Thief River Falls Read Free Page B

can’t tell,” the second man called. “Did you check to see if the front door’s open?”
    “I will.”
    The other police officer headed back to the porch. Lisa heard the thump of his footsteps, and she gasped quietly. She squeezed her eyes shut and felt her whole body tighten into knots. She couldn’t remember if she’d locked the door when she got home. Half the time, she forgot.
    Directly below her, she heard the rattle of the doorknob and the thud of someone pushing heavily on the door from outside.
    Then the cop called to his partner again. “No, it’s locked.”
    “What do you think? Should we break in?”
    The first police officer didn’t answer immediately. Lisa felt her breath coming faster, and she sweated in the warm, humid bedroom. She tried to grasp what was happening. Two cops, two strangers, both with guns in their hands, were debating whether to break into her house .
    She heard footsteps descend the porch steps and scrape along the gravel again. When she peered into the yard, she saw the two police officers meet near their squad car. They were both solidly built, one taller than the other. Their faces were invisible.
    “Should we break in?” the second cop repeated.
    “No, not right now. We’ll come back when it’s light.”
    Under the white moonlight, both men holstered their weapons. She watched them climb into either side of the SUV, and the engine roared to life, and the headlights came on like two shining eyes. Thecops turned around in her yard and drove to the highway. The vehicle headed south.
    South toward Pennington County. South toward Thief River Falls.
    Lisa felt a sickness in her gut, driven by fear. She hadn’t eaten in hours, and she felt acid bubbling up out of her empty stomach, burning her throat. She scrambled to her feet and ran to the bathroom, where she threw open the toilet lid and retched through a series of dry heaves. Nothing but yellow liquid came out of her mouth. The effort of throwing up exhausted her. She rested for a while with her head leaning against the marble counter on the sink, and then she got up and rinsed out her mouth and walked unsteadily back into the bedroom.
    She tried to decide what to do.
    Call the police. That was her first instinct.
    But the police were the ones who’d been here. From the wrong county. With their guns out. Searching her property, testing the locks on her house, debating whether to force their way inside. No, she wasn’t ready to call the police yet, not until she knew what was going on.
    Call Laurel.
    Laurel March was her best friend.
    It was the middle of the night, but Laurel wouldn’t care about being awakened. Laurel was the calm head whenever Lisa found herself in the midst of a panic attack. Lisa didn’t think she would have survived the last two years of the Dark Star without Laurel’s help. She couldn’t count how many times she’d gone to her friend to talk, cry, scream, and pray.
    Call Laurel. Together, they would figure out what was happening.
    Lisa grabbed her cell phone from the nightstand beside her bed. Before she dialed, she went back to the tall bedroom windows. She didn’t bother hiding now. Her eyes checked the highway to be sure the police were gone and hadn’t come back. Then she turned her stare down to the ground.
    She wasn’t alone. Right there, under the bright, bright moonlight, someone was standing in her yard. Looking up at her.
    It was a young boy. He couldn’t have been more than ten years old.
    When their eyes met, he turned and ran.

    Lisa rushed outside from the house, and the night air assaulted her. The storm was over, but the ground was wet, and cold wind blew down from Canada across the flat fields with the speed of a train. She shoved her hands in the pockets of her cream-colored trench coat. Her long brown hair swirled around her face in tangles.
    “Hello?” she shouted, trying to make herself heard over the wind. “Are you there? Do you need help?”
    No one answered.
    She