Free Furious by T. R. Ragan Page A

if he’d thought there was any chance they might hurt his family. But what if they held a gun to his head? What then?
    No sooner had the thought struck her than she felt a chill creep slowly up the back of her neck.
    Somebody was watching her.
    She stood perfectly still. A light breeze caused the branches of a giant oak to sway. The only sounds were the wind and the squawk of a bird in the distance.
    Mr. Hawkins, the baker, lived in the house to her right. She couldn’t see anyone looking out the windows. The neighbors down the road were too far away to see her unless they stood at the edge of the road. Behind her house was an empty lot—twenty acres of dead grass and trees.
    She slipped the button she’d found inside her pants pocket and turned slowly, looking out over the high weeds. She then climbed through the slats in the fence and made her way to Mr. Hawkins’s house. What if traffickers hadn’t taken the kids? What if Lara and Hudson were locked in a closet inside her neighbor’s house?
    After knocking on the door and ringing the doorbell, Faith made her way around the side of the house and peeked inside the garage window. Mr. Hawkins’s car wasn’t there. Back at the front door, she lifted potted plants and examined every rock and decorative item looking for a key. A sheen of sweat covered her brow. As an afterthought, she lifted the rubber mat. There it was—the key—shiny and new. She picked it up and slid it into the keyhole. The door creaked open. “Anyone home?”
    Something sounded in the other room, a light thump.
    “Lara! Hudson!” She hurried down the hallway and found herself in the master bedroom in time to see a cat scramble under the bed. She got down on her hands and knees and looked under the bed.
    It was just a cat.
    Her heart pounded as she walked into the bathroom next and searched through tall cupboards and removed dirty clothes from a hamper until she could see all the way to the bottom of the wicker basket. She called out her kids’ names as she looked around.
    She yanked open the shower curtain.
    Empty.
    Adrenaline soaring, she made her way through every room in the house. She opened cupboards and closet doors, even looked inside the washer and dryer. Standing in the center of the main living area, hands on hips, heart pumping fast, she looked around. And that’s when it hit her. She’d broken into Mr. Hawkins’s house. Was Mom right? Did she need help? Had she completely lost her mind?
    The sound of a car door being shut got her moving again. She rushed to the sliding glass door leading to the backyard. Her fingers fumbled with the lock. It took her too long to realize a piece of wood had been used to prevent the door from opening.
    Through the curtain over the front window, she saw Mr. Hawkins’s silhouette as he approached the entrance to his house.
    She removed the wood. The door slid open at the same moment a key rattled at the front of the house. She took off and sprinted through the backyard, weaving around decorative bushes and fruit trees. At the fence, she squeezed her way back through the wood slats, then dropped to her knees when she saw Mr. Hawkins walk through the open slider. Crawling on all fours, she made her way across the field to the fence bordering her own property. Covered in mud and out of the breath, she made it back home.

T EN
    Miranda was almost done braiding Jean’s long, blonde hair.
    She stopped for a moment and listened to the pitter-patter of rain on the rooftop. She thought of her room back home, the only room she’d ever known before she and her mom had been kicked out of the apartment, and how the droplets used to sound like the tiny feet scurrying around inside the apartment walls. For the first time in a long while she saw a flash of her mom’s face in her mind’s eye. She squeezed her eyes shut and forced away the memories.
    “What’s wrong?” Jean asked.
    “Nothing. I thought I heard something—that’s all.”
    Cow bells sounded,