Dreadful

by Jana DeLeon

  Marisa froze and sucked in a breath. She reached for the doorknob and it turned easily in her hand. She’d managed so far to keep the worst of her panic under control, but now it flew into overdrive. She pushed the door open and peered inside, but the room was empty. She stepped inside the eerily quiet house. The ticking of the old kitchen clock echoed throughout the house like a drum, the stillness seeming to increase its volume.

  “Jenny,” Marisa called out. “Jenny, it’s me. If you’re hiding, come out.”

  She waited, listening, but nothing indicated that Jenny was inside the house.

  Get out!

  The commonsense answer raced through her mind and she knew it was the right call. Every single time she’d watched a movie where the woman had gone further into a dangerous situation, she’d yelled at the television. But now she could see the dilemma. Jenny wasn’t just her friend. She was like a sister to Marisa. No way she could run back to her SUV and leave her here.

  Maybe she was having an episode—a psychotic break as she’d had after Caitlyn disappeared. The doctor had said it was possible, and Jenny had suffered from mini-breakdowns over the past few years. Given all the stress of the investigation and now with Virginia missing, Marisa wouldn’t find it surprising if Jenny had another breakdown. A large one.

  Which meant she could be hiding somewhere inside the house.

  Marisa pulled her cell phone from her pocket and pressed in Jenny’s number, but the call dropped. She checked her signal strength and cursed. Service had always been sketchy out here, but with a storm moving in, it was bound to be worse. She shoved the phone back in her pocket and headed upstairs, figuring her bedroom was the logical place for Jenny to hole up. But the room was empty. A quick check of the closet and bathroom revealed nothing. Something banged outside, and Marisa froze. It sounded like something hitting wood, like a door slamming, but it hadn’t been on the house. It was farther away. Maybe the storage shed or the barn.

  Jenny had said she’d checked both, but maybe she’d gone to check again. Or maybe Virginia had returned and was outside in one of them. Marisa hurried downstairs and into the kitchen to peer out the back window. The skies overhead had darkened as the forecast thunderstorm began to move in. The door to the shed was closed, and Marisa could see the latch was in place. She looked over at the old barn but didn’t see any sign of movement.

  The back door was unlocked, and she stepped out onto the porch to check the ground surrounding it. Maybe Jenny had gone outside and fallen. She scanned the hedges surrounding the porch but saw nothing. She was just about to head back inside to check Virginia’s room when something moved in the barn. She jerked her head around, trying to lock in on what she’d seen out of the corner of her eye, and saw the upstairs window move a tiny bit.

  Jenny!

  She should have remembered. Once, Virginia had called Marisa looking for Jenny, worried because it was past midnight and she couldn’t find her. Marisa and Rick had rushed out in the middle of the night to search and after spending hours in the woods, they’d found Jenny hiding in the loft of the old barn. She’d probably gone there to hide now.

  Marisa jumped off the porch and ran for the barn, casting an anxious glance at the angry overhead skies. She’d barely made it to the barn when the rain began to fall. The barn door was old and heavy, but she managed to get it opened enough to slip inside, then realized she should have looked for a flashlight before leaving the house. She pulled out her cell phone and accessed the flashlight app, then shone it around.

  At one time, the barn had held farming equipment and housed an array of livestock, but now it just held the remnants that the previous owners had left behind. Virginia had never had any use for the structure but hadn’t wanted to spend the money to tear it down either. So it had stood, deteriorating, along with its contents.

  “Jenny?” Marisa called out. “Are you in here? You’re safe now. I’m going to take you home with me. Just come out.”

  The rain pelted against the tin roof, creating a faint roaring sound inside, and wind whistled through the cracks. Could Jenny hear her upstairs given the noise from the storm? She took a couple of hesitant steps toward the ladder to the loft, then grabbed one of the wooden rungs, pulling on it to test the strength. It felt solid, but Marisa was still carrying around that extra twenty pounds she’d put on after having Maya and Jenny had always been really thin.

