“The alarm works,” Knox answered.
“I’d say it does.” Jack chuckled.
“I’m going to do a walk-around,” Knox said. “I’ll be right back. Wait right here?”
She shoved the kitten back into the trailer and closed the door. “I’m going with you.”
Jack nodded and said, “I’ll grab a couple of flashlights in the rec hall and go with y’all.”
“We’ll all help,” Eddie said. “We are all here and accounted for, so it wasn’t one of our team that tried to sneak in. But if those lights and noise didn’t scare the trespassers away, they could still be hiding on the property.”
“Are you sure that none of you set that thing off?” Lottie raised her voice.
All the men looked from one to the other as if they were taking roll call, but not a single guy said a word for several seconds. None of them looked sheepish or owned up to driving into the site after the alarm was set.
“If any of you are guilty, then this is your first warning,” she said. “Just speak up so we don’t have to spend time checking out the whole site.”
“It wasn’t one of us,” Vincent finally answered. “We can make short order of the search if we all get our flashlights from our trailers and get with it, rather than standing around here.”
“When we catch the sorry suckers that woke me up, Iwant first dibs on the bunch of them!” Thomas growled and held up his flashlight. “I came prepared.”
“They are all probably running like scared little bunnies. No telling where we will find them, so check every nook and cranny.” Jack raised his voice and headed toward the rec hall.
“Give me time to put on my boots,” Micah called out. “I’ll check out between the trailers and under them.”
“I’ll help you do that,” Eddie said.
“If you find anyone, Thomas has to stand in line behind me to get at them,” Lottie growled and jogged around the trailer to catch up with Knox. “There’s lots of places for them to play hide-and-seek, but the bunch of us out here shining lights might scare them into running.”
Jack came out of the rec hall and handed a flashlight to whoever needed one. “If whoever set off the alarm was in a vehicle, I imagine they put it in reverse and hightailed it away from here. But if they were on foot, they could still be on the property. Y’all go check out the first cabin. Mandy will have my hide if they use spray paint on the walls and she has to wait to move in.”
Knox and Lottie both nodded and started that way.
“I’ll check around the whole cabin,” Lottie said.
“I’ll go on in and make sure everything is safe inside. Now that it’s in the dry, and it’s ready for the cabinets, there’s lots of nooks and crannies for hiding.”
Lottie stopped at the porch and sucked in a lungful of air, then let it out in a whoosh.
“Did you see something?” Knox asked.
“No, but that alarm going off when it did…” She paused. “Could that be a sign that we are moving too fast? Do we need to slow things down?”
“What do you think?” Knox opened the door and took a step inside.
“Hey, don’t shoot me,” Jack yelled. “I checked all around this place, and no one is here. Y’all can go on to the next one. I had to see for myself that everything is good because Mandy is going to have a million questions. I came in by the back door. The locks will be installed on Monday when the next team gets here. That won’t keep vandals from destroying the outside or breaking down the door.”
“But hopefully they won’t ever get this far when the lights and sirens go off,” Lottie giggled nervously.
“Amen,” Jack said. “Looks like there’s enough lights out here to make that crazy rooster think it’s daylight. With this much help, we’ll have this done in no time.”
Half an hour later, everyone gathered up in the rec room. Eddie reported that they had found a opossum hiding under one of the trailers and a raccoon under another. “We didn’t see any vandals, not even running away toward the lake.”
“Didn’t find a single spray-paint can or beer can where we searched,” Vincent added.
Jack scratched his head and yawned. “A wild animal, unless it was a deer, couldn’t have set off the alarm. But if those boys who caused all this damage”—he waved his arm around the room—“sent their little friends back, then I hope they spread the word that we are not putting up with their crap.”
“That’s right, but I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t find a couple of kids shaking in their boots. I would have loved to give them a big chunk of my mind for waking me up,” Thomas declared. “I’m going back to bed. See y’all tomorrow morning, or maybe I should say later this morning.”
