by AJ Scudiere
Kayla shook her head, they weren’t. Holy crap. “Did he make it work?”
“I don’t think so, but he said he was close.” Turning tear-streaked eyes back to Evan, she whispered. “They killed my grandfather over this thing, and they took Ivy and they’re still here, looking.”
“It was right in front of them.” Kayla whispered, holding her hand out to the generator-Whitney combo she had running under the blue tarp. “I’m guessing maybe they don’t want the actual machines. They want the schematics before they’ll dismantle it.”
Reenie whispered again. “They killed my grandfather.”
Kayla spoke as softly as she could. “And they just heard this whole conversation.”
She pointed to the bug at the side of the building.
20
The Barn
Kayla kicked at the dirt, ruining the footprints. She didn’t need to see them; they were seared into her head.
“Hey!” Evan protested. “The rest of us don’t have your photographic memory.”
She nodded. It was as close as she could come to admitting that she’d screwed up by kicking the dirt. She was getting frustrated and knew she didn’t handle it with any grace at all. The gun shifted in the waistband of her jeans, making her sweat against the warm metal. She hated the feel of it. And she could detect all of it, the loop of hard metal that protected the trigger. The small indentations along the side of the barrel where the pieces slid against each other as the gun fired. Sometimes it turned and in the middle of her back she could feel the safety.
There were better safeties on the market now, but she didn’t have one. Evan and Reenie seemed not to notice theirs. But then again, they didn’t notice a lot of things. Like the fact that Evan’s omelets were usually a bit runny. Or that Reenie always had the same tone of voice when company was around, whether she liked them or not. And they didn’t notice how sticky it was being glued to each other all day.
They’d first checked the slave cabins, hoping to find something, but expecting nothing—which was exactly what they’d gotten. Some of the cabins were just a few old timbers jutting out of the earth where corners had been, or a stone here or there from a truly primitive hearth. Glancing through open walls ten or fifteen feet from Evan or Reenie was as much alone time as Kayla had been allowed today. Even when she had to pee, they decided they should all go pee together. And it was just too much.
Evan set down the shotgun he’d been carrying and went to crouch at the area where the footprints had been. She was pretty sure she heard a muttered “Dammit, Kayla” but she didn’t really care.
They were the same prints that they had seen before. Someone with a roughly size-ten-foot and good work boots liked to come see how things were doing. He’d been shot at, and he’d come back. Kayla didn’t need his tracks there. She sighed. “They never took anything because even the lighter version of the gears that Charles made for me are too heavy to carry the whole thing off. Without a cart, they’d have to steal it bit by bit.”
Evan glared at her. Eyebrows slanted down toward the thought-knot just above his nose. His mouth was in a straight line, his lips pressed together. In case she’d missed that, he jabbed one finger at the bug on the far side of the open space.
She shrugged back at him. She wanted them to hear, wanted them to know that she knew. Kayla had had enough.
Grabbing the shotgun, she headed out the door.
She was cresting the hill when she heard the noise, a muffled rhythm from up by the house that had her jogging faster. Logically, she knew if Ivy were somewhere on the plantation and able to make noise, they would have found her already. Still, she hoped.
It wasn’t Ivy. A cream colored sedan was parked in the roundabout in front of the big house. The owner was knocking on her front door, steadily making a noise, hoping for someone to come. She automatically didn’t like the person, even though she couldn’t see him. Couldn’t, in fact, even tell if it was a “him.”
The noise stopped and she could see only the outline of a man in a suit coming around the side of the house. She dropped low, letting the tall grass mask both her and the gun she carried. Two guns actually.
In faint tones, the wind carried the sound of his voice to her. She couldn’t make out words but the tone revealed that he was looking for someone, anyone.
Moving softly, trying not to draw attention, Kayla came closer and shortly he made his way around between the buildings and out of her line of sight. Picking up pace, she tried to be sure she stayed where he couldn’t see her. But once he moved, he could head in any of a number of directions. He could come around the back of the carriage house or the kitchen and spot her. Or he could make his way to the Overseer’s and knock on the door there, though he’d have no better luck with that.
As she peeked around the edge of the carriage house she found he’d left the small quad behind the houses all together. But then sound came from the front, startling her. The man had looped around the big house and was back at the door again, his knocking soft but persistent. His clothes looked expensive, his left hand casually in his pocket when he’d come by. She waited while his right hand paused, then knocked again.
Kayla heard him from where she stood now just inside the carriage house; the sound carried well through these old plantation buildings, especially since this one stood nearly empty.
Switching her grasp and wiping her hands on her jeans, Kayla went out into the midday sunshine that flooded the small, grassy area between the buildings. There were noises from the creatures in the grass, but they were obscured by the rasp of the generator as it kicked up and the whir and chug got louder.
She climbed the short, wide staircase and headed across the back porch and through the standard double doors. So many things about Hazelton House seemed ordinary for its time frame.
Kayla was angered by his presumptions; he’d let himself in and turned on lights. Coming around the side and through the archway, she saw that the man in the entryway looking up at the brightly lit chandelier overhead, but he didn’t give her time to ponder his presence.