  “Jenny?” she called up. “Are you there? Please answer me.”

  Seeing no other option, she put her phone in her mouth and started up the ladder. She was halfway up when she heard movement outside the barn. Then the barn door slammed shut.

  She scrambled back down, dropping her phone, and ran for the door, thrusting her body against it, but it held. She peered between the cracks and saw that someone had placed a board across the brackets to hold the door in place.

  She was locked inside!

  26

  THE HEADACHE that had never really gone away came back full force and Marisa clutched the side of her head, pressing her temples in an attempt to stop the pain. Think! Now was not the time to lose it. She had to stay in control and figure a way out.

  The double doors on the back of the barn had been nailed shut since Virginia and Jenny first moved in. They used to come open at night and bang in the wind, so Virginia had nailed planks across them to keep them permanently closed. The windows were all boarded up except for the one in the loft, but that was a two-story drop. Still, a two-story drop was better than whatever the person who’d locked her in had planned. But who was it? It couldn’t have been Virginia or Jenny, because they would have opened the door when they heard her pound on it. Besides, neither of them would have bothered locking the barn to begin with. They never had.

  And she still hadn’t located Jenny. Maybe the person who’d locked her in the barn was doing the same thing. Maybe Jenny had hidden from him and that’s why Marisa couldn’t find her friend either. She needed to get up to the loft and see if Jenny was there. Surely, somewhere in here was a rope she could use to climb down from the loft.

  She grabbed her phone from where it had dropped and was happy to see it was working, even though she still didn’t have a signal. No matter, she thought, and accessed her text messages. She sent an emergency group text out to everyone she knew, telling them she was locked in the barn at Jenny’s house and to send the police. As soon as her phone got enough signal, the message would go through.

  She accessed the flashlight app again and climbed up the ladder and into the loft. It was basically one big open space that used to hold hay. It had been empty since Virginia bought it but Jenny had found a hiding spot between some framing in the far corner. Marisa carefully picked her way across the loft, testing the flooring beneath her with every step before she put her full weight on it. It was rotted in several places, and she couldn’t afford to fall through.

  When she reached the corner, she peered into the hiding space, but it was empty. Jenny wasn’t here, but someone had closed the window. Where were they now? Had they been inside the barn when she’d entered, then slipped out when she’d started climbing the ladder? It was the only thing that made sense, but it also scared the hell out of her. She felt as though someone was playing a game and she’d walked right into their trap.

  She headed for the window. Rope be damned. She’d lower herself as far as she could over the edge, then drop. What was the worst that could happen? She broke a leg? Then she’d hop to her vehicle. But she was getting the hell out of here and she was doing it now. She headed over to the window, ready to throw it open and begin her descent, when the light from her phone reflected back at her.

  When she saw the shiny new padlock on the window, she started to cry.

  Checkmate.

  OFFICER DUPREE PARKED his squad car behind the SUV in the driveway and called in to get an ID on the plate. When it came back with Rick Sampson’s name, he looked out at the blinding rain and sighed. This whole thing was going to be an exercise in fut
ility. Jenny Taylor was a nice girl and he felt bad for what had happened to her family, but she was also unstable and prone to dramatics. Her mother had probably caught a ride to town with a neighbor and would come walking up any minute, wondering what all the fuss was about.

  No doubt, Jenny had contacted her friend Marisa, and now the woman who should be in the hospital mourning the death of her husband was probably in the house trying to talk sense into Jenny. He let out a sigh and threw open the car door. Might as well get inside and get this over with.

  The rifle blast rang through his ears a millisecond before he felt the pain in his chest. He looked down and saw blood seeping out of a hole right where his heart was. He slammed the door and reached for the radio, but before he could even press the button, everything faded out.

  At some point, he drifted back into consciousness, but only barely. His body jostled around, and he could hear his car engine running. He felt a weight on his back and realized someone had shoved him to the side and was driving away in his police cruiser. He tried to reach for his pistol, but he couldn’t lift his hand.

