The ripping sound of the tape unfurling was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard.
I kept rolling the unstuck tape into a larger and larger sticky ball, kept using the leverage of my leg to pull off more tape, rolling, pulling, rolling, pulling. . . . Free!
Of their own volition, my hands moved apart as far as they could go, as if they wanted nothing to do with each other. A hiccuping sob bubbled up out of me. Silly old hands. You’d have thought they’d have gotten used to each other, tied together like that for so long.
How long, in fact, had it been? I had no idea.
The urgency came back with a vengeance. I untied the one end of the shoelace and relaced it through the shoe. I yanked at the big ball of tape, but couldn’t get the other end free of the sticky mess. Cursing, I was forced to leave the tape attached to the lace, and tied a bad and very lumpy knot.
I scrambled to my feet and ran across the small room. Hand there, foot there, and I was balancing on the bottom of the window frame. Hand up, foot up, hand up higher into a cobwebby darkness, foot up on the window frame’s top, other foot beside it.
Gingerly, I stood up straight, doing my best not to look down. I didn’t think I was afraid of heights, but I’d never been standing on a board not even an inch wide with my head at least ten feet off the ground before, either.
I poked my head over the top of the wall. Please, let there be a way out. Please . . .
The darkness on the other side was deep. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t an unlocked door through which I could escape. All I had to do was figure out a way to get over the wall and drop down on the other side without getting stuck in the ceiling or breaking a leg on the way down.
I stood there, my legs starting to quiver, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark. Was that a shelf down there? Maybe it would hold me. Maybe . . .
The sound of gravel crunching changed everything.
Without thought, I jumped high and shoved myself into the small space at the top of the wall. I didn’t fit, didn’t fit, had to fit, had to get through and out and away before he got here, had to go out, and then my head and shoulders were through and—
Voices. Footsteps. Car doors opening and closing.
I grabbed the top of the wall, pulled, couldn’t get my big fat butt through the gap, wiggled, squirmed, pulled the rest of me over to the other side, slithered down the wall, hung on as my feet scrabbled for the shelf.
Where was it? I had to find it couldn’t risk landing on it had to run had to get away had to—
A hand clamped around my ankle.
“NO!” I yelled, screamed, shrieked. I kicked, I kicked again, I was not going without a fight, he’d have to kill me in order to kill me he’d have to—
“Ms. Hamilton,” said a male voice, “this is Detective Inwood. You can come down. Don’t worry. You’re safe now. It’s okay.”
But I was frozen in place. I couldn’t move, couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t even nod my head. Strong hands encircled me, helped me down, away out of that barn, and into the sunlight of early evening.
Evening. I’d been in that barn a full day.
“You’re shivering,” Detective Devereaux said. “Let me get you a blanket.” Two police cars were in the driveway, one unmarked vehicle and one patrol car with someone, I couldn’t make out who, sitting in the backseat. Devereaux sat me in the unmarked and brought me a fuzzy blanket. I saw real concern in his eyes.
I tried to thank him, but it came out as a froggy croak.
“What was that?” the detective asked. “Your voice is pretty hoarse. Bet you’re dry as a bone after spending, what, almost twenty-four hours in that barn. I’m so sorry we didn’t get to you sooner.” He looked over his shoulder. “Deputy, get the lady some water, will you?”
A uniformed officer, whom I recognized as Deputy Wolverson, ran over with a water bottle. He cracked the top off the bottle, and held it out to me.
Water. I stared at it. At him. My mouth moved, but nothing came out.
“Go on,” Detective Devereaux said. “It’s all yours. There’s more, if you want.”
I did my best to smile at the deputy, then took the bottle and drank greedily, slugging it all down, not wasting a single precious drop. Nothing had ever tasted so good. The detectives let me drink, then asked if I needed an ambulance. I shook my head. All I needed was water and, after a gallon or so of that, a hot shower and whatever dinner Kristen wanted to cook for me.
“You sure?” Devereaux asked. “We can have one here in no time.”
I shook my head again and drank water until I couldn’t drink any more. When I lowered the bottle, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and envisioned dinner. Prime rib or whitefish, that was the question.
“Okay, then,” Devereaux said. “What was that you were saying before?”
“. . . Thanks. Just . . . thanks.”
He studied me. “You know, we were listening to you all along.”
Either my time in the barn had done something to my hearing or I hadn’t gotten the memo about you-know-where freezing over. I looked at him. He didn’t appear to be playing a practical joke on me. “It didn’t seem like it,” I said.
“Yeah, I know.”
I finished off the water bottle and he handed me a full one. When I’d poured it down my throat, I said, “If that was an apology, it wasn’t a very good one.”
“How about if I say I’m sorry you were locked in a barn all night?”
I shook my head.
He looked around. “Hey, Woody! She wants me to apologize for you being such a jerk.”
Detective Inwood came over. “Ms. Hamilton, I’m deeply sorry.”
I eyed him. “For what?”
Inwood sighed. “Ms. Hamilton, we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. Please accept my apologies for not seeming to take you seriously. But we were, and it was your tip about the quad that got us looking in the right place.”
“Okay,” I said. “Apology accepted. And I’m sorry, too. I should have had more patience and I really shouldn’t have lost my temper yesterday.”
The detectives nodded, and, for the first time, we were friends. But . . . “How did you know I was out here?”
They exchanged a glance I couldn’t interpret at all. “You can thank your cat,” Inwood said. “He was howling and making such a racket this morning that your neighbor, Louisa Axford, came to see what the problem was. When you weren’t there, she used the key she said you gave her”—he looked at me with his eyebrows raised and I nodded—“to get in. She was worried you might have been sick and went in to check. That’s when she saw the note you’d written. The one that said you’d expected to be back by dark yesterday. Good idea, leaving that.”
Bless you, Mom, I thought. You were right all along and I will forever do whatever you say without question.
“The note also said where you were and what you were doing,” Devereaux said. “We’ve been searching for you for some time. Nice to find you all in one piece.”
I agreed wholeheartedly, and I told him how much I appreciated their efforts, but . . . “Who’s in the backseat?” I gestured to the other vehicle.
“Oh, yeah.” Detective Devereaux smiled. “That is a gentleman who was found driving down this road. After a short chase he obligingly stopped. Since the only place the road leads is this house, what do you bet we’ll find his fingerprints all over this barn and that nice quad parked inside?”
“A quad with an ORV license issued to one Kyle Sutton.” Inwood raised his eyebrows. “And I’m willing to bet that Mr. Sutton here owns the exact type of rifle that was used to murder Stan Larabee. What do you think, Don?”