Trevor (Strong Manor #6)

Prologue

LeAnn watched her ward play on the floor in front of the television. The stupid thing hadn’t worked for about a month now, but it didn’t seem that either one of them missed it all that much. She was happy that the little girl had been with her when her mother had been killed. LeAnn oftentimes wondered if anyone knew that Prissy had had a child, much less one as pretty and as young as little Debra was.

She was sure that, at some point, someone would have come for her had they known about her. LeAnn had started sleeping with a gun in her hand when they went to bed, the little girl in the bed next to her. But when she nearly blew a hole in the electrical man who read the meter, she decided that she might well be better off hiding them all over the house. It had broken her heart, too, that she’d had to show little Debra how to use it and how to be safe around it.

“Grannie?” She asked the child what she could do for her, smiling each time she heard her calling her such a sweet name. “There’s a man at the door. Did you hear him?” She said that she’d not and told her to go and hide. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll go hide. But you be extra careful, please. I don’t have nobody but you in my life.”

For an eight-year-old, the child was beyond smart. It took her very little time to teach the child that things weren’t like other people’s homes and that she had to be extra quiet when anyone came around. Looking around her sparse rooms, LeAnn thought she was about as ready as she could be for a visitor. She only hoped that they weren’t there for Debra. Being as old as she was, there wasn’t much fight left in her to keep her safe much longer.

“Hello, Ms. Jamestown. My name is David Westminster. I’m from the power and light company.” She asked him what he wanted. “Well, if I could come in, I’d be able to show you how we’re able to save you about a hundred dollars a month on your bills.”

“I don’t pay but about half that now. If’n you’re going to be able to save me a hundred, am I gonna get to keep the other fifty?” He laughed, it was forced, but she knew it when she’d opened the door that he was out for trouble. “You go on now. Leave this old woman alone. I got me enough to worry about what with the neighbor’s dog coming over all the time and eating my tomatoes in the summer months. Go on now.”

“Where is she, LeAnn?” She asked him what he was speaking about. “The girl, the child of your daughter? I know you have her. Just let me have her, and I’ll make sure you never have to go without again.”

“Oh, for the love of Pete. If’n I had a daughter, you dumb cracker, don’t you think I’d know it? I’m pretty near ninety years old now. A daughter of mine would be in her seventies. Even a kid of hers would be in their fifties if she was to have a kid herself. Where do you get off…I done already told you to go on now. I ain’t got no daughter. And if’n I had one, she would never have been considered a child. I’m sure to Christ, she’d be an old and ugly one.”

He shoved at the door just as she heard the back door open. She was scared beyond words now and let herself fall to the floor when he knocked her back. There was a gun just there under the footstool, and as soon as she got to it, she was going to—

“Mrs. Jamestown? It’s Trevor Strong. I’m here to help you out with the paperwork. Are you here?” She knew that she should have known the name, but she was too afraid to think beyond the men in her house. LeAnn told the man who was still calling for her that she was in the living room being shoved around. The big man who came in through the mud room winked at her. Making her feel like she was just a young girl and he’d come to courtin. “My dad, you know him, Barkley? He said that you prefer when someone comes into the back door like company. I’m assuming that this fellow here isn’t company nor welcome.”

“No, sir, he’s not. Come in here telling me that he knows about some child that I have of my daughters or some story. I’m nearly ninety, the young fool. If I had me a young person working around here, don’t you think that I’d have a much nicer and certainly cleaner place? I swear to Jon, people just don’t think with their minds no more. That’s what it is. Nobody is thinking beyond what they want to hear.” She looked the young man over as he helped her up from the floor. The other man, still with his gun out, told Trevor that he’d been here first. “Well, you might well have been first, but you didn’t even bother helping an old woman up from the floor. You even knocking me there didn’t have you helping me out.”

She was babbling. She knew that. Her heart was hurting her, and she wanted to get to her nitro pills before it became a full-bloom pain. Reaching for the tiniest little bottle she thought the drugstore had, she knocked it to the floor and knew that she was going to just die right then.

