The Secret (The Scinegue Series Book 1) Read Free

followed him. “What does that mean?”
    Billy sat on their old, red plaid couch that had graced Sarah’s parents’ living room for many years before they passed it down to Billy and Sarah when they remodeled. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “Ben came over to me after work today. He was getting ready to leave, and it was like he made a decision to tell me something. He chewed me out a little for not being careful enough with the trash , then he said people who mess up around there disappear.”
    “You mean they get fired?” Sarah narrowed her eyes and tilted her head to the side as she tried to clarify.
    “Well, that’s what I thought at first too, but he said they disappear. As in not just gone from the job. Just gone. Like Jerald.” Billy glanced at her face to gauge her reaction to his words.
    “You know I’ve really looked for him,” Billy continued. “I thought it was too strange for him to lose his job and move the same day. I’ve tried tracking him down online and I talked to his neighbors. I can’t find a trace of him. And no one is too excited to talk about him. To talk to his neighbors, you would think they never even knew him.”
    “How could that be? You said he lived in the same area his whole life. Even if he wasn’t friends with his neighbors, they would have known him.”
    “You would think.” He shrugged. “Everyone I talked to was vague, acting like they didn’t know who had lived in his house. When I told them his name and described him they seemed surprised they’d forgotten about him. ‘Oh, right! Jerald Tanner. Of course, he...’ and that was it. It seemed like they were going to tell me something about him, and then nothing.”
    Sarah shook her head. “That sounds pretty crazy, you know. It sounds like a bad spy movie.” She pushed her blond bangs back from her face and gave a nervous laugh, but Billy didn’t join her.
    “You’re right,” he agreed, rubbing his thumb over a callous on his palm. “I don’t know what to think, though. You know this job was strange right from the start.”
    “Don’t say that! It’s a great job. You were so fortunate to get it with the economy the way it is. It’s so much better than working two part-time jobs like you were doing. You know not everyone who took that test got job offers.”
    She paced over to the window and stared unseeingly into the backyard with her hands on her hips. Since Billy started working at Scinegue things were finally starting to turn around for them financially. She knew money wasn’t everything, but it sure was nice knowing the bills would be paid every month.
    “It is weird that they don’t want you to talk about your work, and that you have to be so careful,” she continued with a half shrug. “I mean it’s garbage, stuff people are throwing away.”
    She paced some more and then continued speaking as if Billy had replied. “It’s also strange that you’re not supposed to have any contact with the people who live there.” She thought out an answer to her own comment. “They just have more money than anyone should be allowed to have and want things done a certain way. That’s not all that strange. Picky, sure. But if they’re going to pay top dollar to have a job done, it’s not strange for them to request it be done just so.” She almost had herself convinced and turned to Billy for his opinion. “Right?” she asked, looking for his reassurance.
    The job was strange, but the money was phenomenal and Billy was smart. When the local job fair offered IQ testing for free job placement, he and Sarah were very excited about it. He’d always done well in school—finishing both high school and college early—and had scored an impressive 146 on an IQ test when he was younger. Not exactly Einstein level, but high enough to get him noticed. He figured he would score well on the test at the job fair and hoped the score would translate into a decent job.
    When he was offered a position as