Twenty-Six

You’re not going alone.”

It had been the argument of the past few hours, ever since I’d showed Tay the note. Tay had insisted we show it to Hannah as well, believing it would be akin to extending the proverbial olive branch, and she’d been correct. Hannah was still miffed at me for hitting on Briz, and upset at Briz for flirting with me. The poor thing was driving herself bonkers with jealousy over a man she wasn’t even dating. Showing her the note, however, had snapped her out of it. Our old friend was back and ready for adventure. It was a slight relief … slight because the whole notion of meeting a stranger in an empty building on the whim of a note was unnerving. Who had written it? Why did they want to talk with me? What if it was a trap? These were all questions we had no answer for, but we weren’t about to let that stop us.

The wine and cheese tasting event had come to a successful end, yet Erik Larson was still missing. Cody had reappeared but kept his distance. I didn’t try to speak with him again, partly because the note might have been his, and partly because he was seriously busy. Erik’s absence had continued throughout the Cherry Blossom Barbecue Dinner, held on the torch-lit patio. Many of the guests were still lingering there, stuffed with cherry-glazed baby back ribs, loaded baked potatoes, gilled corn on the cob, and the inn’s signature Cherry Cove Salad (lettuce, pink lady apples, dried tart cherries, toasted pecans, and grated mozzarella cheese tossed with homemade poppy seed dressing) while contemplating large fresh-baked slices of Grandma Jenn’s famous cherry pie. We had skipped the pie. It was 8:45, and I was in my room with the girls, changing into a pair of dark jeans and a black hoodie.

Picking up the conversation, I argued, “Whoever it is won’t talk if you two show up with me. I mean, you can come with me, just not inside the processing shed. I don’t want to scare the kid away.”

“Okay. But I still think you should be packing heat in case it’s not a kid.” Tay, having gone home to change, reached into her handbag. “Here,” she said, and pulled out a hefty pistol.

“Holy cobbler! I’m not taking a gun.”

“Jeez, Whit, it’s not real.” She cast me an admonishing look. “It’s an airsoft gun. Todd hides it in Char’s naughty drawer.”

“How on earth would you know that?” Hannah asked, her tone striking a note between mild disgust and delicious scandal.

“Because, obviously, I saw him put it in there. I thought he was playing in my mom’s unmentionables and called him a perv. He pulled out the gun and shot me. It stings like a sonofafudge, but it’s not lethal. See? It’s got an orange tip. Not lethal.”

“He shot you?” Hannah was aghast.

Tay shrugged.

I eyed the gun, took it, and said, “Yeah. Sure.” I shoved it in the back of my waistband like a real detective. It felt pretty cool.

We were about ready to leave my room when Hannah piped up, “I still think we should tell Jack.”

“Heck no!” Tay blurted, spinning to face her. “He’s been bewitched by a slice of Jenn’s pie. I saw him sitting at a table on the patio staring at it like he used to stare at that skanky reporter Greta Stone. Let him enjoy the moment. Besides, this is our lead to follow. Not Jack’s.”

Taking that as our cue, we left my room and headed for the processing shed.

A single light, yellow with age and choked with moths, illuminated the front entrance of the building. The sun had set before we left the inn, and now the entire blooming orchard and the processing sheds were cast in the last purple glimmer of twilight. Somehow, standing beneath the old porch light, it seemed darker. The utter quiet that permeated our senses reminded us that we were indeed alone. It was 8:59.

Hannah, seemingly fascinated with the knot of moths fluttering around the light, suddenly looked at me. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

Tay, monitoring the time on her phone, looked up as well. “Ditto. What if it’s a trap?”

“Ladies. We’ve been over this. You’ll be able to hear everything I do over the phone. Also,” I said, giving my backside a pat, “I’m packing nonlethal heat. At the first sign of trouble I’ll hightail it out this door. I promise. Until then, stay here and listen in.” With my phone on mute, I clipped it onto a short lanyard and placed it around my neck with the microphone poking slightly above the neck of my hoodie.

“Nine o’clock,” Tay whispered.

I gave the girls a nod, opened the front door of the shed, and slipped into the building.

It was black as night inside.

I stood a moment, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Once they did, I saw that the only source of light in the cavernous processing room was an exit sign above the doorway leading to the break room and Jeb’s old office. I didn’t know who I was meeting, or where, but I figured, due to the utter silence, that they most likely weren’t by the heavy machinery.

“Hey,” I called out softly, walking through the dark room. “Anybody here?”

Nothing.

My progress wasn’t swift. The deserted building was downright eerie, and the farther away from Tay and Hannah I traveled, the more the hairs on the back of my neck began to prickle. If someone was waiting for me here, they were being awfully quiet about it.

I thought of Jack then. Why hadn’t we told him about the note? He was the law around here. He was the man investigating this case. And yet here I was, walking through a creepy building where a man had been murdered the night before, all because of my competitive nature and a stupid note. I stood under the exit sign and glanced into the back hallway.

Then I froze. It was a sound, soft and insubstantial as a baby’s breath.

Someone was in the building with me.

I drew the airsoft gun from my pants and held it before me. “Hello?” I uttered tentatively, peering into the darkness. I was just about to take a step into the hallway when sound erupted, violent and vicious as a dog attack. It came from the break room. “Somebody’s in here,” I cried to my phone, and ran for the break room door.

I thrust it open with my shoulder. The moment I did, the door on the far side of the room closed. But someone was still in the room, someone or something that was flopping against the hard tiles like a gaffed fish thrown onto the rocks to die. With heart pounding, I pressed a hand to the wall, searching for the light switch. I found it, flipped it on, and gasped in horror.