“Here, you go. Let me help you out with that.” Not only did he get her pill bottle picked up, but he had the little sucker open and was putting an equally tiny pill under her tongue. Almost as soon as it melted, she could feel it working. Trevor even told her that in a minute, if she wasn’t better, he had her a second one, too. LeAnn nearly sobbed. Nobody had been around to help her but the child and she just didn’t know what to say.

Leaning her head back on her chair after getting the second little pill, LeAnn closed her eyes and let the two men argue about the silliest things. At least to her befuddled mind, it seemed like they weren’t making nary a bit of sense. It scared her a bit, feeling this way. She couldn’t leave the child alone, not until she was able to talk to someone about her and why she was hiding her.

LeAnn must have dozed off for a bit there because the next time she opened her eyes, Debra was helping her with a sip or two of water and asking her if she needed another pill. Taking it, just to be sure that everything in her chest was working the way that it was supposed to, she was glad to see that the big man, she couldn’t remember his name at the moment, was on the telephone. Since she knew for a fact that he’d not been on her house phone, LeAnn figured that he had one of them cellular phones that he was using. She looked at Debra when she called out to her.

“That man had the password to make me come up out of the cellar. He said that he was going to call his daddy and get us to a safer place. Are you all right?” She said that she was and that Barkley, his daddy, was her friend. “That man that was here when I went downstairs, he’s fit to be tied standing on the street with the police. They arrested him on account of him having a gun when he was on parole. He sure was powerful upset that Mr. Strong came in and ruined his plans. He didn’t say what they were, but the police hauled him right out of here kicking and screaming about how he was here to get a little girl.”

“I don’t know how he ever thought that you’d not be prepared for someone coming alone, do you, Mrs. J?” She smiled at the nickname, remembering him as a young man when he’d come here with his daddy sometimes. “Dad told me to tell you that he’s sending his best men here to make sure you get out of here all in one piece. Debra here is going to be as safe as we can make her too.”

“They want her on account of them thinking that she knows more than her mother did. You know she’s not my granddaughter, don’t you, son?” He said that he did and that he remembered being around here when she had baked him some chocolate chip cookies. “Yes, I remember that. You sure could eat your weight in them.”

They both laughed, and she felt her heart tensing up a little bit again. Not taking a third pill, she told Debra to make sure that she got her mother’s books from the cellar. While she was down there, she looked at the young man who seemed to know just what she was going to say to him.

“You hang on now. My dad said that you owe him a game of chess.” She said she didn’t know if she could remember how to play now. “An ambulance is coming to get you. Now, don’t you be frightened when they zip you up in one of those body bags. Ms. J. Debra will be in there with you, holding onto you for dear life. Don’t frighten her by doing something sad, all right?”

“I hurt, and I’m old.” He said that he was going to make sure that she got herself some good care. “I know, Trevor, but I’ve only been holding on for the last few years until someone came along and helped me out while caring for little Debra. She’s not a bit of trouble, but I’m ninety years old. My poor old body just can’t hold on too much longer.”

“My dad is going to meet the two of you at the hospital. I know you have things to tell him. Things that the two of you have been putting your heads together about for a long time. Now, you just hang on until then, and everyone will be happy. You’re not going to believe it, Ms. J but my brothers are all married now with babies and children coming along. You have to hang on a bit to see them all. Please?” She cried, and she watched him as fat tears rolled down his own cheeks. Trevor had always been a good boy and she so hated to disappoint him. “Will you at least try for me, please?”

“I’ll try, young man, but I expect you to be there when I’m passing on. I need a young person to hold onto my hand when I’m passing over into the next world. It’ll make me ease into it better whilst I look for my husband. Now that I think on it, he’s been gone longer than we were married. Probably got him a whole lot of women just hanging on his every word.” They both laughed, and she felt another pain rip right through her. “It ain’t gonna be long, Trevor. You make sure that your daddy knows that.”

He said that he would and went to let in the medics. It had been forever since she’d had so many guests in her home, and she didn’t have nary a cookie or cup of coffee to offer them. When they got her onto the gurney, feeling the nice mattress under her worn-out body, they told her that they were going to give her a bit of something that would make her feel a lot better.

