“Did you check the barn at the Radcliff farm?” Beau asked.
Beau was dressed in his Tastee Delight shirt and cap, sitting at the kitchen table, working on a bowl of cereal before heading out. In true Beau fashion, he wasn’t worried about Cleo. Not that he didn’t care. If something bad happened, he would just pretend that she’d left town.
It had to be nice, Daniel thought. For most people who suffered a great loss or witnessed an unnecessary act of violence, there was no looking back, no returning to the way it had been before. Because now you had proof that bad things happened for no reason. And life didn’t always make sense.
Beau hadn’t been tainted by the horrors of life. He didn’t know that most things were out of his control. Control wasn’t anything he thought about. He could sit there eating his cereal. When he took a bite and it slid to his stomach, the food didn’t churn until it turned into a heavy stone. At night, he slept a deep sleep, because in his own mind his mother was at a nursing home. In his own mind she would be coming back any day now, and Cleo had simply gotten tired of Egypt.
Daniel had gone without sleep for too long. He couldn’t stay focused. “The Radcliff place?” he asked. “There’s no barn on the Radcliff place. It burned down along with the house.”
“There’s a barn. A different barn. I saw it when I was riding with Percy, delivering mail. He turned wrong, and we ended up at a barn. There was a lot of weeds in the road. Percy got some of them stuck under the car.”
“A barn?” Daniel asked, leaning both hands on the table, staring at his brother. “Are you sure?”
Beau took another bite of cereal, swallowed, then continued. “A big, broke barn with one of those wind things on top.”
“A weathervane?”
“Yeah. Weathervane.”
Beau had an eye for detail. If he said there was a weathervane, there was a weathervane.
“With a pig. It had a pig on it.”
Daniel grabbed his truck keys off the table and headed for the door. “Thanks, Beau.”
Hands on her. Cold hands. Rolling her to her back. Something tight on her biceps. Tight, like a big rubber band. Somebody slapping the inside of her arm, rubbing, slapping, breathing hard. Cleo felt a sharp/dull poke. The rubber band fell away. The ground fell away.
Daniel pulled down the lane that led to the Radcliff place, his heart rate increasing.
There was the spot where the house used to be, the only thing left a cement foundation and a brick chimney. To the left, across the lane, was a small hill of soil, littered with the ugly kind of weeds that went along with disturbed earth. A huge milking barn had once stood there. As far as Daniel knew, the Radcliffs still owned the place, but they’d quit farming and had moved to the city.
There was a lane of sorts, leading past the place where the barn used to be. The weeds were so tall and overgrown that his two-wheel-drive truck wouldn’t clear them. He shut off the engine and got out, slamming the door behind him.
Birds called from nearby trees, and the sun beat down on his head. He walked along the path, noting that someone had been there within the last few days-weed stalks were broken, leaves crushed.
That didn’t mean anything. It was the perfect place for a party. He spent half the summer breaking up keggers.
The road turned to loose black dirt that was almost sand. The weeds were fewer now, the earth unable to hold enough moisture to nurture them.
Directly ahead was a barn. Red, like most barns in the area. Loco weed, mare’s tail, and goldenrod grew around it. On the cupola was the weathervane, just as Beau-
Daniel lifted the metal latch and pushed, the bottom of the door dragging across a flat stone.
Inside, the support beams were hand-hewn, the pegs hand-carved. Old barns were a work of art, a piece of Americana that was vastly underappreciated, with more doors and hidden compartments than a magician’s box. He could tell the barn had been used for milking at one time.
Dark, slanted beams of light crept between rough boards, falling through a jagged rip in the roof. To the left were stalls that had once held cattle and horses, in the center, angled beams supported a second floor where hay bales had once tumbled off a conveyer belt to be stacked for winter. To the right was a tack room, just as dark and musty as the rest of the place.
The barn had been built on a hillside, giving it three levels, with the lower level partially underground. Beneath his feet, the wooden floor echoed hollowly, hinting of empty space below. He walked carefully, knowing how unstable the structure could be. The toe of his boot caught on something and he backtracked.
He kicked away straw to reveal a hatch. He slid a board aside, looped his fingers through a metal ring, and pulled, surprised to find that it opened easily.
Looking into the pit, he was barely able to make out a floor strewn with straw. Past the perimeter of light was nothing but a black void. He yelled into the darkness, the echo of his own voice the only answer. Then he heard a sound, a small, tiny sound. A kitten, he thought.
“Cleo?”
There was the cry again, louder this time.
Daniel grabbed a nearby ladder and lowered one end into the hole. He scrambled down, his feet sinking into the straw at the bottom. He repeated her name, thinking he’d lost his damn mind, searching the bottom of a barn for a woman who was a thousand miles away.
And then he heard a low moan that was definitely human.
In the darkness, he made out a shape on the ground, and his mind recognized lighter patterns as a person’s bare arms, a person’s bare legs.
He moved close enough to make out the curve of a pale face, the line broken by wildly curling hair. He fell to his knees in the straw. “My God.” His voice didn’t sound like his own. “Cleo.”
He touched her arm. Under his palm, her skin felt cold, bloodless.
“Sinclair?”
The question came without movement, with hardly a breath taken to carry the whispered name to his ears.
She searched, finding his hand, pulling it to her mouth, pressing it to the side of her face and holding it there. “Stay with me,” she whispered, clinging to him. “Stay with me in this bad place.”
Adrian Tyler’s words came back to him.
Daniel swallowed. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
She pressed her lips to his knuckles, his fingertips, his palm. “Shh,” she said, her breath against his wrist. “It’ll be okay.”
“Cleo-” He slipped his hand from her grasp, then grabbed her by both arms, pulling her to a sitting position, where she slumped forward like a rag doll, chin to chest, arms hanging limply at her sides. He could feel the bones beneath the muscles of her arms. He could feel every tendon, every sinew.
He touched a finger to her chin, tipping her face toward his. He could make out the glow of her skin. “Cleo, I’m going to get you out of here.”
She nodded, her head moving sluggishly.
He stood. Then, with his feet braced, he pulled her to a standing position.
She was boneless; he couldn’t keep a grip on any part of her. He finally managed to get her upright, but as soon as he let go of her arm, she began to sink. “Stand up,” he coaxed.
For a fraction of a second he felt her stiffen. Just as quickly, she dissolved again. Before he lost more ground, Daniel bent his knees, hitched his shoulder under her diaphragm, then straightened, locking his legs once he was upright.
With Cleo draped over his shoulder, he grabbed the ladder with one hand, his other hand gripping Cleo’s legs. He climbed one rung at a time, the muscles in his arms and legs straining. When he was two-thirds of the way through the door with his bundle, he shifted her weight, resting her bottom on the wooden floor.
