kept working, reaching down and grabbing bale after bale. Finally I’d managed to create a corridor along the back wall. I grabbed the flashlight and jumped down. I bounced the flashlight over the wall. And there it was. The pig door. About three feet by three feet, with a wooden bolt on one side. I nearly sobbed in gratitude. I knelt down on the cold floor of the barn and, after undoing the bolt, slid the door over.
A blast of cold air hit me. I dove through the opening and scrambled up to my feet. I was shaking—in both fear and relief. I’d made it out, maybe with only seconds to spare before the smoke overwhelmed me. In the western sky, there were still smudges of light, enough to see that there was no one around. I raced to the front of the barn.
The lower north side was now engulfed in flames. Smoke was circling upward, and big flames flicked along the old, dry wood, making loud crackling sounds. Instinctively I glanced up to the house on the hill. There were lights on inside, practically in every room, and I thought I could make out the shape of someone standing just outside the front door. I jumped in the car and drove it down the road twenty yards or so.
I was shaking hard by then, and I wasn’t sure exactly what to do. Should I go up to the house and make sure they’d called 911? But then, from far off, I heard the wail of a siren. I decided to sit in my car on the road and wait for help to arrive.
Two minutes later, a fire truck came roaring up the country road. It pulled up in front of the barn, and five or six guys in big boots, helmets, and slickers sprang from inside it. By now the flames were shooting up the whole side of the barn. It took the firefighters a minute or two to unload the hose, and then they were shooting a hard stream of water at the barn. Even from inside my car I could hear the flames begin to hiss into submission. About ten minutes later, the flames were gone, and there were just curls of dark smoke ascending toward the night sky.
I knew that the firefighters had more work to do, but I didn’t want to wait any longer. I opened the car door and propelled myself toward the fire truck.
Before I’d made it just a few feet, the fireman nearest me caught my movement out of the corner of his eye and spun around. He put a hand up, motioning for me to stop. He was about thirty, hefty, with a big strong jaw.
“You’re going to need to step back, ma’am,” he said. “We can’t have spectators getting this close.”
“But I’m not really a spectator,” I said.
“Do you own the barn?”
“No, but I was in the barn when someone set the fire. They locked me in. They were trying to kill me.”
His jaw fell in surprise. He turned around and called for one of the other guys to come over—an older man, who’d taken his helmet off and was wiping sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. I figured he might be the dude in charge.
I went through my story quickly with them, trying not to sound like a lunatic because I knew how far-fetched the whole damn thing sounded. They exchanged a couple of looks as I spoke, especially when I touched on the Devon Barr connection, but I couldn’t really read them. I got the feeling the young guy thought something funny was up, especially when I described escaping by the pig door, but the older man, the chief, seemed to buy what I was saying. Behind us the rest of the crew kept dealing with the fire. A few of them had gone in the barn and were looking around with big torches.
When I’d finished my story, the chief stepped back to the fire engine, grabbed a clipboard from inside, and returned.
“I want you to write down your name, address, and phone number, okay?” he said. “The arson investigator is going to want to talk to you. And then I need you to stop by the state trooper’s office and report this.”
I nodded in agreement.
“Are you sure you don’t need medical treatment?” he asked. “How much smoke did you inhale?”
“Very little,” I said. “I got out before it filled the barn.”
I said good-bye and trudged back to my car. I used the GPS to find the state trooper office, which turned out to be about fifteen minutes away. At least it was in the same direction as the highway toward New York, because I was completely frayed around the edges by now. When I stepped inside the squat cinder-block headquarters, there were a couple of troopers huddled by the front desk, and they glanced at me almost expectantly. I realized after a second that the fire chief had called ahead.
A detective named Joe Olden took my statement. His face looked like it’d last cracked a smile in 1997. He seemed pretty curious initially, but the more details I offered—the weekend at Scott’s, the Lasix in the water, the gypsy cab experience—the more skeptical he appeared. It was like I’d started off reporting a minor traffic accident, but was now describing how I’d discovered alien spacecraft when I stepped out of the car to inspect the damage.
Finally, I gave him Collinson’s info and begged him to call the man. Just as I was wrapping up, the fire marshal arrived and asked me a series of questions as well.
Later, as I nearly staggered out to the parking lot, I called Collinson myself, reaching his voice mail. I told him I had important news and desperately needed to speak to him.
It was an utter relief to be back in my car and headed for Manhattan, but even with the heater cranked up and Maria Callas arias playing, I couldn’t keep my body from trembling. It was partly from the exertion of hurling all those bales of hay, but also from the sheer terror I still felt. I knew that if there hadn’t been a pig door in the barn, I probably would have died tonight.
I hadn’t traveled far on the highway when my BlackBerry rang. I had service again. I realized that I had never deleted my SOS e-mails to Landon, Jessie, and Beau, and they’d all gone through. When I answered my phone, a frantic Beau was on the other end.
“Are you okay?” he demanded anxiously. “Are you still in the barn?”
“No, I’m out and I’m fine. But I was nearly killed.” I felt myself tearing, and I shook the drops away. I blurted out what had happened since I’d sent the message.
“God, Bailey, I can’t believe this,” he said, his voice laced with worry. “Is there any chance this person could be following you?”
“No, I bet they beat it out of Pine Grove once the fire started. . . .”
“Do you want me to come meet you someplace?”
“I’m okay. But—it would be great if you could be there when I get home. I’m still pretty shaken up.” Without warning, a sob caught in my throat. “It was just so scary when the smoke filled the barn.”
“Why don’t you call me when you’re about twenty minutes away. I’ll just hop in a cab.”
“You’ve got to do me one other favor. Will you get in touch with both Jessie and Landon and tell them I’m fine? I want to concentrate on the road.”
As soon as I signed off, I checked the rearview mirror instinctively. I was positive I wasn’t being tailed. There’d been stretches on the trip so far when no one had been behind me. But that didn’t mean I was safe. Once the fire starter learned that his efforts had been thwarted, some other deadly plan would surely be hatched.
I’d have to be as careful as I possibly could. My trouble in Pine Grove had sprung in part from not watching my back well enough. I’d thought I was being such a smarty-pants by arriving at the barn early, but my assailant had come even earlier, and must have been parked out in back the whole time. And lucky for them, my BlackBerry hadn’t worked.
Suddenly my stomach flipped over.
I made better time than I’d planned, driving eighty miles an hour in my desperation to put as much distance as possible between Pine Grove and my sorry ass. I dropped off the rental, and once I found a cab, I called Beau, telling him I was on my way to my apartment. I felt almost weak from hunger and asked him to pick up food, anything. Plus, having a few more minutes to myself would give me a chance to pop by Landon’s and reassure him.
It turned out to be a good plan because Landon was nearly bug-eyed with worry when he opened his door.
“I can’t tell you what a fright your e-mail gave me,” he said after we’d hugged. “I was about to call not only
