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Prologue
Bass
Ryan Sebastian Fisher might only be ten years old, but he was already smarter than a lot of adults. He’d had no choice but to learn as much as he could as fast as he could, given how he’d grown up. His father had left before he was born, and his mother was more interested in finding her next sugar daddy than in raising him. He learned from the time he was a young boy that if he didn’t take care of himself, no one else was going to do it . . . no one cared if he lived or died. Heck, there weren’t many people in the world who evenknewhe was alive.
For a ten-year-old child this should’ve been traumatizing. For him, it wasn’t, he simply accepted his fate. There were times he was jealous of those kids in school who had loving families to go home to, but he’d learned early on that jealousy got him nowhere. What good did those emotions do for him? He’d learned how to survive by any means necessary. He was determined to make something of his life, and the only way to do that was to depend only on himself.
He went by the name of Bass now because he hated the name Ryan, and Sebastian was a mouthful. Sadly, he was a master looter. He had a charming, innocent face, and he knew all of the tricks of the trade. He could go into a store and try on clothes, then put his old clothes over them and walk right out of the store.
He had secret pockets to hide food and other needed items in. He knew not to take too much so he wouldn’t be noticed. It meant he had to take more often, but the chances of getting caught substantially went down. He’d avoided going into people’s homes because it simply felt wrong to take from neighbors who might also really need the items he was desperately seeking. He also knew he couldn’t stalk the same store each week, so he had to break his code of robbing neighbors . . . but not people too close to where he lived.
Even though he’d been stealing from the time he was young, he never entered homes that were rundown. They most likely had as many problems as he did, and the thought of taking something from a kid as hungry and needy as he was didn’t sit right in his mind. Bass knew he was becoming more and more hardened by life as each new day came and went, but he was unable to stop it. He was getting angrier, and he knew by the time he was a teenager it would most likely boil over. That wasn’t good. He promised himself one day he’d stop, but for now it was what he had to do.
On this particular day, Bass moved through a neighborhood he’d never been in before. It was a hot summer scorcher of a day and his mother had been gone for a week this time. She was prone to leaving for days on end, but this time it was longer than usual. No matter how much Bass told himself he was a big kid and didn’t need adults in his life, it was creepy in his tiny apartment all alone.
The sounds that came through the walls of the low-income housing he lived in often scared him. He’d never admit out loud anything scared him, but the constant fighting and flinging of items against walls did cause him to sleep beneath his bed at times. Some of those sounds were disgusting which at least had the added benefit of taking away his appetite. He might only be ten, but he was well aware of how babies were made, and he was even more aware that sex wasn’t just to make babies, and some people were really disgusting. He’d been approached more than once by strangers to ask if he wanted to make money. He knew what the sickos wanted. He also knew his mother did despicable things to earn drug money. He wanted nothing to do with that life.
Bass turned a corner on the road he was on and spotted a beautiful farmhouse about a hundred yards from the highway. He stood behind a tree for a long time and stared at the nice house. He never approached a home unless he was sure the people were gone. Even though he was bigger than the average ten-year-old, he was certainly no match for an adult . . . at least not yet.
Beyond his size, Bass didn’t want to fight with anyone. He simply wanted to grab some food and maybe find a few dollars to buy more food and supplies and therefore not have to rob anyone for a long while. He sat beside a tree with the house visible to him, but also giving him cover. If someone did happen upon him, he could simply say he was out picking berries and had grown tired and was resting. Healwayshad a plan. He’d heard about juvie and he didn’t want to end up there. He knew a lot of kids got hurt in those places. He wouldn’t go down without a fight, but he was smart enough to realize that if he was ganged up on, he’d lose.
San Francisco could be dangerous now, and it was still a growing city. He couldn’t imagine what it would be in another twenty years. That’s why there were places like this neighborhood just a bus ride to reach. There were still communities with a bit of farmland and not as much traffic as the city. It was the kind of place Bass hoped to live in one day. He wanted to be away from the noise and crime of the city. He wanted to sleep in peace. He wanted so much more than what he’d been born into. He wasn’t sure how he’d get it, but he knew he would. He’d never sell himself, and he wouldn’t do drugs and end up like his mother, if he could even call her that. He simply thought of her as his incubator.
