Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70516 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70516 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
“That’s it,” she said.
I nodded and got to work, heading to the electrical panel in the back corner of the basement before shutting off the power to everything besides the lights.
You can learn a lot from what an electrical panel looks like. Such as, when you have more breakers than are needed to run a room with only four can lights and eight electrical sockets. If I wasn’t convinced that there was more to the downstairs, seeing that there were four times the number of breakers needed for the space would’ve made me suspicious.
I got to work installing the new camera outlet—something that looked so eerily similar to a real one that it was concerning. When I was done, I “checked” the other outlets, moving a couch out of the way of one to ensure that it was working properly.
While I was down there, I plugged the cell phone into a charger and left it plugged in under the couch. Then moved on to the rest of the room.
I was almost done when my phone rang. “Grant.”
“It’s good,” he said. “And I now have access to their network. I don’t see anything else on the network besides a computer that they know about upstairs. Did you find anything else?”
“No,” I grumbled.
“I think that whatever they have going on is all closed circuit, like I suspected.” He cursed. “Hopefully you can get into that room today.”
But, as if the world had heard Apollo’s words and jinxed us, there was a pounding on the stairs.
“What’s going on here?” a man barked.
I cursed under my breath.
“Oh, Dad,” Eddy said, sounding surprised. “What are you doing home so early?”
“We decided to skip paying for a hotel room for a second night thanks to some teens using the one next to us as a party suite.” He looked suspiciously at me, then Eddy. “What’s going on here?”
His words this time were a whole lot less pissed off. He’d somehow flipped a switch, and now the nice pastor had come out to play.
“I broke off the vacuum plug in the socket.” Eddy pointed at the vacuum, an old, ancient thing. “I think it might’ve given up the ghost. Then it started to smoke, and I freaked out. Cara Humphreys recommended Mr. Grant here. And he came as soon as he could.”
“Got the socket changed over,” I said as I tucked my power tester into my belt. “Everything else in the rest of the sockets look really good. No smoke was visible when I arrived, but I imagine that’s because the vacuum wasn’t drawing any power. You don’t want to be plugging something that ancient in again. The rules and regulations have changed a lot over the years, and they have to pass a whole battery of safety tests before they can be sold. The same can’t be said for vacuums made in the nineties.”
“What’s going on?” a hesitant sounding female voice said from the top of the stairs.
“Your vacuum cleaner kicked the bucket, dear,” Barton Wheeler called out to his wife. “I think it’s time to finally admit you need a new one.”
I looked toward the woman who blushed on command. “Oh.”
“I got the prong stuck in the outlet,” Eddy pointed out as she walked toward them with the old outlet in her hand. “Look.”
“Whoops.” Minnie Wheeler covered her mouth with her hand.
“Smoking, you say?”
I gathered the rest of my things and headed toward the group.
Eddy looked clearly uncomfortable, but not in an obvious way. In an awkward, I don’t always get along with my parents kind of way.
“Why were you here to clean up?” Minnie asked when Eddy didn’t speak up fast enough.
“I…”
But before she could say anything more, there was yet again a commotion at the top of the stairs.
This time, Eddy’s twin walked down the stairs and said, “Surprise!”
Eddy’s shoulders drooped.
“Antoinette!” both parents cried.
A solid distraction.
Good.
I caught Eddy’s hand and tugged on it lightly.
She looked over at me with wide eyes.
“Not to interrupt,” I said. “But I have to get going. The cost of the after-hours house call and the new outlet is one fifty.”
“Oh, let me just get—” Eddy started, but her father interrupted yet again.
“I’ll get it. Follow me.”
I did, giving one last look toward Eddy before heading up the stairs behind the sicko.
We went into his office, and he wrote out a check to me before holding out his hands.
The last thing I wanted to do was shake that sick fuck’s hand, but I did it anyway.
“Thanks for coming out on such short notice,” he said. “I would hate for my house to have burned down.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Can’t have the pastor’s house burnin’ down.”
“Do you go to church, son?”
I nodded. “Sure do.”
“Where at?” he asked.
I named the first one that I could think of, which happened to be the sign for the Cowboy Church that was just down the road from my place.