Before he could yank out the battery again—his first reaction—he saw from the number that the call was from was his friend Victor. A glance at the time told him that at school they were on break.

“Hey,” he said, picking up.

“Where are you, man? What happened?”

“Suspended,” Nick said, and felt a little proud. That was not something that had ever happened to either of them.

Victor’s voice dropped conspiratorially. “What did you do?”

“Nothing. It was that play I wrote for Nelson’s class.”

“They suspended you for that?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s cuz it had the word ‘shit’ in it, right?”

“Which, right now, you are saying freely in the hallowed halls of Montgomery High,” Nick said drily.

“How long are you suspended for?”

“Two days.”

“What are me and Aaron supposed to do at lunch?”

“You’ll figure something out.”

The school bell rang in the background. “Gotta go,” Victor said.

“Later.”

Nick clicked off. After talking to his friend, the house suddenly seemed quiet—too quiet—and he started to feel a little creeped out again. He checked to see if there’d been any messages sent in the minutes his phone had been off. There hadn’t. And while he was glad there was no photo of a serious little boy, he was a little disappointed that there was no credit card offer.

Maybe he shouldn’t have deleted that first text.

It would be nice to have his own credit card.

TWO

1

“The bank called. Another foreclosure. They’re faxing over the forms now.”

“Goddamn it.” Sheriff Brad Neth picked up his coffee cup, took a sip, then spit the coffee back into the cup, grimacing. There was nothing he hated more than cold coffee.

Unless it was enforcing a foreclosure eviction.

“Who is it?” he asked his deputy. “Anyone we know?”

Hank Dillman shrugged in that bony-shouldered way that Brad always found irritating. “She didn’t say. Want me to check the fax?”

The sheriff waved him off.

Foreclosures were down from the peak of the recession, but this was still the second one in as many weeks, and Brad always got a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach when he had to kick people out of their homes. Especially families. It didn’t sit well with him, and while it was legal, it didn’t feel right. He’d gone into law enforcement to catch bad guys, not to make life more difficult for good people who were down on their luck, and it seemed like a violation of his oath to conduct evictions on behalf of a private company. He was a public servant, damn it, and it was his job to uphold and enforce the law in order to protect the citizens of Montgomery.

“Carol!” he called. “Who’s available this morning?”

There was a beat, then the receptionist called back, “Mitch is off, Hildy and Clint are taking nights this week, Vern and Issac are out on that domestic call, and Norris, Paul and both Bills are on patrol. I think it’s just you and Hank.”