I would have liked to take the time to savor this sudden small gesture of acceptance from our reserved and rather formal neighbor, but I could see the flashing lights in the distance now. I scrambled into my car, backed it out of the roadblock, and raced along until I found the dirt road. Then I turned my headlights off, so my escape wouldn’t be as easy to spot, and didn’t turn them on again until I was several miles down the dirt road.

I took it slow, but even at twenty miles an hour, it was a rough ride. And it didn’t help my anxiety that as I drove along, I called both Michael and Dad without getting an answer.

“Damn it, what are they doing?” I muttered.

Just then, my phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID. Chief Burke. I let the phone ring. I could pretend I still had the phone on vibrate and hadn’t heard it. In fact, I flipped it over onto vibrate, just for good measure.

I’d call him back as soon as I got home and saw that everything was okay. Or got home and dealt with whatever wasn’t okay. I was probably being hyper, I told myself.

But I had a bad feeling about what could be going on at home. I kept trying to remember exactly what Freddy had said on his cell phone call and wondering who he’d been calling. Trey—that was the name he’d used. One of his confederates? Surely there had to be confederates—I had a hard time imagining Freddy and Jasper running even a moderately successful criminal enterprise without some kind of competent help. Maybe even a boss who would want to tie up loose ends. Why did Rob have to mention that Dad and Dr. Blake might have taken the finches? What if this Trey knew who they were and where they might have gone?

I slowed down when I reached the ridge that gave me a view of our house. Only the one car, Sandie’s, parked there. But that didn’t mean Dad and Dr. Blake weren’t there—they could have hidden their car. Or they might not have turned up yet.

I kept on till I reached Seth Early’s driveway, where I turned in and parked. I locked the car, made sure I had my flashlight and that my cell phone was still on vibrate, and set out walking along the road toward the house.

Thirty-Three

When I reached our yard, I watched from behind the hedge. All was quiet. I crept along the edge of the yard to the barn and slipped inside. No contraband birds or vengeful thugs there or in any of the various outbuildings. The only birds I found were the ducks, roosting in their shed. Another shed still contained a couple of terrariums of snakes, which meant that Dad and Dr. Blake hadn’t taken my diatribe on our need for a reptile-free environment as seriously as I’d have liked. The rest of the sheds were unoccupied.