Touching as little of the latch as possible, while thinking that maybe I should go to the doctor and make sure I got a tetanus shot, I pushed the door in the fence forward. It squeaked so loudly I knew it must have been years and years since anyone had oiled it. Sprinkles resisted coming in for a split second, but a light tug on the leash and he followed.
It felt like the light level had just dropped about four levels. It no longer felt like evening; now it was well and truly night time.
“What is wrong with you? You’re afraid of the dark or something?” I asked, muttering to myself. For goodness sake, I was twenty seven years old. My days of being afraid of the dark were supposed to be over.
My resolve steeling after my self-talk, I walked forward towards the house. As I reached the front steps, I realized I had no idea what I was going to do. All the windows were boarded up, and had been for years. Surely the front door was going to be locked. I supposed I could use the spell to unlock it; there were no occupied houses in view, and the street looked deserted.
It was upon that realization, that if anything happened I was well and truly on my own, that my heart really began to pound. As I got closer to the front door, I could tell Sprinkles next to me was scared as well. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.
I was about to turn back and head home, wrap myself under a blanket and try to sleep without having nightmares when the front door began to open.
My mouth dropped open as the old oak door squeaked open, and I found myself standing face to face with Gareth Sims, owner of Boss the German Shepherd. He was holding a gun, and had it pointed towards me. I dropped Sprinkles’ leash in surprise, and as soon as the dog saw Gareth he let out a whimper like someone had hit him, and ran off as fast as he could.
“Gareth?” I asked, barely believing what I was seeing. Why was he in this house? Why did he have a gun?
“Angela. Please, come in,” he said. My mind whirled with a thousand thoughts. Was Sprinkles going to be ok? Poor thing had run off again. How could I contact Sophie? Did anyone know I was here? No. They just knew I’d gone for a walk towards Pine Street. Oh God, this man had a gun trailed on me and there was no one coming to save me.
My heart plummeted to the bottom of my stomach. I was definitely in trouble here. But still, I had no choice. After all, Gareth had a gun. I followed him into the house, which was dark. There were no lights on at the front. He nudged me towards the living room at the back of the house, however, and there the lights were on.
What I saw stopped me in my tracks. There was no furniture in the room at all, except for a cheap plastic chair in one corner. But in the middle of the room was what I immediately recognized from years of watching bad action movies as bricks of cocaine. Boss was sitting in the corner, and he growled at me, but one look from Gareth and he stopped and sat down.
Oh boy. This was not good. Suddenly, everything started to make sense. Sprinkles calling it a ‘bad house’. Andrea living right across the street.
“She found out about your drug den, didn’t she?” I ventured to ask, trying not to look at the gun Gareth was holding. He nodded, and put it in the back of his pants. Evidently he didn’t think I was much of a threat in here, especially not with Boss around. And as much as I hated to admit it, he was right. Gareth was a strong, young guy. He could easily overpower me, not to mention the dog.
“Nosy old lady. We were so careful, too. For six months we’ve been here, and no one has been the wiser. There wasn’t a single person in town who’d even guessed that we were running drugs through here.”
I thought about Jason Black and what he said about his source in the police department.
“That’s not true,” I replied. “The cops know. They don’t know where you are, but they know you’re here.”
Gareth scoffed. “Well what good is knowing we’re around if they can’t find us? That’s the beauty of Willow Bay. Everyone said I was a moron for doing this, but it’s perfect. No one suspects a dumb little tourist village, so far from the interstates, to house a drug running operation. After all, it’s a small town. Everyone knows everyone, right? Someone would notice, right?”
I nodded. “How come no one has noticed, except for Andrea? I mean, this house is rural, but its’ not that rural. There are two other houses on the street that aren’t Andrea’s, and a few others on the nearby streets. If you’re on Birch, the quickest way downtown is to pass through Pine. Why hasn’t the extra traffic been noticed?”
Gareth smiled at me, a cold smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Obviously that would be too conspicuous. No, we’ve done much better than that. You might see a small hole behind Boss, that leads into the crawl space under the house. We’ve built a tunnel there that leads into the forest. All we have to do is park our trucks on the side of the road, move the goods to the other end of the tunnel and load them up. No one drives on the roads around here at 3am, it’s such a deserted part of the world. Plus our trucks can pull off far enough that they’re almost impossible to see from the road. That way no one knows we’re here.”
“How long did it take? Building the tunnel, I mean.” A part of me was genuinely curious, but to be honest, I really just wanted to keep Gareth talking. I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like anyone knew I was here to rescue me. It would take at least another hour before Charlotte began to get worried, and then even if she did, what reason could she possibly have to think I was in the creepy house?
“About a month. GPS makes it a lot easier than it used to be.”
“But if you were so careful, how did Andrea find out about you? And I found out too, just now. Surely you can’t expect to continue this forever.”
“Andrea was too nosy for her own good. She would always be looking out her curtains at the street, glaring at this house, like she knew we were in it. Then one day she was walking past when Boss got scared and let out a bark. She came to the front of the house, and started looking inside the shutters. She went home, but I knew she wasn’t going to give up. I was going to take her out right then and there, but then that stupid niece of hers showed up. At least when the girl left I was able to follow Andrea by pretending to walk Boss. That was all the time I needed.”
So it hadn’t been Kelly after all. Sophie was going to be so disappointed. If she ever heard about this, that was.
“It’s just too bad you had to get involved too,” Gareth said.
“There are people who know I’m here,” I tried. “They’re waiting for me to come back home. When I don’t, they’re going to come looking for me.”
Gareth gave me that cold smile again. “Nice try, but I saw you coming. I know you weren’t planning on coming to this house, and why would you be in the creepy old house that no one ever goes to? No, they’ll narrow it down to this neighbourhood, but no one will ever find your body. Especially since it’s not going to leave by the front door.”
A shiver ran up my spine as Gareth spoke so casually about my death, like it was just another day in the life of the drug dealer. I had to keep him talking. My only chance was to distract him and try and run away. If I could make it out the front door, maybe I had a chance of screaming loudly enough to get the neighbours to notice. Although Boss would definitely be able to catch me in that time.
“Was Boss really poisoned in the park?” I asked. “Or was it here?”
“One of my idiot runners left his stash out and Boss got into it,” Gareth told me. “Now, come on. Get up. It’s time to go.”
“What are we doing?” I asked, my heartrate instantly flying up to a record high.
“You’re going to walk through the tunnel, and we’re going to meet a truck there. I’ve already texted a friend to meet us. It’ll be easier to kill you out there rather than have to drag your body through the tunnel.”