by Leigh Landry
Liz stared at Sierra for a minute, then her face softened. “It was a long weekend, hon’. Y’all are both tired.”
Sierra couldn’t deny that.
“I still say it’s better if you stay away from this guy for a while,” Liz added. “Doesn’t sound safe.”
“Well, if he’s out of the picture, I’m going to need some help.”
Liz eyed her suspiciously again. “What kind of help?”
“For starters, I need a little help getting inside a place.”
Liz waited for the punchline to some nonexistent joke, but she never got it.
She shook her head. “Uh-uh, no way. Didn’t that already fail epically yesterday? What do you need so badly anyway?”
“Answers. I think I know who’s behind all of this.”
“You mean who put those snakes at that house?”
Sierra nodded. “And set the fire.”
“Answers you can’t get legally?”
“No time. And I don’t have enough evidence for the police to take me seriously. The arson investigator hasn’t even been to the house yet. He’s going today, then he’ll have to file a report. While everyone’s waiting around for paperwork, this guy’s going to get away with everything.”
“All right, calm down.”
“You just said you have some free time today. We’ll go in separate cars, so you don’t even have to stick around. You can get me through that door in a few seconds, then take off.”
“No. No way.”
“Pleeeeease?”
“No! I can’t get arrested for that kind of stuff now. I have a kid. What the hell would happen to Luna with me in jail, huh?”
And there was Liz’s ace. Sierra didn’t have much of an argument against that. “She could stay with Auntie Sierra?”
Liz grunted and threw away her lunch trash. “You’d be in jail too. You know, you’re my listed guardian and all, but right now you’re not exactly…stable. No offense.”
Okay, that stung. Sierra would do anything for Luna. She hoped Liz knew that. And technically this all started because she cared about Luna and wanted her to get better. And getting better always took cash. But she couldn’t argue with Liz’s assessment right now. “I need you on this, Liz.”
Liz looked her in the eye. “I know you think you need me, but this isn’t happening. And I don’t want to see you in over your head either. If this guy who already set a house on fire catches you breaking into his place…I don’t even want to think about what could happen to you.”
Sierra looked away as her eyes filled with tears. “I’ll be fine.”
“Sure you will.” Liz laughed and placed a hand on Sierra’s shoulder. “Because you’re going to find Marc and make up and figure everything out together.”
One of the guys from the front desk walked in. The one with the short, fluffy fauxhawk and tribal armbands. Scott. Or Sean. Sam? Something like that. He worked the quick station out front for drunk girls who wanted a tiny butterfly on their ankle or guys who wanted their pissed off girlfriend’s name on their arm. He had the greenest eyes Sierra had ever seen.
“Hey, Sierra,” he said. “You weren’t gonna leave without visiting me, were you?”
“Of course not, sweetie,” she said. Crap, what was his name?
Liz snorted a laugh. “You’re gonna have to step up your game, Seth. You’ve got competition.”
Seth. She’d been close at least.
“Competition?” he said. “As if!”
Sierra turned and stared slack-jawed at Seth. “How dare you doubt my allure?”
“It ain’t your allure I’m doubting, darlin’.” He flashed a flirty smile back at her. “It’s your follow-through that’s suspect.”
She held his stare, playing a flirtatious game of stubborn-chicken. No way he would win this one.
“You needed something, Seth?” Liz interrupted.
“Oh yeah.” He shook free from their staring contest. “Your one o’clock’s here. Want me to send him in?”
“Yes. God please, yes.”
Sierra hopped off her stool. “Jeez, I can take a hint.”
“Not last I checked.”
She followed Seth out and held the curtain open for Liz’s next customer. Then she stuck her head back in to add, “You’ll at least post my bail, right?”
Liz patted the chair where she wanted the new guy to sit and took the picture he handed her. She waved Sierra off with her free hand. “Yeah, sure. Whatever. Just remember, I’m gonna come looking for your butt the next time you don’t come home or answer my texts.”
She shut the curtain and waved goodbye to Seth before letting the screen door shut on her way out.
The visit hadn’t gone as planned, but Sierra could work around today’s roadblocks. She didn’t need Marc for what she had planned next, and Liz had been a long shot anyway.
She’d been able to do a little research at work, calling breeders, dealers, and pet stores. Her biggest remaining hope was Wildlife and Fisheries. But she needed to put in an official request for public records, and it might take forever to get that information.
She couldn’t find anything about Mr. Guidry either. No obituary. No marriage announcements. Nothing. It was weird. Like he’d vanished. No mention of the man after he left town. If the guy bred snakes, that didn’t leave much in the way of transferable skills. You’d think she would have found some listing of him somewhere in the U.S. registered as a breeder. She couldn’t imagine he’d ditch his only source of income like that. And what had happened to all those reptiles after he left?
One person had access to them. One person who might still have them. A person who might be missing a few northern water snakes.
Sierra sat in her car and looked at the torn envelope on her driver’s seat. She picked it up, looked at the address she’d scribbled on the back, and flicked it with her middle finger.
