Blaze (Steel Brothers Saga 21)

PROLOGUE

CALLIE

The door of the bank opens then, and a woman wearing jeans and a red T-shirt walks through. The shirt reads Karen’s Locks.

Rory and I abruptly stand.

“You’re the locksmith?” Rory asks.

“Yes, I am. I’m here to see Michael Keats.”

Mr. Keats approaches us quickly. “Karen Bates?”

“Yes, I’m sorry I’m late.”

“Wait a minute,” Rory says. “Is the baby okay? The one who was locked in the car?”

Karen smiles. “She’s fine. She slept through the whole thing. The poor mother cried like a baby, but the little one was just fine.”

Rory lets out a relieved sigh. “Thank goodness.”

Yes, my sister will be a hell of a mother. I hope she gets that chance.

“Come on back, all of you,” Mr. Keats says.

I inhale a deep breath, gathering all my courage.

In a moment, we’ll find out.

We’ll find out if our property was stolen.

And if it was… I don’t know what we’ll do.

The four of us—Keats, Karen, Rory, and I—crowd into the room. The walls are lined with locked boxes of various sizes. I cast a glance around. Which one of these is Donny’s? My gaze falls on Box 451.

That’s it. That’s the number that was on the key inside the glasses case. Funny that I only now remember. How did I think, for one minute, that Donny had taken our key?

Karen opens up her toolkit and pulls out a drill. Keats nods to a plug on the wall. Several minutes pass while Karen readies her tools. The boxes on the wall seem to move in closer. The room is shrinking, closing in on us.

Then the piercing shriek as she drills into the lock.

CHAPTER ONE

CALLIE

The girls’ restroom on Monday following homecoming is a veritable gossip fest. Makes it hard for me to stay invisible. I walk in. All the stalls are occupied, so I get to wait.

Several girls huddle around the sinks, their backs toward me.

“I heard she almost died,” one of them says.

“I know. It’s scary,” says another.

“How much of it did she drink?”

“No one really knows. She went to the hospital later, after the bonfire.”

I’m never one to force myself into a conversation, but I saw how sick Rory got Friday night after drinking a cup of the hairy buffalo spiked punch. I force myself out of my comfort zone to insert myself and approach the girls.