  “You should have stayed away,” he heard a woman say before he drifted off again.

  SHAYE SPOTTED Rick’s SUV parked next to Virginia’s car. She’d been trying to contact Marisa for the past thirty minutes, but her phone had gone straight to voice mail. She checked her cell phone again, to make sure she hadn’t missed an incoming call or text, and saw the problem. The signal strength was nonexistent.

  But Marisa had said she was going to get Jenny back to town. She had to have reached the house over thirty minutes ago. Why was she still here?

  Maybe she’s looking for Virginia or worse, for Jenny.

  Shaye reached into her glove box and pulled out a penlight and her nine-millimeter. She had no idea what she might find inside. The storm had made it fairly dim outside and no lights were on in the house. The power might be out. She watched the storm for a moment, hoping for a break in the blinding rain, but when it was clear that one wasn’t coming anytime soon, she flung open the door to her SUV and sprang out, then sprinted for the house.

  She paused long enough on the front porch to wipe the rain from her eyes, then immediately checked the front door. It was unlocked. Unsure whether that was a good sign or a bad one, she clutched her pistol in ready position and pushed open the door, peering inside. The room was dark, so she reached around the side of the wall and flipped on the light switch. Nothing happened, so she pulled the penlight from her pocket and shone it into the room, scanning it from left to right.

  Nothing looked out of order, so she moved inside and crept through the living room to the kitchen. Again, everything appeared in order. She was just about to check Virginia’s room when her phone signaled an incoming text. She pulled it out and saw Marisa’s message. She whipped around and hurried to the window, looking into the storm at the barn. She could tell that the doors were closed and could see the big plank across the front of them. Someone must have closed Marisa inside. But was it an accident or intentional?

  Clutching her pistol, she crept out the back door and down the porch steps, then ran for the barn. The plank was so heavy and bulky, she had to shove her pistol in her waistband in order to lift it, but she managed to remove it from the brackets and dropped it to the side. She pulled open the door and looked inside.

  “Marisa?” she called out.

  She heard the footsteps behind her too late. The storm had masked the sound of them approaching. Someone shoved her from behind, pushing her into the barn, where she tripped over something big and heavy and sprawled onto the ground. As she sprang back up, the door slammed shut and she heard the plank drop back into place. She reached for her waistband and cursed. They’d taken her pistol when they shoved her inside.

  “Shaye?” Marisa’s voice sounded above her. “Is that you?”

  Shaye pulled the penlight from her pocket and shone it up at the loft. “Yes. Are you all right? Is Jenny with you?”

  Marisa’s face appeared over the edge of the loft. “I couldn’t find her. I saw something moving in here and came to check, then someone locked me in.”

  “We’re both locked in now.”

  Marisa climbed down the ladder. “Did you see who it was?”

  “No. They shoved me from behind. We have to find another way out of here.”

  “There’s not one. Everything was boarded shut years ago. I went to the loft to check the window up there and it has a new padlock on it.”

  “New?”

  Marisa nodded, and Shaye could tell by her expression that she understood the implication. It was no mistake that they were locked inside.

  “The storm is dying down,” Shaye said as the noise inside the barn decreased to a light patter of rain on the roof. She checked her phone. “Still no signal but I’m going to send a text for help like you did.”

  “What’s going on?” Marisa asked. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  Shaye shook her head, but the thought that had been lingering in her mind the entire drive was still there. And maybe, just maybe, it was more than a wild thought.

  “Is it possible that Caitlyn is still alive?” Shaye asked.

  Marisa’s eyes widened. “What? No. I mean, I don’t think so. You don’t think…”

  “I think that Caitlyn is the common denominator for everything that has happened. Garrett Trahan and Cody Reynolds both dated her; you were friends with her. You’ve all been careful with your descriptions of Caitlyn, but I’m good at reading between the lines. I don’t think she was a nice person, and I’m going to guess that she resented all of the attention that Jenny got by being ill, which is why she tended to be more outrageous in her behavior and why she was always chasing after some guy.”

