“So, let me guess, you send a scout out every night to rob people?” Nathan turned his glare on the man in cuffs.
“No, son. We don’t do that. We take what’s given to us.”
“He didn’t ask. He held us at gunpoint,” Nathan said, gesturing to the man on the ground.
“Michael, what have you done?”
“I didn’t hurt them, Pastor. Neither of them. I just needed some money for Mary since the bills covered in red wouldn’t work.”
“His daughter,” the pastor clarified and gestured to the kid that had been coughing.
“I’ve made a list of everything I took. I planned to pay everyone back,” Michael, the handcuffed man, whispered in the dark.
Nathan’s scowl grew in intensity, and I rested my palm on his arm. “We understand.”
“No, we don’t,” Nathan growled.
“You’re all homeless, right?”
“That’s not an excuse for breaking the law, Cassie,” Nathan said as he glanced around the room.
“Yes, ma’am. The bank called our mortgages, and we couldn’t pay. It included the one on my home, or these people would be living there,” the pastor announced.
My heart shattered into a million little pieces as I glanced around the room. These people had dirt covering the faces, their clothes were old and in need of repair. Jugs of water sat in the corner. Each person had a piece of fruit or vegetable they’d been coveting.
“How long have you been like this?”
“Three months,” the man sitting in handcuffs answered.
Nathan finally lowered his gun. “Our town has resources. Why didn’t you go to the city?”
The pastor dropped his head. “The resources were used up. These good people aren’t the first that lost everything to the bank.”
“I don’t understand,” Nathan said, and his brows dipped. “Uncle Dan would have helped you.”
The man wearing handcuffs tsked. “That no good piece of—”
“Michael, there are children present,” the woman clipped from across the room, shuffling the sick girl in her arms.
I touched Nathan’s arm and gestured to the cabinet. “You need to go take a look at what Michael has hidden inside.”
He walked off while I jogged up the stairs and carried the basket of food to the others. I laid it at the pastor’s feet before moving next to the woman with the sick child.
“What’s her name?”
“Mary Ellen,” the woman answered with a smile.
“What did the doctor say?”
Mary Ellen held up two prescriptions in her hand. “She has a respiratory infection, and he gave us these.”
I took them and looked at the scripts. “Why didn’t you get those filled?”
“No money,” Michael answered from across the room. “We could barely afford the doctor bill with the money I took from you.”
“You told me you found it, Michael. What good is it going to do us if you’re in jail?” the woman asked.
“Janet, I’d do anything for Mary.”
