It wasn’t his mom. Two cars, both big and black, and Ricky almost picked up the phone to call the police, but he froze when he saw a bunch of men get out of the cars. Four men. Three were big, and one was short and had wide shoulders and a mustache that was too big for his face. One of the tall, skinny guys looked familiar, but Ricky didn’t know why. His mom worked with a lot of people and Ricky didn’t pay attention to them when they came over, mostly because he was always sent out of the room.

Did they have a meeting or something with his mom? The short one took keys from his pocket. They looked like his dad’s keys. That was superweird.

The men walked up to the porch and put the key in the dead bolt and Ricky didn’t have time to call the police. He didn’t know what was going on, but in the back of his head he screamed, Hide!

If he ran upstairs, they might hear.

Maybe they aren’t bad guys.

His mother always said his imagination was bigger than the Star Wars universe, which didn’t make sense to him, other than he got in trouble for exaggerations both at school and at home. But why did they have his dad’s keys? Who were they? Where were his parents? His sisters? Why were they coming into the house without knocking?

He decided to hide until they left, then he’d call the police. His dad had a gun safe in his closet, but Ricky didn’t know the combination. His dad said that when he was fourteen and went through a firearms safety class he could have the combo, but right now Ricky wished he had it. He knew how to shoot a rifle because they went out back, in the open space, and shot at bottles.

Hide!

He walked fast down the hall toward his mom’s office. She had a really neat office, a library she called it, with lots of books and it’s where she had meetings and worked at night. As he neared the door, he heard the front door open and one of the men said, “You two—go upstairs and grab suitcases, toiletries, whatever people travel with. Don’t make a mess. I need to find those damn deeds. This is fucked.”

What?