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Considering how long their text thread had gotten in just a couple days, that was, in Kelsey’s mind, a cause for concern.
So, then, no. She wouldn’t call. She’d go over. If he didn’t want her there, he could tell her to his face. If there was some reason he’d been unable to check his phone, then he needed help.
Uncle Gun said he’d been acting weird, that a job they’d been on today had been weird. If it was all weird enough for Gunner Wesson to not only notice but try to do something about it, then it was pretty darn weird.
She went into the living room and crouched beside her dog’s fluffy donut bed. He sat up and licked her hand. “Sorry, Mr. D. You’re on your own for a while tonight. Let’s go play for a few minutes before I go, okay. Outside?”
He jumped up and did his little spinny dance of joy.
~oOo~
The front of Dex’s house was dark, but the didn’t mean he wasn’t home. His house was laid out so that the kitchen and a small bedroom faced the street, and the living room and master bedroom faced the back yard. Maybe he was simply in his living room.
As Kelsey got out of her Prius, she reckoned with the fact that she was nervous. A little bit scared, really, and it was more than that vague intimidation she’d felt growing up around Dex’s perpetual scowl. Now, she thought of his reluctance to be with her, his insistence that he was dangerous for her, and wondered if the weirdness that had prompted Gunner to call her was related to the lost time Dex had described.
What was she about to walk into?
She was about to walk into the house of the man she was in a relationship with. Her new boyfriend. Someone she could grow to love, maybe was already growing to love.
That was the only answer she had, so she went to the door and knocked.
From the other side of the door she heard the scratch and jangle of Dex’s pack of outlaw doggos. None of them barked, probably because their alpha was Charlie, a former military dog who was trained about as thoroughly as a dog could be.
She heard the dogs, but no one came to open the door. When she knocked again, this time calling out “Dex?” the sound of the dogs increased, and she heard a rough whine. Charlie or Ripper, probably.
Pulling her phone from her pocket, she texted again:Hey. I’m at your front door. Are you home?
She watched the screen for a minute or so, but the message showed only delivered, not read.
“Hey guys,” she said to the edge of the door as she slipped her phone back into her pocket. “Where’s your dad?”
The door was locked. Kelsey lifted the rubber mat, but there was no key under it. She looked around the porch and the row of boxwoods beside it, looking for a rock it might be under, or one of those fake rock things, but nothing. Her parents had one of those, but they kept it—right. Duh. They didn’t keep it near the front door, because that was too obvious.
After a quick scan in the dark for a likely place Dex might keep a spare key, she went around to the far side of the house. Along the side of his garage was a narrow row of river rocks, the rounded, mixed-color kind they sold at home stores in big sacks. Taking a guess, she turned a few over near the back fence—and found a key.
Back at the front door, she wiped the key clean and slid it into the deadbolt. It turned smoothly, and Kelsey opened the door.
Not until then did she consider that the dogs, who’d been calm while she was on the other side of a closed door, might consider her an intruder when she opened said door.
She resisted the flinch of her second thought—a good way to signal to the dogs that she was an intruder was to show fear or surprise—and instead, before she let go of the door, said, “Hey guys! Good pups. How are you?”
They recognized her. Charlie gave her a careful sniff, and then his tail wagged and he bumped his snout into her leg. That was all it took. She stepped all the way into the house and closed the door, and the dogs swarmed her happily.
After about thirty seconds, though, Charlie broke from the knot, trotted halfway down the central hall, turned to her, and chuffed a low bark. His ears were erect and his tail down.
“Something wrong, Charlie?” she asked, real worry beginning to bloom in her chest.
Charlie chuffed softly again. Kelsey stepped through the rest of the pack, and as soon as she did, Charlie trotted to the end of the hallway and turned back to her. He wanted her to follow.
Therewassomething wrong.
She followed the dog to the back of the house. No Dex in the living room. But Charlie was at the sliding glass door, his nose at the handle. He wanted her to go outside? Was that it? The dogs needed to pee?
Was Dex not here at all?
She unlocked the door and slid it open. All five dogs barreled outside, following Charlie.
But he stopped and turned to chuff at her again while the others ran toward the little shed in the back corner. It was too dark to see more than the idea that the shed was there. Kelsey went out and followed Charlie.