Sure enough, it did. Her heart was beating at its full strength, and she felt just a little like she could take on the world. After a bit, when they told her that she seemed to be steady, they had little Debra lay over her gentle like, and then they put the biggest sheet over the two of them like she was being carted away to the funeral parlor.

They strapped the two of them down, and she might have been a little afeared of the darkness, but Debra started to sing to her, a little song that she’d picked up off the television when it had been working, and she sang along with her. People might well have been scared out of fifty years of their lives if’n they heard that big old sheet covering them singing about the colors of the world. She smiled a bit. Debra could certainly make her feel like she’d had a good long time left in her old body. She surely did.

Once they were at the hospital, they were taken to an elevator and told that they only had a little bit more. She heard Trevor’s voice talking to someone, and she felt a might better about it. There was someone with him, a doctor he called him, and he was telling the other man what he’d done in the way of helping Ms. J make it here.

“I’d like for her to be around a bit longer if you think you can make that work for us.” The doctor said he’d give it his all as he thought the world of Lisa and Barkley Strong. “They like you too, Jimson. I heard that you were excited about the new equipment that my brother and sister have been working on.”

When the elevator stopped, she was ready to get off the mattress. It had gone from feeling just fine to something that didn’t have nary a soft spot in it. As soon as she was put on a better bed, her whole self felt like she’d been given a million-dollar place to rest her head. But it wasn’t doing all that much for her heart. She was never so glad to see Barkley Strong as she was in that moment.

“I fear I don’t have too much longer to go, sir. I just can’t seem to keep this ticker here going.” Barkley told her that he had her. “Good, you always were the best of the best of the best when you’d come over and mow my lawn. Now, you listen to me better than you did in them flower lessons I gave you. Didn’t I tell you that they’d come in handy?”

She told him everything. LeAnn knew that she was getting close to the end of her talking and her body being around. But it was as important to her to tell him everything that he’d need to know as it was for her to make sure that he knew all about it. Debra, she came and held her hand off and on, the little mite crying a great deal, but she too knew what was going to happen to her, and she was surprised every day that she opened her eyes that she was in this life for another day or two.

“You got them books I been sending you?” He said that he also had the ones that were in her cellar. “That child, she’ll know where to find everything else you might need too. You keep her safe, Barkley. That little thing is smarter than anyone I’ve done ever did know, including you.”

“You know that I’ll keep her more than safe, Ms. J.” No one will ever find her, not so long as there is breath in my body.” She closed her eyes but opened them off and on to make sure that they were all still there and if’n they had any questions to put to her. While she wasn’t all that sure she could answer them, she knew that someone would be there to listen to her.

“Grannie?” She had to focus really hard on seeing who was talking to her and when that pretty little thing smiled at her, it hurt her bad that she couldn’t remember her name. “It’s Debra. I wanted to tell you that I love you with all my heart. And that I’m sure that I’m only alive because of you.”

“Aren’t you the sweetest little thing? I think, and we both know it, that you could have done this all on your own without me meddling in your life.” Debra laid her head on her chest. It wasn’t hurting now. None of her old body was. “You make sure you listen to everything that Barkley and his family tell you, child. They’ll keep you out of harm’s way. All right?”

“Yes, ma’am, I know that.” LeeAnn closed her eyes and couldn’t pry them open again when Debra, that was her name, said something to her. “You go on now, Grannie. You don’t have to make sure I have beans and taters anymore. Go on now and go in peace.”

“I think I will. I surely did love you, child.” She thought that she told her that she loved her too but couldn’t be sure. LeAnn was as sure of her love for the child as she had been her husband nearly sixty years ago now. “You be good, honey. I’ll see you when you come a calling.”

~*~

Trevor had no idea what made him stop at the little house that was so far off the road that few people even knew that it was back there. When he’d seen the man on the front porch, he’d made his way around to the back to make sure that Ms. J wasn’t being ambushed. As it was, he had to break into the house, knocking the window out of the mudroom to gain access. He didn’t know what he’d find when he got inside, but his heart was telling him that she needed him, and Trevor was never one to second guess himself when his mind or heart was talking to him.