“Excuse my intrusion. No one answered my knock and the door was unlocked.” He smiled.
Looking him straight in the eyes, Kayla asked, “Where’s Ivy?”
When he only shrugged in answer, she lifted the shotgun and shot him square in the chest.
Blood bloomed on his shirt and face. Lifting his hands as though to look at them, he staggered back a step before falling and beginning to bleed in earnest. Red pooled slowly there in her hallway as he tried to push himself back from her.
She stomped up to him, avoiding the blood that found every seam in the floor, every dip in the old wood. It snaked out, making it difficult to get close, but Kayla tread carefully. “Where’s Ivy?!”
“Kayla!”
The sound came from behind her, Reenie’s shocked voice and massive gasp coming at the same moment as the man’s hand came out to grab an ankle. But Kayla had seen it coming, his muscles tensed in preparation to move, so she deftly sidestepped both his hand and the growing streams of his blood.
The effort proved to be too much and he sagged back. Which pissed her off—if he died, he couldn’t tell her where Ivy was.
Carefully tracing her steps backward, she tried not to inhale. Kayla didn’t think she’d ever smelled human blood before, she would have remembered the sharp smell. Though she’d been exposed to her own and even others before, the quantity must have made the odor stronger. Once out of his range, she turned and looked square at Reenie and Evan.
Reenie was nearly hyperventilating just from looking. Kayla decided it was a good thing Reenie hadn’t shot anyone. She’d pull the trigger, Kayla had no doubt about that, but she was now sure Reenie would hit the mass dead center and then pass right out from having been so good at it.
Reenie’s voice squeaked as she ping-ponged her gaze back and forth between Kayla and the figure sprawled on the floor. Though he was clearly dying and though Reenie clearly didn’t a
pprove, she made no motion to help him either. “Kayla, what have you done?”
Kayla looked back and saw he was exactly as she’d left him. “I think I killed him.”
“Oh, God.” At least this time Reenie did something reasonable; she turned away and put her hands to her face. “I need some air.”
But Evan stopped her. “You can’t go out alone, certainly not now.”
She looked up at him, back at Kayla and up at him. “The cops are going to come!”
Evan shook his head. “I don’t think so. Gunfire isn’t all that uncommon out here.”
Kayla had expected the cops to show up, too. She’d been rehearsing what she’d tell them, about how this man was spying on them, how he’d planted the bugs on their property. But she likely wouldn’t get to use her speech because Evan was right. They heard gunshots occasionally, and they probably weren’t close enough for anyone to either identify the sound correctly nor to pinpoint the direction it came from. She found herself disappointed that she was going to have to call the sheriff and report this herself. Lord knew, Reenie couldn’t do it. She’d hyperventilate and the operator would send an ambulance. It was already too late for the man on the floor.
Kayla looked back at him. He’d had the decency to shut his eyes as he died, saving Kayla from his glassy stare. He appeared as though he’d gotten really tired and was taking a half-exhausted, half-drunken nap right there in the entry. But his skin was slowly turning grayer and the pool of blood was a clear denial of her nap theory.
“What happened?”
Like a hand grabbing her and dragging her backward to the present, Evan’s voice forced her to turn and look at him.
“He knocked and let himself in while I was still out back. He turned on the lights.”
“You killed him because he turned on the lights!?!” Reenie sucked in a huge breath again and bent over to put her hands on her knees.
“No.” This could get exhausting, so she decided the best defense was a good offense. “He’s inside our home. I killed an intruder. Georgia is a ‘stand your ground’ state. I’m allowed to use lethal force if I feel threatened.”
Kayla watched Reenie absorb all of that. As soon as Reenie seemed to accept that they weren’t all going to jail for the rest of their lives, Kayla started to breathe a little easier and look around.
“We need his wallet.” Kayla considered the man on the floor, wondering if she should pick her way back close to the body and pat him down for it, or if she could convince Evan to do it.
She was quickly stripped of her musings.
Evans voice snapped through her focus again. “What will that tell us?”
“Who he is.” She wondered why they didn’t see what she did. Then she wondered why she wondered that. No one ever seemed to think like her. Except maybe Charles. And sometimes, Ivy. “How will we ransom him for Ivy if we don’t know who he is?”
Reenie moved toward Kayla, eyebrows to her hairline, then saw where she almost stepped and jumped back. “You’re planning on ransoming him?”
“Well,” Kayla shrugged. “Sure. I mean we’re screwed if they ask for proof of life, since he doesn’t have any anymore. But we should be able to maneuver a trade for Ivy. We need to get his phone, too. And we should move his car into the carriage house, or around back.” And they should clean up the blood, too, but she didn’t say that because she wasn’t volunteering.
Reenie had turned a little green and spoke as though reassuring herself really, rather than Kayla. “You’re not going to jail. He was in your home, and we can make a case that you felt threatened. You’ve got Aspergers—”
Kayla immediately cut her off. “I didn’t shoot someone because I have Aspergers!”
“Fine. You still won’t go to jail.” Reenie shrugged Evan’s hands away from where he reached for her. “But how do you know that you shot the right guy?”
