The Python at the Playground

In the mirror, Toby sat motionless, gazing past the glass. His face looked emptied out. Brutus rested his enormous head across the boy’s knees, while Toby’s fingers moved softly over the dog’s tangled ears.

“Toby,” I murmured.

He gave no sign he’d heard me.

“Do you know him, Toby?”

Nothing came back. His hand kept traveling over Brutus’s fur, slow and steady.

I shifted into gear and drove out of the park. Home wasn’t where I was headed. I was going to Greg’s place.

The day before, Greg had said he was taking a flight to Chicago for an urgent real estate meeting. He claimed he had to keep earning so he could handle Sarah’s growing hospital expenses. On Friday evening, he had left Toby with me, taken a suitcase, and called a car to the airport.

But when I turned onto Elmwood Drive, unease tightened beneath my ribs.

The street was still. Trim lawns and costly homes filled the block, the sort of neighborhood Greg liked to boast about. I stopped several houses short of his immaculate colonial.

His silver BMW sat in the driveway.

I shut off the engine. The cabin was warming fast, yet a chill ran through me.

So much for Chicago.

I glanced behind me. Toby had fallen asleep, worn out by the fear and exertion, his head against Brutus’s side. In the mirror, the mastiff watched me, ears raised.

I got out carefully and stepped onto the baking pavement. Oak trees cast patches of shade along the sidewalk, and I used them as I approached. The front windows were covered tight. Greg’s mail still waited outside.

Keeping close to the garage, I edged up the drive. A small cloudy pane gave me a view inside. Though the room was dark, I could distinguish a broad metal animal cage tucked into one corner.

It was huge. A dog Brutus’s size could have fit inside it.

Beside the cage stood a glass enclosure, wide and tall. A narrow stripe of sunlight caught its surface.

There was nothing inside. Above it, heat lamps glowed a faint, rusty red.

My breath stopped short.

He’d kept the python here. Then he’d taken it to the park.

A sudden bang sounded from inside the house. Glass shattered right after it.

I flattened myself against the brick, pulse pounding. Someone was in there.

I moved toward the porch without a sound, stepping around the board that always groaned beneath a foot. Then I leaned close to the thick front door.

Voices drifted through it, blurred but unmistakable.

“I don’t care how you manage it!” Greg snapped. Panic frayed his voice. “This was meant to go differently. You said it would be simple!”

A stranger replied in a measured tone. “The dog got in the way. I warned you that keeping it alive was a mistake.”

“I couldn’t just shoot it,” Greg whispered harshly. “They’d find the body. Just deal with this. Where’s the boy now?”

“He’s with David,” the other man said.

“David’s a fool,” Greg answered. “He thinks Sarah took a fall. But if Toby says anything—if he tells them what he saw downstairs—”

My blood seemed to drain away.

What he had seen in the basement.

Sarah hadn’t simply fallen. Toby’s silence wasn’t only the result of watching his mother get hurt. Something else had happened there, something Greg was desperate to keep hidden.

He wasn’t trying to keep Toby safe. He wanted to stop him from talking.

The python’s appearance at the playground couldn’t have been chance. A snake like that didn’t simply turn up in a tree in suburban Ohio. Someone had put it there, aiming it at Toby. Brutus had followed the boy to guard him.

Then what did Sarah’s hair mean? Why had it been on the dog?

I stepped away from the door, thoughts colliding. Sarah was in the hospital. If Greg meant to erase Toby as a witness, she could still be in danger too.

I ran for the truck, yanked the door open, and dropped into the driver’s seat.

“Toby, wake up.” My voice trembled as I jammed the key into the ignition. “We need to leave. Now.”

Toby stirred and opened his eyes, bewilderment clouding his face. Brutus rumbled low in his throat, staring toward Greg’s house.

I pushed the truck into gear and pulled hard away from the curb. My phone vibrated in my pocket. I grabbed it.

Greg had sent a message.

Hey Dave, I just landed in Chicago. How’s Toby? Give him a hug for me.

I stared at the words, gripping the wheel until my fingers hurt. He was building a story to prove where he’d been, while somewhere in that house he’d been plotting his next move.

I threw the phone onto the passenger seat and pressed the accelerator, heading for Oakridge General Hospital.

The tape on Brutus’s collar told me someone had entered Sarah’s room. Someone had cut off a piece of her hair. If Greg was willing to come after Toby, then I feared what he might do to my sister next.

I raced toward the hospital, afraid Greg was already making his next move against Sarah.