He’d been afraid when he’d seen the elderly woman on the floor. More so to see the man standing over her yelling about the child. He did know that Ms. J had someone living with her, but he’d not known who it was—actually, he still didn’t—until he remembered the password that he’d been given long ago to get the person to trust him.

When Debra came out of the cellar, cobwebs were not only all over her jeans but in her hair as well. He helped her clean up while she told him what was going on. The man, he’d not caught his name was gone now, the police having come to get him just after Trevor had broken into the house. As soon as he could, he called his dad and mom to tell them that he wasn’t sure that Ms. J was going to make it after telling them what he’d come up upon when he’d pulled in behind the house. His dad told him that he was on his way and Trevor told him to drive safely but to hurry. Turned out he was right to have his dad hurry it along. The elderly woman died not ten minutes after they got her to a hospital room.

“Mr. Trevor?” He asked Debra again just to call him Trevor. “Grannie said that I wasn’t to trust anyone but your dad. I don’t know what it is about you, but I have the same trust for you that I have for him.” He got down to her level before speaking to her again.

“My dad and I used to come here a lot before you came here. Then, one day, we came here, and Ms. J had a tiny little baby in her arms. I know you don’t remember that but I got to hold you for hours while they talked business. You were then and are now a pretty little thing.” She thanked him. “Did you know how you ended up with her? I mean, I know that she didn’t have any living children and that most people didn’t have all that much to do with her. Thinking that she was an oddball. She wasn’t. Just a lovely woman that didn’t take crap from anyone.”

“It’s in those books why I was with her. I don’t know, to be honest. I wasn’t to read the books that she’d had in the cellar. I could read the new ones, but not those.” He had a feeling that if asked she could recite the entirety of all the books if asked. “Grannie, she wasn’t my relative at all. But I had to hide out when people came around sniffing. It took me a long time to figure out what that meant. She had funny words for things that I had to come to understand.”

“Yes, I had a grandda like that too. He could say things that would make you scratch your head and more than likely still not have any idea what he was talking about. Even when I got older, I still didn’t know.” They both laughed, and he and her moved to the living room in his parents’ home. He’d never been so relaxed around a child before. “From what my dad told me about you, is that your some kind of prodigy. Is that right?”

“Yes.” When she didn’t say anymore he didn’t ask. Whatever she was smart about, he figured that he’d find out soon or later or not. Really, it wasn’t any of his business. Dad had it under control, and he was fine with that.

They talked about Halloween for a little while. Of course, she’d never been trick or treating. Nor had she had a big Thanksgiving dinner with family around. Grannie, she told him, would get food delivered to the house all the time, and they’d share it. Also, they had them a nice-sized garden that they’d eat from all summer and into the fall year. Debra told him how Grannie had taught her the basics of canning and that she could live in the forest for months so long as she had a sharp knife and a bottle. He figured out what the knife was for easily, but she explained to him what the bottle was for.

“Carrying stuff. Toting things back and forth that I’d find to eat or need. Also, it was nice to have water brought to wherever I was hiding out. Each summer since I was three, grannie would tell me to go away and not come back for a month. She wanted me to be able to care for myself in the event that something happened to her. I guess she was right. I’m going to miss her so much.” Trevor told her how sorry he was and held her while she cried. “It was fun, honestly. And I did learn a great deal. I can find things in the forest to keep my belly filled up that nobody I know would think about. I would always get to have cake, something that we rarely had when I was with her.”

He could see that, too. Someone like Grannie, her age, giving the child answers to questions about the outdoors that she’d not get from a book or someone younger. Her relationship with her, too, someone watching over her that would be better than any other relationship that she’d have with a parent who wasn’t around or even one who didn’t care if she needed help or not. Debra told him that she’d learned how to know where she was at any given time, too, so she’d be able to find her way home. He did wonder why she was taught those things, wondering what kind of scary things Ms. J knew about the little girl.

“She’s going to be staying with your mother and me until we can get things figured out with the government. If you’d not mind, I don’t want either of you to say anything to anyone until we know for sure that we can trust them. Of course, your brothers and their wives will know. However, as far as anyone else is concerned, she’s just a relative who is spending the holidays with us until such time as her parents return. That’s all the information that anyone needs to know. If they get too pushy, well, I’ll have Jade or Jenson take care of them.” Both he and Debra laughed. “As soon as that came out of my mouth, I knew it was the wrong thing to say. Anyway, once we get something more than we have now, we’ll be able to move forward.”