Angrier by the moment, Kayla gave up thinking that Reenie had come to trust her judgment. “It’s not the wrong guy. The fact that there even is a ‘right guy’ is disturbing. And this is him!”
Evan, at least, stayed calm. “What happened?”
“I asked him where Ivy was and when he shrugged at me, I shot him.”
Reenie looked nauseated and closer to tears. “Why?”
“If he’s not the one who planted the bugs and checked out the barn, then he’s working with whoever did. Look how he’s dressed.” She pointed to him, unmoved from his dark cherry puddle on the once-pretty floor. That was likely to leave a stain.
“Kayla, you can’t shoot a man because he wears a suit!”
She regained her calm, even when Reenie couldn’t. When Evan was hanging onto his composure by a thread. Because it was the only thing that would find Ivy. “Look at his shoes.”
Reenie gasped again, and Kayla reclaimed some small level of respect for the other woman. As much air as she had sucked down with her repeated deep gasping, Reenie should have passed out well before this. But the other woman’s voice turned to a breathy whisper, “Holy shit. They’re an exact match, aren’t they Kayla?”
Kayla just nodded.
This time it was Reenie who took her arm and provided support and Evan who began to question things. She didn’t get the feeling that he was against her, just putting pieces together. “Did he show you his treads before you shot him?”
“No.” Kayla took what Reenie offered and thought maybe—not definitely, but maybe—things could be okay. “You could see from the sides.”
Reenie tipped her head. “How?”
It was Evan on her side this time. “Kayla can.”
And she could, though the treads weren’t obvious on the nearly shiny dress-looking shoes, there were small rectangular cutouts along the bottom that matched perfectly to the prints found all over the plantation. The size matched, too. Kayla could tell just by looking. She hadn’t ever doubted who he was, only if he was going to do something sinister before she managed to shoot him.
Kayla slid bonelessly into bed in the big house. Evan had argued with her about staying here, but she’d argued back. There was no way she’d ever get any sleep in the Overseer’s. Reenie and Evan had already reclaimed her room. And there was nowhere here for them to sleep if they were so inclined.
After the way the day had gone, Evan almost flat out refused to let her stay here. But how would she sleep in another bed? Besides, she harbored a hope that she knew was stupid, but she wanted to be where she was expected in case Ivy should return.
In the end, Evan relented, only because he’d installed the master deadlocks himself. Because he’d been the one who secured all the windows in expectation of the items that would be on display in the scheduled-to-open-soon museum. Because he had checked every possible entry point and made sure her cell phone was programmed to speed dial him. She’d promised to call the moment she woke up. So she stood in her room by herself, wondering if anyone was outside, watching her lights to see when she went to sleep. Ignoring the feeling of being alone, which she usually liked, but not tonight, she closed her eyes.
The heater reached out with a mild warmth and tried to make up for the missing Ivy, but fell far short. Two nights now, she’d crawled in alone. Two nights she’d taken the gun into the bathroom with her rather than letting Ivy casually stand watch while she brushed her teeth. The constant shuffling of the gun as she got ready almost took her focus from recombing through the day’s events for clues.
No one had called the phone they took from the body of Robert Bell. It remained silent even though Kayla managed to unlock the screen with just a few tries. Then later it was silent because she pulled the battery, hoping to stop any GPS tracking, though there was nothing she could do about the fact that any previous tracking would place the final location of the phone here.
Reenie questioned the validity of the name Robert Bell, but it was all they had. The photo on his driver’s license matched and Kayla couldn’t detect any forgery.
&nb
sp; They spent only a little while checking the small amount of documentation on his person. His car was also mostly devoid of anything other than registration. Not even a burger wrapper or a bottle of Tums was anywhere to be found, nothing that identified the vehicle as belonging to anyone in particular. But the registration did match the name and address on the license, so maybe he really was Robert. That didn’t help much in the end though, because he really was dead.
Kayla rolled her shoulders to work out the kinks. When she’d shot him she hadn’t considered the massive cleanup a human death would require. The three of them had rolled him into an old tarp, and then folded that tarp into another and tied it with rope so that they could move it without further smearing the blood. Planning had been required. Luckily, Bell lay still while they debated.
He was hauled to the carriage house and parked next to his car.
They spent hours scrubbing the floor and dumping buckets of bloody water in various locales away from the buildings. No one showed up to ask them what they were doing. The three of them didn’t speak at all around any of the listening devices. They used laundry-safe stain removers to get the red out of the floor as best they could, but they weren’t willing to do much more. Kayla was pretty sure that anyone with luminol and a blacklight would be able to see what they had done, but pulling up the flooring or sanding that one spot when they’d already resurfaced and stained the floors recently would be just as damning.
It wasn’t that she didn’t feel bad about killing a man. It certainly wasn’t anything she’d ever done—or even come close to—before. But she contemplated her actions as she brushed her teeth. She thought about the holster and gun that she’d gotten a glimpse of as he fell. She considered the fact that he had a knife strapped to each calf. That Ivy was missing was something she could not avoid.