After a half hour of watching the house, Bass grew hungrier and super thirsty. This was it. He needed to hit the house or move on. There’d been no movement. It appeared no one was home. It was a Sunday afternoon and the people living there could very well be at church, which Bass found was a great time to gather some items, or they could be shopping. They could return at any time though, so he needed to get started.
He crept down the road, listening for signs of life. There was nothing. When he was within five feet of the house, he ducked beneath a window and a smell drifted out that had his stomach audibly growling. It sounded like a bear was trying to rip its way from his stomach. He was always hungrier on Sundays because there was no school for free breakfast or lunch over the weekend. There were a lot of nights Bass was lucky to have a few crackers or a piece of fruit for dinner. He really looked forward to the school meals. He didn’t understand why so many kids complained about how much they hated the food. It was gourmet cooking to him.
Bass had even mastered how to snag uneaten food from other kids when they weren’t paying attention. He didn’t want them to know how needy he was because they’d make fun of him. He wasn’t going to be a victim and he certainly wasn’t going to be bullied. Neither the teachers nor the students knew how poor he was. There were too many kids at the school for the staff to pay that much attention to him.
Bass peeked through the window that led into a kitchen where he saw a crockpot on the counter. From other homes he’d broken into he knew there was a big chunk of meat in that pot. A lot of families put on a meal while they went to church so it would be ready when they got home. Drool pooled in his mouth. He didn’t hear another sound as he stood up and really looked inside the home.
He made his decision. He wanted whatever was in that pot. It was a charming home that didn’t have elaborate furniture in it, so he told himself he’d only take some food and maybe a small blanket and then he’d get the heck out of there. From the crocheted table decorations, he thought it might be an older person living there, and Bass didn’t know why, but he wasn’t keen on stealing from old people. Maybe it was because none had ever been mean to him.
He decided he’d go to the door to see if it was unlocked like a lot of these country houses often were before he tried crawling in through the window. He made it to the front porch when he heard the sound of tires on gravel. Bass spun around, panicked as he fought back tears. He’d taken too long. He could’ve already had a full belly if he’d have simply come to the house as soon as he’d spotted it.
His stomach growled again and he quickly ran through his choices. He could run off into the woods behind the house and hope they didn’t come after him, or he could try to rush into the house, grab some food, find the back door, run away, hide in the woods, andnothave a hurting stomach.
His need for food outweighed his fear of the family who were on their way. When he reached for the doorknob, a siren chirped, and a voice spoke over a speaker.
“Stop right where you are, young man,” the voice called.
Bass’s blood ran cold when he realized it was a cop pulling up the drive. The car screeched to a halt and a door flung open. Bass turned and looked at the officer quickly approaching. He could try to outrun this man, but he hadn’t had a bite to eat since yesterday morning, and that had only been an apple and some cheese crackers he’d snagged from one of his teacher’s desks the day before. His energy was almost nonexistent.
“What are you doing, son?” the cop asked, now only a few feet away. Bass pushed back his fear and glared at the cop.
“I’mnotyour son,” he snapped.
The cop didn’t seem fazed at all by the bite in his voice. He smiled at Bass, a smile that told him he’d been well and truly busted. Before the cop could answer, the door flew open, and Bass whipped back around and stared at an old woman who had brown hair with a lot of white mixed in it. She was wearing an apron and had a confused expression on her face. Bass started shaking though he attempted to push it back as he gazed at her with defiance.
Her expression morphed as she looked past Bass to the officer. “Hello, Mitch, what brings you out this way?” the woman asked.
“Maggie wanted me to drop off some berries,” the officer replied. “I turned and saw this young man looking in your window. I waited to see what he was doing then saw him step up on your porch and decided it was time to ask some questions.”
Bass defiantly stared at the old woman before him. He knew he was going to be hauled off to kid jail. He didn’t want that to happen, but the one good thing about it was they were going tohaveto feed him. It would be illegal to let him starve. His shoulders sagged and he had to fight tears. He’d been lucky so far not to get caught. It was bound to happen one of these days.
Though Bass knew it was probably only a few seconds, the time seemed to drag for minutes, even hours. He saw something spark to life in the woman’s eyes, but he wasn’t sure what it was. He felt raw as if she could see right through him. It was the oddest feeling he’d ever had.
“I’ve hired this young man to do yard work for me,” the woman said, shocking Bass to his core. What had she just said?
