the back bedroom, sleeping. The ranch house was a good size, about 4,600 square feet, so the way it was spread out, the music was not so loud back there. The issue was, as the alarm wasn’t on, when Mrs. Snyder went to check on her six-year-old daughter, she found a window open, the screen popped out, and no sign of her child.
She was screaming, Mr. Snyder was yelling at everyone to look for Lauren, and immediately Gale had a search party.
Mrs. Snyder started to hyperventilate.
It would have been easy to make a snap judgment and say they were bad parents, but instead I took hold of Mrs. Snyder, gripped her arms tight, and ordered her to breathe.
Her gaze met mine as she took several shaky breaths.
“When did you see your daughter last?” I asked her.
Listening to the answers, I walked her back to the room and didn’t let her touch anything because it was a crime scene and needed to be left untouched. She explained that when she’d put her daughter down for the night, it was just supposed to be a few friends coming over to celebrate her husband’s promotion at work, but it had gotten out of control quickly.
“I understand,” I told her as we walked together back out to the living room, where only a few of her friends remained, waiting to console her. “This is not your fault.”