Ravenous (Steel Brothers Saga 11)

Joe wasn’t kidding. Plenty of work awaited me, and it kept my mind occupied, thank God, until my cell phone chimed midafternoon. My mother.

“We’re here at Vicky’s, safe and sound,” she said.

“Good news. Can I speak to Henry?”

“Sure. Come here, honey. Daddy wants to say hi.”

“Hi, buddy,” I said, already missing him terribly. “Did you have fun on the airplane with Ga-ga?”

He gurgled into the phone.

“Daddy misses you,” I said.

“Da-da.”

I smiled. I had a Henry-sized hole in my heart, but I was happy he was safe in Florida and away from the mess my life had become.

My mom got back on the phone. “He’s still teething badly. Fussy. Vicky got him some of those large plastic beads…”

She went on, but I was struck by the word “beads.” The jewelry from the cabin popped into my head.

“Mom, I have a question.”

“Yeah?”

“Did Dad ever give you any jewelry?”

“Jewelry? Nothing other than my engagement and wedding rings. Why do you ask?”

“It’s just… I was at the old cabin, and I found some stuff. A lot of jewelry, actually.”

Silence for a few seconds.

Then, “What kind of jewelry, Bryce?”

“Some pendants. Some loose gems. I found a bunch of stuff hidden in the cabin.”

Silence again.

“Mom?”

“Unbelievable,” she finally said softly.

“What’s unbelievable?”

“I haven’t thought about this in years.”

My skin tightened. “Thought about what in years?”

“You were just a kid at the time, but about thirty years ago, our house was robbed.”

I lifted my eyebrows. Total news to me. “Robbed? In Snow Creek? Was this before or after…”

Even I had trouble saying the words sometimes.

“Before Luke disappeared,” she said. “You would have been seven or eight at the time.”

Crime was almost unheard of in Snow Creek until Luke disappeared, so a robbery would have been very unusual.