She had a pretty good idea of what she might find at that address. All she had to do now was find a way inside.
18
Sierra turned off the twisting road that ran along the Vermilion Bayou onto a driveway that was nothing but two dirt ruts. She parked in an empty lot and walked toward the aging mobile home.
The grass was patchy and dotted with deep puddles, even though it hadn’t rained in at least a week, and the air smelled like mud and swamp water and garbage. And…feces.
After a quick look around, she found the source. A dirty, plastic doghouse on the other end of the trailer.
Every instinct urged her to check it out, to make sure the animal was healthy and cared for. But the last thing she needed was a dog barking its head off while she tried to break into a place she had no business being at. She made a mental note to assess the situation on her way out, then she tiptoed up the wobbly wooden steps to the small platform in front of the door.
It was quiet behind the small window and thin curtain, but she knocked anyway. She was prepared to ask about some random name and explain that she had the wrong address, but no one answered.
Sierra dug in her pocket for the paper clips she’d swiped from the Nature Station. Liz still kept a tension wrench in her car, but she’d known the chances of getting Liz on board with this had been next to nothing. So she’d brought her own backup.
Between lookout glances, Sierra unfolded two paper clips—one with a ninety-degree bend at the end and the other completely straight. She inserted the bent clip and wiggled it to see which way the lock turned. Pressing down on the shear line, Sierra took a deep breath and stared at the knob.
That was the easy part. She’d seen Liz do this enough and practiced on her own at home to know that she wouldn’t get this right on the first try. That was why she needed Liz. She always needed Liz, but she really needed her for this. Except she couldn’t argue against the logic that her friend had responsibilities now. Specifically, a three-and-a-half-foot responsibility with big brown eyes and a nasty habit of needing things like food and guardianship.
So Si
erra accepted the fact that she was on her own this time. It would just take her a little more time to do it. Hopefully, time she had.
She slipped the pick inside then jiggled it, catching the first two pins. Then she slipped. Crap. She was out of practice.
After glancing over both shoulders, she tried again. She twisted her wrist, jiggling each pin while keeping pressure with the wrench clip, and eventually unlocked all five pins. She twisted the other clip and turned the handle.
Success.
Sierra closed the door and exhaled against it as she returned the paper clips to her pocket. It smelled worse inside the mobile home than it had outside. Cigarette smoke and mold.
With no time to waste, she pushed away from the door and tiptoed through the dark living room. She had no idea where this dude was or when he’d be back. She was lucky enough that he wasn’t home. She couldn’t have enough luck left to screw around wasting time.
She crept down the hall, the thin floor vibrating beneath every step. She poked her head in the bathroom, then checked both bedrooms. One room had a bed, a dresser, and a small desk with a computer. The other room was filled with half-assembled computers and assorted parts stacked along the walls. She’d hoped to find a room filled with glass reptile cases, but she’d apparently used all her luck getting that front door open.
Back near the living room, piles of half-opened envelopes, junk mail, and sale ads sat on a round dinette table. Sierra sifted through them, not sure what she was looking for. She didn’t find anything that might implicate the guy in anything more nefarious than landing on a craft store’s mailing list.
The place was a bust.
A flashing neon sign pointing at an empty snake tank would have been swell. But if this guy had taken over his dad’s reptiles, he was keeping them elsewhere. Unfortunately, he hadn’t left a treasure map either.
Sierra sat at the table and drummed her fingers. Think, think, think. She didn’t know much about Adrien. She’d never even seen the guy. All she knew was that he was Chloe’s brother, and he worked with Marc as some kind of computer geek.
That was it!
Before Sierra could follow through, a deep series of barks erupted from outside. A few seconds later, a knock at the front door echoed through the trailer. She slid to the ground and crawled a few feet to hide behind a kitchen counter.
The person outside fiddled with the knob, and she realized that she hadn’t locked the door.
Crap, crap, crap.
The door creaked open. “Hello?”
She reached a hand beside her and opened the nearest cabinet. CorningWare. Plastic containers. Nothing with a handle. Crap. She grabbed a glass lid and pulled it against her body.
The door closed. “Adrien?”
Footsteps moved closer across the carpet and stopped at the edge of the hallway. She held her breath and gripped the lid tightly as the footsteps came toward her.
“Seriously?”
The voice was clear now. Clear and familiar.
She looked up and waved with the hand not holding the lid.
Marc shook his head. “You’re really looking for an assault charge, aren’t you?”
“Hey, I didn’t hit you this time. I call that making progress.” Progress. She remembered the check and the fact that they’d taken a million steps backward that morning, even though she still had no idea why. “Although you’d totally deserve it if I had.”
“You’re probably right.” He held out a hand to help her up. “We can talk about that later though. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Me? What are you doing here? I thought you were at work?”
“I was. I thought you were at work.”
“I was. Now I’m here. Didn’t you say Adrien would never do that stuff? Didn’t you rule him out?”
Marc frowned. “That was before I ruled out my brother-in-law. And before I got this.” He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket.
“This better not be more job openings,” she said, taking the paper.