“The man that was at the house today, he seemed really pushy. What happened to him?” Dad just looked at him and didn’t answer Debra. “Okay, so I’m assuming that it’s best if I don’t know. I can live with that. I’m not sure, but I think that Grannie took care of a couple of pushy people, too. I helped her put them in the well at the back of the property. I won’t be getting into trouble over that, will I?”

Dad told Debra that he’d look into it, but he shivered when he said it. Trevor, too, had a feeling that there wouldn’t be just a couple of bodies back there but as many as six. The way that the police were talking earlier, there had been some kind of trouble going on here for a long time.

When Jade showed up, she told Dad that she’d gone shopping and had some things for Debra. After she took off to try some of them on, she looked at the two of them like she had some serious information to hand out. He wasn’t entirely positive that he wanted to hear it but sat down when she told him to. Christ, all he’d done was check on an elderly lady that he’d met long ago, and now he was knee-deep in whatever was going on with a child.

“The elderly Jamestown had some traces of poison in her body. I’m not saying that the child did it, but I’d be extra careful around her if I were you.” Dad asked if he’d be all right here with her then. “I would say so. If I were you, I’d have Trevor move in here too, another set of eyes that can watch over things. It might well not be her that did it, but I’m not taking any chances with either of you.” Dad looked at him.

“I can stay here, you know that, for as long as you need. However, I haven’t any idea how I’m supposed to keep an eye on someone so that they don’t poison you. I mean, I’m not a stupid man, but that’s well beyond anything that I studied for in college.” Dad said that just having him here would be a blessing. “You know that I’d give my life for you and Mom. Just tell me when you want me here, and I’ll—”

“Tonight.” He nodded and worked around in his head on how to move things around on his schedule so that he could work with his parents and not miss too much in the way of working.

Then he felt stupid for doing that, making work first in his life, so he decided that he’d clear his calendar until his parents no longer needed him. As Jade was leaving, she handed him a thumb drive. She didn’t say a word, of course, but kissed him on the cheek and whispered to him to use his own laptop. This was getting scarier and scarier all the time.

~*~

Trevor didn’t care for the little girl. He wasn’t one to make snap judgments about people, but there was something decidedly creepy about the kid. Even Sherm, the nicest kid he’d ever met, seemed to not want to have much to do with her. Debra Carter was odd. Not only that but she was snippy, as his mom would call it.

No one knew that the child was with him. Well, not him, but his parents. Sherm was the only kid who knew that she was around, and he wouldn’t tell. He was the most adult child that he’d ever met and trusted him more than he did his own banker.

“She’s weird.” He told Sherm that wasn’t nice. “Well, she is. Last night, I asked her if she wanted to play a game on my reader, and she told me that it would melt my brain. I might be younger than her, but I know better than that.”

“Sherm, you’re younger than I am, and you know a lot of things that I don’t. But you found out her age?” He told him that she told him that she was twelve. “You say that like you don’t believe it. You think she’s older or younger?”

“I don’t know, to be honest. She’s just weird.” Sherm had been telling him that for the past three days. It was like he didn’t know what other label to put on the girl. While Mrs. J had left them notes on the child, there really wasn’t enough personal information about her to be able to know where she came from or how she had ended up at Mrs. J’s home.

Then there was the thumb drive that he’d been given. He no more understood that than he did how a kid could be so smart with the dumbest parents around. Correcting himself. He knew how that happened. Sherm was a product of a good home. Just yesterday, he’d been talking to someone at his office who said that their child had been tested and was considered gifted.

“She’s reading off the charts in books. Only ten years old and reading at a high school age. Can you believe it?” He was reasonably sure that he wasn’t supposed to answer no at that point. “I just can’t believe how smart my little girl is.”

Neither did he. He had attempted to converse with the child, who appeared to be an ordinary kid at first glance. However, when he offered her a book, she didn’t settle down to read as expected. Instead, she fidgeted restlessly, tearing out pages and eating them. Unless she was somehow absorbing the book’s contents through her mouth, he doubted she could read at all.

