Page 1 of Promise Keeper

1

The five pound ball of white fur nestled beside me under the quilt let out a growl that would've been intimidating if not for his size.

"Shh," I said, stroking Liam's head. "It's just Spook."

The neighborhood wandering black cat liked to break into my attic whenever the mood struck him. The dogs always heard him before I did.

The dogs, our pack of five, made quite a full house of barking and shedding. Right now, all of them except little Liam the Maltese were staying with my sister and her certified K9 trainer boyfriend being transformed into well behaved beasties instead of wild ones.

Liam wasn't a fan of the big dogs being gone and had taken to sticking to me like glue to make sure I didn't disappear as well.

A bump up above the ceiling made Liam let out a shrill yip. "It's okay," I whispered, scratching his back. I glanced over at Ben, my husband, to see if he'd heard Liam, but a rumbling snore assured me he was still sound asleep.

"Spook's being loud tonight," I whispered to Liam. Spook was always silent as a ghost unless he wanted to be heard. Sometimes, like tonight, he liked to rile the dogs. He must've been out looking to stir up trouble.

It was a little after two in the morning and I was reading on my e-reader. I'd woken up with heartburn about an hour earlier. Heartburn was new to me and came when I hit forty. I used to brag about my lead-lined stomach that allowed me to eat anything I wanted. Banana peppers on spicy pizza was now a thing of the past.

Another bang and skittering feet in the attic had me and Liam on alert. He tunneled out from under the quilt and circled around my legs, growling and baring his teeth toward the light fixture.

"You're very intimidating," I assured him.

Listening to the ruckus, I knew I wasn't dealing with Spook. There were critters in my attic of an unknown variety.

I eased out of bed doing my best not to disturb Ben and followed the sound of clodhoppers making their way across my ceiling into the hall. They weren't even trying to hide their presence and sounded like a parade of elephants in combat boots.

Liam skittered along after me, quaking but putting on a fierce, brave face.

The hallway was pitch black, but I knew my way to the attic door in the dark. Taking small steps on tip-toe, I crossed diagonally toward the left. The racket was even louder out here.

As I approached the door, there was a crash and a squabble broke out, a few of them hissing and chittering. I backed up quickly and tripped over a big box. Tumbling over backward, I flailed my arms and hit the wall, but couldn't stop my fall. I landed on another box, rear end first, flattening it to oblivion and sending poor Liam scampering back into the bedroom.

The hall light blazed to life and my step-daughter, Mia, shouted, "Freeze! My dad's a cop!" She held one of her cheerleading trophies over her head ready to bludgeon me to death.

Ben burst out of the bedroom ready to take down an intruder and looked back and forth between the two of us, wide-eyed with confusion. "What on earth are you two doing out here?"

"That's what I want to know!" Mia said, her hand over her heart, trying to catch her breath.

"I'm sorry I scared you," I said. "We have--"

That's when the attic bandits decided to make a run for it, trekking across to the back of the house where there's a vent above an old, rickety window.

I pointed up to the attic. "That's what I'm doing out here."

Ben's expression shifted from me and Mia to the attic door. "Please tell me you adopted another animal and you're hiding it up there."

"Sorry, no," I said, struggling to free myself from the box and get back on my feet. "Little help?"

He grasped my hands and tugged me up out of the box. "Didn't Monica say she'd have all of this out of here by now?" he asked, looking around at the packed boxes my sister had left in the hallway outside her old bedroom door.

"I'm helping her with these last boxes in the morning," I said, trying to pry up the end of the one I'd flattened. "I hope there wasn't anything fragile in this one."

"Listen," Mia said, angling her head toward the ceiling. "I think they left."

Ben rubbed his eyes and yawned. "Good, let's go back to bed and deal with this in the morning." He turned and gave Mia a hug before returning to our bedroom.

"Are you okay?" I asked her. "Still scared?"

She shrugged. "I just hope they don't come back."

---