“Would you just put that lid down and look at it?”
She returned her weapon to the cabinet and unfolded Marc’s paper. “What’s this whois.com stuff?”
“Check out the address I highlighted.”
“You found out where Adrien lives. So did I.”
She knew she sounded bratty, but his cold shoulder that morning still stung like a fresh wound. She wasn’t ready to make nice. Not yet. Not here. Not without good reason.
He yanked the paper back. “I already knew where Adrien lives.” He shook the paper. “This tells me the email was sent from here.”
“The email?” Adrien had sent the email. They had proof now. Maybe not enough to pin everything on him, but enough to know they were on the right track.
Marc nodded and stuffed the paper in his pocket. “Freddy helped figure it out.”
She stood to dust off her butt. Adrien’s kitchen floor wasn’t the cleanest place to sit, that was for sure. “You’ve got a good friend in that one.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
He grinned, and she was sure she was missing something. Something important. And fun. She didn’t like missing fun. But, since she was going to miss out on all the fun with Marc from now on, she figured she’d better get used to it.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” she said. “How did you know Adrien wouldn’t be here? What if he came home early?”
Mark shook his head. “Freddy again. He helped me screw up my computer at the paper, so Adrien’s gonna be busy for a while.”
“Nice.” Even Sierra had to admit that was an impressively devious move. Especially since it was all Freddy, and she didn’t have to give Marc any credit at the moment. “How did you think you were going to get in here? Wait…did you steal his keys?”
“No!” He wrinkled his nose. “Freddy said I could get in with a credit card.”
Sierra rolled her eyes. Even Freddy couldn’t be perfect, she guessed. “You can’t do that on an exterior door. Not one like that at least. You’re lucky you didn’t get caught.”
“Me? Wait a minute, how did you get in here? More importantly, what are you doing here?”
She gave him a sly smile. “I’ve got skills, didn’t you know?” She nodded toward the back bedroom.
“Um, I don’t think—”
“The computer’s in there.” He wasn’t interested in her anymore, if he ever had been at all. She didn’t need to hear him explain it to her.
“The computer?” He followed her into the room.
“Yeah, the place is clean. Nothing suspicious. But where would a guy like Adrien keep his files?”
She watched the wheels turn and couldn’t help notice how adorable he was trying to figure stuff out.
“On the computer.” He pointed at the hallway. “Lead the way.”
The massive flat-screen monitor sat on a cheap, overcrowded desk. Marc hit the power button and waited. Wasn’t Adrien some kind of tech genius or something? Marc figured Adrien would be able to put together something faster than this.
Finally, the screen lit up and the operating system logo appeared. Marc tapped his foot, the awkward silence growing like the carpet mold between him and Sierra.
When he'd discovered her in the kitchen, his hopes had lifted. Maybe she hadn’t found the check yet. He could sneak into her bag and take it back before she ever found out how badly he’d screwed up. But her cold demeanor told him otherwise.
She’d found it all right. That check might as well have been sitting right there on the desk between them.
When he couldn’t take the silence anymore, he asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for snakes.” She said it like it was the most normal thing in the world.
“Snakes? Why would Adrien have snakes and why do you care?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you tell me their dad was a breeder?”
“Mr. Guidry?” He scratched the back of his neck. “I’d fo
rgotten all about that.”
“Well, that might have been kind of important to know.”
“Why? He’s gone.”
“What happened to his collections?”
“Collections? The snakes and stuff? I don’t know. What does that matter?”
“Well, if Adrien inherited them, doesn’t that give him access and opportunity? So now we have him with snakes and the email. Plus, he knows you and Denise, and he has the perfect stake-out spot from his mom’s house. Everything points to him right now.”
“And you expected to find…what? A trailer full of snakes?”
She shrugged. “A neon flashing sign would have been nice.”
He didn’t know how to respond to that kind of optimism.
“What about you?” she asked. “You have the email evidence. Why did you break in? No, wait…why did you try to break in?”
“Hey, I’m in here, aren’t I?”
“Only because I forgot to lock the door. You’d have never made it in without me.”
She was right. Not to mention he felt like a jerk about the check, even if he was still uneasy about the conversation he’d overheard. So he kept quiet and let her have that little victory. A flood of relief hit him when the desktop popped on the screen with a huge photo of half-dressed blonde women wearing bright underwear, cowboy hats, and snakeskin boots on the deck of a space ship.
“What the hell is that?” Sierra asked.
“Welcome to Adrien’s brain,” he said. “Let’s just get this over with.”
He swirled the mouse and watched the cursor zoom across the screen while he decided where to go first. He wasn’t sure what they were looking for, but he was pretty sure any evidence would be on this computer. Unfortunately, it was hard to focus with Sierra leaning over his shoulder and breathing across his ear.
He leaned his head away from her. “Do you mind?”
“Fine.” She crossed her arms. “Please, continue, Mr. Snooping Expert.”
Marc clicked open Adrien’s email, figuring that was as good as any place to start. Sierra put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. He was about to ask her what the hell she was doing when he heard a knock on the front door.