After spending what little time he did with Debra, he realized that she was forever staring at things. Not like looking, he looked at things and observed. But she would go off in this kind of trance and stare at something for a good hour before she’d look back at him. Trevor shivered. That just creeped him out, too.

“Did you know that there are tests that you can give someone to see what sort of intelligence they have?” Sherm told him all about the tests he’d taken them several times and what they would tell you about a gifted person. “It…Grandma said I can’t call her an “it” anymore. She might be only gifted in one thing. Like I am. I can read, hear, or smell something, and I will remember it forever. But I’ve applied my gift, I guess you can call it, so that I can use it to help others. There are some kids who can do math and see things beyond the scope that it is. I can do that too but I have to have something to draw it out so that it doesn’t get all fuzzy in my head.”

“What do you think Debra is gifted with?” He told him, again, that she was just weird. “Sherm, I don’t think that’s a gift. Being weird, I mean. What would that even be?” But the more he thought about it, he thought that was what she was gifted with. Being weird.

Trevor hadn’t been able to talk to Jade or any of the others about the girl or the thumb drive. He’d watched it from beginning to end several times, and he no more understood what he was looking at then than he did a book on political science that Jenson had given him. It might as well have been in a different language as far as he was concerned.

There were other things about the girl, too. She had a habit, well, he wasn’t sure it was a habit or not, something else that made her weird, he supposed, but she wouldn’t eat things on her plate that touched something else.

Like she’d not eat succotash. The corn and the lima beans touching were too much for her. All her food was put into separate bowls or plates. And she would need a new fork with each thing, too. The other night, she’d had a meltdown because he’d put mushrooms on her steak. She had wanted both, but he’d not known about the touching thing until then. Dad had to leave the room, and Mom…well, she seemed like she thought the kid was…weird. Like Sherm had said.

Also, she wouldn’t wear socks with her shoes. She’d wear them around the house, keeping her feet cozy inside of them, but once she had to put on shoes, nope, she’d take them off and put them in the laundry.

As he was eating his lunch, making sure that everything on his paper plate touched, he had to laugh when his Mom sat down beside him and told him to behave. As if she knew just what he was up to. After kissing her on the cheek and offering her the last of his chips, she took one bite and picked up his drink.

“You could have warned me.” After she drank down most of what was left in his paper cup she made him go and get her a refill. While he was there, he also got her a bottle of water. Setting both down in front of her, he watched as she tried to get rid of the flaming hot taste in her mouth. “What am I going to do with you, Trevor? Some woman is going to come along, take one bite of your dinner, and run to the hills.”

“Nah, she’ll have to get used to it. But I don’t need another woman in my life. I have all I need right here with you.” She smacked him on his arm. “What are you doing in this part of town? Not that I’m complaining, I love seeing you, but you don’t usually come down here unless you need…did that girl say something to you?”

“She’s odd, don’t you think? But no, she didn’t say anything to me. I don’t know what to do with her most of the time.” Trevor almost told his mom not to be alone with her, but he didn’t. He had no idea where that thought came from but he knew it was true as much as his love for his mom. “I came into town to have lunch with Jade, but she’s in the middle of a huge project. Jenson is working on his office in DC. And Grace had already eaten by the time I was able to run her down. I felt so lonely.”

“I have an idea that both Jenson and Jade will be gone for the rest of the day. She told me that Jenson has some furniture that he needs to move. Grace told me that she had puppies. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I didn’t ask. I love her to pieces, but she sometimes talks like she’s been having a conversation with you for several hours and that you just need to catch up with her. Also, and this one really floored me. What the heck is a Flintstone? She did mention it was an old cartoon, but I’ve never heard of it.”

Mom was laughing. He was happy to see it; she’d been down a bit for the last few days, and when she explained to him what the Flintstone reference was, she had him look it up and watch one of the cartoons that she had enjoyed as a child.