  Marisa opened her mouth to respond, then closed it and dropped her head, averting her eyes from Shaye’s. “You’re not wrong. Caitlyn was sometimes mean, borderline cruel, especially to Jenny. But why does that matter now?”

  “What if all of this is Caitlyn? What if she killed Cody Reynolds and Garrett Trahan? What if she cut your brake line? What if she’s the reason Jenny and Virginia are missing, and we’re locked in the barn?”

  Marisa shook her head. “No. That’s not possible. Maybe if you’d asked me yesterday I would have thought…but not now.”

  “Why is yesterday different from today?”

  Marisa looked up at Shaye, tears pooling in her eyes. “Because today is the day my husband apologized to me for killing Cody Reynolds before he went into cardiac arrest and died.”

  Shaye stared. In a million years, she wouldn’t have seen that one coming.

  “He was in New Orleans early that morning,” Marisa continued. “I found a coffee cup in his SUV and the mileage was all wrong if he’d just gone to work like he claimed. I asked him about it, and he said he had an interview and didn’t want to tell me in case it didn’t pan out. I knew he was lying about something, but then he got an email last night requesting a second interview. I saw it myself and thought maybe I’d been wrong. That maybe he really had gone into New Orleans for an interview.”

  “But why would Rick kill Cody Reynolds? You didn’t even know him.”

  “I didn’t, but apparently Rick did.”

  Shaye looked at Marisa and could see how haunted the other woman was. “What did they do?”

  “Rick said Cody hid the body,” she whispered. “He must have helped.”

  “Caitlyn’s body?”

  Marisa nodded, then burst into sobs. She crumpled onto the ground and covered her face with her hands. Shaye knelt in front of her.

  “Tell me what happened,” Shaye said. If one text had gotten through, then another could. And the storm wouldn’t last forever. If Shaye knew who was behind this and why, she knew what warnings to give those who came to help.

  “It’s important that I know,” Shaye said. “Other people could walk into this trap.”

  Marisa’s shoulders shook but she finally looked up at Shaye. �
�Jenny killed her.”

  Of all the things Shaye had thought Marisa might say, that one hadn’t even entered her mind. “Jenny?”

  Marisa nodded, clearly miserable. “Jenny was mad at Caitlyn. She made a pass at Sam even though she knew how Jenny felt about him. Jenny followed her to the bathroom to confront her.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I don’t know exactly. They were gone a while, so I went to look in case I needed to referee. When I didn’t find them in the bathroom, one of the servers sent me out the back door and that’s when I found Jenny standing there and Caitlyn—”

  She choked on the last words.

  “Dead?” Shaye asked.

  Marisa nodded. “At least, that’s what it looked like. She was on the ground and wasn’t moving. I tried to find a pulse but couldn’t. Jenny was totally freaking out. She said they’d gotten into a fight and Caitlyn had shoved her and then Jenny shoved her back and she fell. There was blood coming out from under her head, so I figured…”

  Marisa shook her head. “I knew we needed help, so I managed to get Jenny back inside and I told Rick what had happened. He tried to talk to Jenny, but she just stared at us like we were crazy. She said that she’d never seen Caitlyn and then she started freaking out, asking where we were and where Caitlyn was. It’s like she blanked the entire thing.”

  “It’s possible her mind separated because the shock was so severe. She couldn’t face what happened so her mind tucked it away somewhere. Why didn’t you call for an ambulance?”

  “Rick said he would when he got outside. No way they could have heard him in the club. But when he came back in, he said Caitlyn was gone.”

  Shaye frowned.

  “I shouldn’t have believed him,” Marisa said, “but I guess I wanted to bad enough that I took his word for it. I figured I was wrong about the pulse. I was drunk so I could have been. I convinced myself that Caitlyn had gotten up and wandered off because of the head injury, and that something else had happened afterward. I kept waiting for the police to call and say they’d found her body somewhere.”