Tears sting my eyes, but I won’t let them fall. Not for Sullivan and not for the Tates. Not even for Jonathan, because my almost-twin has proven himself to be no brother of mine.
I’m about to retrace my steps when the sound of a door opening draws my attention to the house. For just a moment I can see Cal framed in the warm rectangle of light, then he pushes Betsy back inside by her nose and shuts the door with a bang. He must have heard the barn door too. Or he remembered that he left it open or he has other work to do. Whatever the reason, I’m stuck standing against the rough wood with nowhere to go. If I run for it, there’s a chance that he’ll see the movement and panic. I’m obviously much bigger than a raccoon or a possum, and for all I know, he’s carrying protection because of the harassment he’s experienced.
The thought sends a chill right through me. Farmers have guns. Period. Rifles for hunting and handguns for fun or for nuisances around the farm. Law has dispatched many a skunk with a little silver pistol that he keeps in his bedside drawer, and he even let me shoot it when I turned twelve and he wondered, briefly, if I might show some interest. I didn’t. But if I were Calvin Murphy, and people had been driving onto my property at night, spraying my grass, keying my car, poisoning my dog, and otherwise making my life a living hell, you’d better believe I’d tuck a little something in my waistband.
He’s getting closer—I can hear the melody of his whistle, but I can’t make out the tune—so I make a split-second decision. I duck into the barn and press myself against the wall behind the open door. There are two doors, of course, double wide so they can be swung open to admit equipment and animals, and I pick the side that’s open so that I can wedge myself in the sliver of space between door and wall. A smaller back door will be my escape when the time comes, but if he steps inside and turns on the lights, I don’t want Cal to catch me racing through the barn as if I have something to hide. A couple of minutes. All I have to do is keep still for a couple of minutes.
My whole body is pressed tight against the wall, and I can feel the prickle of the splintered boards against my bare legs and arms. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to regulate my breathing, hoping that the wild beat of my heart and the ragged gulp of each inhale isn’t a dead giveaway that I’ve taken sanctuary in the Murphys’ barn.
But after a few minutes I realize that the footsteps I expected have faded away instead of come closer. I hold still and struggle to hear, but I can’t make out a single noise above the songs of crickets and the complaints of the old barn. Turning, I press my face against one of a thousand gaps in the boards and squint into the inky night.
It appears as if Cal has angled away from the barn and is standing near where the driveway curves toward the roadside stand. I can barely make him out, but he’s a moving smudge in the darkness, and as I strain my sight toward where I think he is, I realize that he’s not alone.
Not alone. A thrill of vindication washes over me, but it’s short-lived. If there’s someone out there in the night with Cal, it means that whatever the Tates have been planning is going down. I wasn’t supposed to be hiding in the barn, frozen. I was supposed to be the voice of reason, the one person who could talk sense into them and fix it all. Or, if I couldn’t make everything better, at the very least I could document it. Take pictures, call 911, do something. But I’m not out there. I’m hiding in the barn.
I push myself away from where I’m cowering behind the door and race out into the open. It’s impossible for me to tell who is who—the two figures on the gravel drive are little more than stains on the velvet night—but I assume that the figure closest to the farmhouse is Cal. Either way, neither Cal nor the stranger make any indication that they know I’m there. They’re talking, loudly, animatedly, but I’m too far away and can’t make out the words. Against the backdrop of their argument, the soft scuff of my feet is mere background noise. But just as I’m about to call out to them, one of the figures raises his arm.
There’s a flash, and a crack splits the night. Cal stumbles back. Another flash, another pop, and Cal makes a guttural, bubbling sound halfway between a shout and a cry.
My mind is far behind the animal reaction of my body. Before I can rationalize what I’m doing, I’ve stopped mid-stride and am scrambling backward, retracing the few steps I’ve taken from the sanctuary of the barn. Nature overrules any uncertainty I may be feeling, and pulsing in every pore of my body is a single message: run.
There’s nowhere to go that isn’t out in the open, and I’m hysterical with the thought that I may have already given myself away. But the barn is only a few steps off, and I’ve closed the distance before his body has hit the ground. I know because I hear the heavy thump of his weight against the earth. The groan of his breath as it’s ripped from his lungs.
Oh my God. There are no words for this, no way to make sense of what I’ve just witnessed. I slam against the inside wall of the barn and collapse on the ground with jagged boards at my back. My shoulders sting, and my hip where I’ve landed too hard, but the sensations are meaningless. In the absence of rational thought there is nothing but noise. The white noise of my pulse as it floods through my veins, of the excruciatingly loud scuff of my scrabbling feet on the dirt floor. Of a whimper that must be coming from me and must be silenced.
Shut up. Shut up. Be quiet as whisper. Be soft as sleep.
But Beth is not quiet. I hear her burst from the farmhouse, shouting, but I can’t make out the words. Behind the closed door, the dog is barking madly, the muffled yelp the warning of a siren and just as steady. It’s a cacophony, a riot, a signal fire that lights up the night until another explosion rips through the air.
Then there is nothing but silence. One bullet, and the woman has been hushed. The dog is quiet, too. Maybe Betsy knows. Maybe now she’s whining.
My mind spins away from what this must mean, and finds a frantic, anguished home in nothingness. I hear nothing. I feel nothing. From far away, I discern a nudge of conscience, a murmur that compels me to look, to listen. But I’m on the ground somewhere, and it is not safe, but it is away.
I claw my fingers at the hard-packed earth, and it comes apart as dust beneath my nails. There is pain, and I realize that I must have torn them, that the wetness against my skin is blood. But when I think of blood, my soul begins to howl. It’s a clamor that I cannot contain, that threatens to rip out my throat if I dare to open my mouth. I do not.
It’s impossible to hear the footsteps, but I feel them. A reverberation in the ground that echoes through my very bones. He’s so close I can feel him over my shoulder, sharing the air that I can barely breathe for shock and horror. If I were a different person—braver—I would surprise him in the darkness. Throw myself against him. Look him in the eye.
But I cower. Press my cheek against the hard boards until splinters bite my skin.
“Who’s there?” he whispers. Two hissed syllables, a voice I almost recognize.
And then he’s upon me. So close I could reach out and touch him through the narrow gap behind the door, but instead I tuck my face into my knees. It is dark as pitch all around us, dark as the grave. I hold so still, I am stone. I am nothing. I do not even exist.
The world is blackness and wailing somewhere deep inside my chest. I am unseeing, unfeeling. Undone. The earth has come apart around me and there is no way that I can go on after this. That life can go on after this. It’s over.
But behind my raw fear and the way my heart and mind skitter away from reality, I realize I can smell him. It’s uncanny, this odor he carries with him. It pricks my nose and invades my mouth. It makes me gag, and I do so silently, noiselessly, wishing him away, wishing everything away. But I’m hemmed in by shadows and he’s trapping me there.
He smells of death.
CHAPTER 23
WINTER TODAY