“Oh my, Trevor, you do my heart a lot of good. I’m so happy I came to find you.” She chuckled a bit more before she asked him what the puppies meant. “Do you think that it’s code for something? It would be like her to come up with something like that. I just love that girl. She’s forever making me have to think hard and then laugh just as hard. I believe that her sense of humor is just as good as Jade’s sarcasm.”

The two of them decided to go by to see Gracie. Pulling into the drive, they were amazed to see a truck backing up to the garage. Wondering what they had ordered now, the two of them bypassed the garage and made their way into the house.

The barking started first. Then the cutest little puppies, all of them round and fat, came running to them. Gracie, chasing them, yelled for us to close the door or they’d escape again had Trevor closing the door and then sitting on the floor to get as much loving as he could get from the rambunctious bunch.

After telling them how she’d ended up with the ten little beasts, she said that it had been so much fun watching them grow into their own personalities. But then, she explained that she’d only had them a few days and was still getting used to them.

“Are you going to sell them?” The look Grace gave him had him raising his hands in defense. I was just asking. Because if you are, I want my pick of them. Christ, this is like having a bundle of love right here in your hands.”

“I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them all. I don’t want to part with them, they give me so much joy all the time when I’m here alone, but I’ve only just realized today how much it’s going to cost for us to feed them when they get full-sized. The vet told us that they were going to be big dogs and would need a lot of yard to play in. I have that, we have it all fenced in as well, but we’ve had to have the local store bring us food for them on a semi.” That explained the truck in the garage. “Yes, I know. I might well have gone a little overboard with that but we won’t run out anytime soon. It’s difficult for me to bring home fifty-pound bags of dog food by myself weekly.”

“I’ll take two.” She asked him if he was serious. “Yes. I want to…do you know their sex yet? If so, I want to take a male and a female. I’ll have them both fixed, but I think that a brother and sister will have fun growing up together. I know that I’ll enjoy it.”

Trevor didn’t even mind that they had names. He figured that if Gracie was willing to part with two of them for him that he’d leave their names for them. Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm were going to go home with him, along with their beds, food, and collars. Christ, he thought to himself, he was nuts but was going to enjoy this so much.

By the time Maverick made it home, his other brothers and their families showed up to get to know the newest additions to the family. Sherm wanted one so badly that it hurt him to know that he couldn’t. At least not until they got their yard fenced in as well. When all was said and done, Gracie was left with two of the dogs, Fred and Wilma, so that she could watch them grow up as well.

“I have something to tell you guys since you’re all here.” Maverick raised his glass of tea up, tapped it with a spoon, and smiled. “Grace and I are going to have a baby in June. By then, we’re hoping that the dogs will be able to be around them without falling over.”

The dogs were clumsy. But so adorable. When he asked Dad if he was going to take one, he said he had enough on his plate right now with Debra. He didn’t sound any more thrilled with the girl than his mom had. Trevor decided right then that he was going to dig deeper into the girl’s life and find out firstly what was wrong with her and secondly why it was so important to keep her hidden away.

Something very telling was that not one of the puppies would go near her. Blackie, the pup that seemed to be in charge of the others, just stared at the young girl and barked. In doggie language, he was sure that he told his little family that they were to avoid her. Having a dog, just a little one to avoid someone, told him that he couldn’t put off any longer what he should have done by now. See what the fuck was her issue.

When he got home that night, after walking the dogs around the yard, Trevor decided that he was going to have to move into something bigger than the one-bedroom condo. They didn’t have any kind of rules as to having pets, but he couldn’t see that they’d be able to run around as much as they might need to when they got older.

Deciding that he didn’t want a mansion like the others had but something with a couple of bedrooms and a nice yard. It was the yard that he wanted most. Something that was his and his alone. He realized that he was sick to death of sharing the space with about fifty other people.

That night, after the pups settled down, he got on the computer to have a look around. Nothing on Debra as yet. He’d do that later but to find him a home. As he was sitting on the floor, where he did his best work, he thought, the pups came over to him and cuddled up on his lap. He found himself so relaxed with them snoring gently by him that he was going to go to bed.

Something was up with the girl. He didn’t know what, but he was going to find it, and if it turned out badly, anything that made her a threat to his family, he was going to make sure that she was never found. That was his job, after all.