Page 105 of Cryptic Curse

“Savannah left us fried chicken for dinner, but fuck, Hawk.I can’t eat.”

I frown.“Yeah, I’m not too hungry either.”

Falcon adjusts his cowboy hat.“If you’re not hungry, I know it’s bad.”

He’s not wrong.Of three teenage boys with monstrous appetites, I could always put away the most while we were growing up.Every so often I’d catch some curt remark under my mother’s breath about how I was eating her out of house and home.Falcon and Eagle ate nearly as much as I did, but they never seemed to be on the receiving end of those muttered comments.

“It’s early yet,” Falcon says, looking at his watch.“Only four o’clock.I want to go check the site.”

“Fal, the more often we’re there, the more likely someone could see us.”

Falcon spits on the ground.“Don’t care.I was up all night thinking about this.I want to see for myself.”

“You think I’m lying to you?”

“Hell, no.I just…” He takes off his hat, rubs his forehead.“I just want to see for myself.That’s all.”

I nod.I get it.If I were in his shoes, I’d want to witness everything firsthand too.

“Okay.”I slide into the passenger side of his truck.

Falcon’s place is slightly closer to the border than mine, so we get there within about twenty minutes.He makes the turn onto the dirt road that leads to the old barn.Tires crunch over the dirt and gravel, and neither of us talks.

In fact, we haven’t talked since we got into the car.

He pulls up by the barn, and we get out of his truck.

“Shit,” I say.“The shovels and work gloves are in my truck.”

“You think I didn’t come prepared?”He gestures to the back of his truck.“I don’t anticipate that we’ll need to dig anything, since you guys already did that, but I’ve got everything we need just in case.”

I simply nod, and he and I go into the barn.

“Here it all is,” I say.

“What did you do with the drugs?”

Fuck.They’re still in my truck.I forgot all about them.

“I took care of it,” I say.

Or I will, first thing when I get back to Falcon’s house.Shit, my truck is parked in his driveway.Anyone could drive by and see the garbage bag in the back.

But Savannah’s not home, and Falcon’s security guards are certainly trustworthy.And it’s not as if the cops have any reason to come sniffing for drugs here at the Bellamy ranch.

Everything may not be as above board as the residents of Summer Creek think, but one thing we don’t mess with is drugs.

Still, I’ll be on edge until that shit is flushed down the toilet.

Falcon goes over to the hole Eagle and I dug and paces around it.Then he kneels, looks inside.

“Goes pretty fucking deep,” he says.

“Yeah, that’s why I stopped digging after a while.Especially after I found that red bandana.Whoever was down there, he isn’t there anymore.”

Falcon simply nods.

“And I have a feeling…”