The officer nods to the other policemen and two go into the house. “We got a call that there’d been a break-in out here last night. Just following up.”
“A call?” Dexter repeats. “There’s been no break-in. This is my house.”
The officer raises his eyebrow. “You live here?”
“Not currently, but it’s owned by my family. We got stuck in the snow finishing up a school project last night and couldn’t get back to Lee Vines.”
Rubbing his chin, the officer says, “What’s your name, son.”
“Dexter Falco.”
He thinks on it for a minute. “Your parents were killed in that car accident a few years ago?”
He swallows. Fists balled. “Yes, sir. My sister and I inherited the house.”
He turns to the rest of us. “School project? You go to Academy?”
“Yes.”
“The four of you and one girl?”
“We were delivering canned goods to the fire victims,” I say through chattering teeth. “The storm caught us off guard. Luckily Dexter got us to the house in time.”
He nods and the officers from inside come out. “Everything’s normal inside. Just looks like they slept by the fireplace.”
“Okay, you kids get inside and pack up. We’ll get you back to your car. I am going to need your names and addresses for the report, though.”
As we head inside, I hear Dexter ask, “Who called this in? You know this area is pretty isolated.”
“Anonymous call early this morning. Took us a while to get out here. I was surprised to find you here. Sorry about the inconvenience. The girl on the phone was pretty insistent.”
I head back to the back bedroom to look for some boots—my sneakers are still soaked. I turn and find one of the officers—a woman standing in the hallway.
“I just wanted to check on you—everything okay?”
I ease my left foot into the boot. “I’m fine. Why?”
“The caller mentioned that there was a girl up here—maybe being held against her will.”
“What?” I look up in shock. “That’s crazy. Those guys are my friends—my best friends.”
“You looked pretty ca
lm when we got here, so I didn’t say anything in front of them, but if anything inappropriate happened, you can talk to me.”
“Nothing inappropriate happened.” Which is the truth. They guys were on really good behavior all night—other than Charlie, not one of them even attempted to make a move. “Like I said, we’re friends. We live next door to one another. We ride to school together and worked on this project together. If anything, they took care of me during all this. Got me somewhere safe. I’m not from this area and was totally unprepared for the weather.”
She watches me closely and nods. “Seems like our caller got a lot of things wrong about what was going on out here.”
“Yeah,” I say, pushing on the other boot. “Sounds like it.”
She waits for me while I grab my still-damp jacket and I walk back into the main room, where Jake and Charlie are dousing the fire. They’re both in their clothes from the night before.
“We’ll come back and clean this up later,” Dexter says. “Me and Sierra. We need to check on the house anyway.”
The officers arrived in an SUV with big snow tires. We pile in the back and they take us to the Jeep, which is now under about two feet of snow.
The men hitch the Jeep up to a chain and quickly get it out of the ditch. During this, we each give the officers our names and addresses—show our IDs. “Just for our paperwork,” the female officer says.