There on the floor, foaming at the mouth and seizing with a violence I’d never before seen, was Cody Rivers. The poor boy had been beaten to a pulp. Beside him, and somehow even more unsettling, was another creepy twig face.

I ran to him, took out my phone, and turned it off mute. “Hannah! Tay, are you there?”

“Whit, My God! What’s happening?”

“It’s Cody Rivers. I think he’s been poisoned. Call an ambulance, and call Jack. I’m going to try to make him vomit. Then we need to get him out of here!”

“Copy that.”

I left Cody for a moment to search the kitchen drawers for something I could use to trigger his gag reflex. He was convulsing too violently for me to use a finger. I grabbed a thick-handled wooden spoon, held him tightly against my chest, and pried his mouth open. Once the nasty business of purging was over, I left him on the floor while I went to find the wheelbarrow. Cody was a tall, well-muscled young man and there was no way I could carry him out of the building alone.

With Todd’s gun in hand, I left the break room and headed for the processing room. The way this time was backlit by the lights I’d turned on, yet this caused the heavily equipped room to appear cavernous and dark. I’d barely stepped across the threshold when I heard footsteps. They were moving fast along the far wall, behind the extra storage bins and the forklift. There was still somebody in the building. Ten-to-one it was the murderer. Shaking, I aimed the gun at the sound. Then I saw it briefly, a hulking, shaggy shadow flitting across the wall toward the break room. I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.

A flash like a bomb exploded in the darkness. The impact launched me off my feet, flinging me across the cement floor on my backside. “Holy cobbler!” I cried, momentarily blinded and stunned. I sat up, shook my head, and looked at the pistol gripped tightly in my hand. Nonlethal? Really? That’s when I realized that fire was raging through entire front of the building. The thing belonging to the racing footsteps was nowhere to be found.

“Oh my God!” It was Hannah. She was screaming over the phone that was still dangling around my neck. “Whitney! Are you all right? There’s fire!”

“Sort of,” I cried, scrambling to my feet. I dropped the gun and ran for the wheelbarrow. “I guess that means you guys aren’t coming in here to help me.”

“We tried,” Tay replied, sounding frantic. “The door was locked. What happened?”

I grabbed the wheelbarrow and was about to dash for the kitchen when I slowed down. “I’m not sure. Guys, this is important. Did you happen to see anyone leave the building?”

“No. I told you, the front doors are locked. We can’t get in. We’ve been here the whole time, trying.” Tay fell silent, then said, “Oh my God, Whitney! Is somebody in there with you?”

“Maybe,” I said, and for the first time in my life, I understood what real fear felt like.

∞

Smoke was filling the room, billowing on the ceiling while the fire spread like a voracious hunger. This was not the time to panic, I told myself. Killer or not, I needed to get Cody in the wheelbarrow and out the back exit.

Pushing the wheelbarrow toward the break room, two things crystalized in my mind. Someone had started the fire, and that same person had beaten and poisoned the boy, using, no doubt, the cyanide that had killed Jeb. What the hell was going on here? No wonder the kids were acting so strangely. They were afraid to talk. They were afraid to be seen with Jack or me. Now I understood why. Even though Cody had taken precautions by passing that note, someone had found out, and that someone had gone to extreme measures to silence him. Once back in the break room, the sight of the handsome kid alone on the floor, bloody and unconscious, made me sick with guilt. Thankfully there was no sign of the other.

“Hannah,” I said, having muscled the boy into the wheelbarrow. “I’m bringing Cody out the back exit. Can you meet me there? Tay, stay and wait for Jack. Also, we’re going to need the fire department.”

“Got it.”

I wheeled Cody out of the break room with caution. I then peeked into the hallway. Once I was certain no one was there, we ran for the back exit. I spun the wheelbarrow around, intending to pull it out of the building behind me, and depressed the door handle. However, when I threw my shoulder against the hard metal slab, it didn’t budge. I did it again. I did the same thing two more times, all with the same result. The door wasn’t locked, but it didn’t budge. Something was blocking it.

“Hannah!” I cried. “Hannah, are you there?”

She screamed my name, alerting me that she was. “Oh my God! The door’s blocked! One of the Gators has been backed into it and I can’t find the key.”

Then she echoed the words that were already ringing in my ears. “Whitney. My God! You’re trapped in there!”

Now I knew what the killer had done. I was confident that whoever it was, they were no longer in the building with me. They were no longer here because it was a trap, and Cody, the poor boy, was the bait. The twig face glaring up from beside him had been my warning. I was trapped in a burning building with a dying young man. There was no way Hannah could pull a vehicle as heavy as a Gator away from the door by herself, and I doubted we had time to wait for help. I might survive it, but Cody would die for sure. There had to be another way.

Then I remembered the forklift.

It was risky, but it was our only chance. With a new plan running through my panic-stricken brain, and my friends crying at me over the phone, I wheeled Cody back to the kitchen. There I soaked all the towels I could find and threw them into the wheelbarrow with him. Once Cody was covered, I pushed him into the burning, smoke-filled room and made for the forklift.

With a burst of adrenaline strength, I hoisted him onto the narrow floor of the forklift, rearranged the wet towels, and climbed onto the seat. I then wrapped a towel around my own head as well. It had been a while since I’d last operated the forklift, but it all came flooding back. Driving a forklift isn’t at all like driving a car. In fact, because of its compact weight distribution and the fact that it steers from the back wheels, it works almost the opposite. I remembered that much at least, and turned it on. I threw it into reverse and backed up into the room as far as I could while aligning myself with the burning front door. Then I stopped, put it in drive, and took a deep breath.

“Tay,” I cried above the roaring fire into the phone. “Stand clear of the door. We’re coming through!”