Why the Rock Falls

by J. E. Barnard

  It didn’t come.

  The weight lifted off her. There was a rush of footsteps.

  Raising her head with difficulty, she saw she was alone.

  Struggling to her feet, she staggered out to the hallway. The near stairs were empty. Leaning against the wall, she peered around the corner. The long hallway was deserted, too. Her attacker could be behind any of those half-open storeroom doors, waiting to strike again, or working their way toward the far stairs. Either way, she was alone, injured, exposed. She groped her way back to the office and slammed the door, locking it.

  As she reached for the fallen chair, an empty space on the desk caught her still-flaring eye. She froze. The external drive, the one that held the entire last month’s archived camera images, was gone. The cable it had been connected to dangled from the desk beside a blood smear from her rapidly swelling mouth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Lacey slumped into the spare chair and concentrated on her breathing. Her heart was a hammer, smashing her battered rib with every stroke. The old nightmare images of Dan roiled up. She pushed them back, compartmentalized them, reminded herself of the calming ritual she’d found on the internet:

  One:

  a thing she could see: her phone

  Two:

  things she could hear: wind rattling the blinds, Frank Turner singing

  Three:

  things she could smell: the disturbed dust, her own sweat, the pines on the bluff outside

  Four:

  things she could touch: the plastic chair arm, the thigh of her work jeans, the spongy mouse pad, the keys on her keyboard

  Five:

  things she could …

  Which sense was she missing? Taste. She looked around. Except for the water bottle with its tepid liquid from hours ago, there was nothing to taste unless she licked the walls and furnishings. The image of herself with her tongue stuck to the window frame, like a kid in a frozen playground, made her giggle, then cough as her ribs clenched.

  Shivering as the pain eased, she took stock. Ribs? A deeper breath said they weren’t cracked again, just bruised. She wiggled her jaw, wincing as the lip split pulled. She’d have a hell of a mark on that cheek tomorrow. She dabbed the blood off her lip with a tissue and a splash from her water bottle. The song changed, and she tapped the phone to kill the music. If the attacker returned, she wanted to hear them coming.

  Two immediate questions: who was the assailant, and were they recorded on any of the cameras or fob logs? Actually, a third thing: did they want anything besides the external drive? Fourth, how did they know to take it, and fifth, why now?

  Before diving into any of that, she obeyed her old cop instinct to report in. She checked her watch and dialled Wayne’s number.

  He picked up on the fourth ring, sounding sleepy. “Problem, McCrae?”

  “You were right about a family member being behind it, boss. Someone here just beat me up and stole the external hard drive with the archived garage images.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Bruised.”

  “Do you need medical attention?”

  “No. Ice pack will do.”

  “Do you want to be replaced?”

  “Hell, no. I won’t be taken off guard again.” She didn’t bring up the panic she’d felt about being strangled. That was between her and a therapist, if she ever got one.

  “They must not know you’ve already uploaded the archive to my office server.”

  “And sent the important images to Jan for analysis.” She rinsed her mouth with the plastic-tasting water, washing away the acid leftovers of adrenalin and blood. “I should have realized something was up when I returned from the airstrip tonight and found the door had been tried enough times to reset that keypad. I’ll check as many alibis as I can, using today’s images. But you’d do me a big favour by finding out where the people on my list were last Monday night. I mean, it has to be the same person, right? We can’t be dealing with two different perpetrators on this isolated ranch.”

  “We can’t assume that, but you’re probably right. Nobody in that family trusts each other enough to collude.”

  “Except the twins,” said Lacey. “I’ll check their whereabouts as soon as I hang up. And I’ll fix that lock on the gym door first thing in the morning. It’s the only place anyone can enter this building without leaving a fob trail.”

  “Good plan.” Wayne paused. “You’re sure you don’t want backup?”

  Lacey crossed her fingers. “I’m sure. This just guarantees I’m on the right track.”

  “I want twice-daily phone reports from now on. Stay safe out there.”

  As she gingerly bent again to set the tipped chair on its wheels, something sticky met her palm. She opened that hand to the light. A smear of blood. On the bracket that held the nearest wheel was another smear, with a small divot of skin stuck to it. She’d marked the bastard. Good.

  Wiping off the bloody residue onto a tissue, she tossed it into the trash. Much as she’d like to believe it would identify her attacker, no police force on earth would DNA-test over a minor beat-down with robbery. Even if they did, the results would take months, if not years to be processed — far too long to be any use at all in the present circumstances. She set the chair upright, settled into it, and wheeled up to the desk to see if she could isolate her attacker’s approach or departure through any of the working cameras.

  The silence was complete beyond Lacey’s door, but she found herself listening constantly, anyway. Could anyone come up on the roof and get through the window? If they tried, the returned moonlight would let her see them. She sped backward through the evening’s logs to suppertime and started forward again, watching the mechanics pack up for the day and Bart drive a load of food from the kitchen entrance out the front gate. More for the searchers, presumably. She and Ben had missed him at the SAR base. She checked time-stamps and found his vehicle returning through the main gate just before hers left by the south gate. Then she traced his movements: into the garage with the vehicle, out of the garage on foot through the elevator lobby, crossing in front of the bluff staircase camera, entering his cabin in the woods. Later in the archive, she watched Cheryl and Sloane walk out to the terrace. Sloane moved in a slow shuffle, her shoulders rounded like those of a much older woman. They sat on chairs for a few minutes, watching the sunset, and then slowly went back to the house. In the moment that Sloane faced the camera, the shadow wasn’t deep enough to hide the glistening tracks on her cheeks. How many tears had she wept since finding her son gone?

  Earl appeared on the terrace soon after the women left, heading down to the machine shed. The kitchen staff approached the garage after the meal cleanup. She watched them into the elevator lobby, checked for them in the garage, and realized there was no coverage of the garage stairs or her office door. Not that she really suspected them, but someone could have been hovering near the door, beneath the camera, and come in with them. If so, the attacker had hung around in the building for a good hour before attacking her, trying the office keypad unsuccessfully and then hiding when she arrived.

  Ben was the last option. Had he really gone home to nap when he left her? Or had he waited around the corner until she stepped inside and then darted back before the door closed behind her? She hadn’t exactly hung around downstairs to make sure it locked. Scrolling back again, she tracked him past the garage, across the terrace, and picked him up entering the cabin barely five minutes after he left her at the garage. He didn’t come out.

  Lacey sat back and propped her aching feet, still in their workboots, up on the desk. One of these Caines must have been in this building tonight. Who was left?

  Andy. She hadn’t seen Andy on a single camera. Could Andy have climbed straight down the bluff below her cabin — avoiding the repaired terrace camera — and cut through the aspen copse to the road below? Was she strong enough to smash Lacey’s head to the desk and hold her down? How would Lacey tell?

  Her bruised ribs
gave a twinge. Bruises, of course. Whoever was behind the chair would have not only missing skin on their ankle or shin, but bruises, too, possibly on their thighs from the chair-back as well as on their shins from being kicked. As soon as she could bring herself to unlock that door and head for the cabin, she could clear Andy, and maybe Bart and Ben, as well. At worst, all she had to do was wait for Andy to go work out in the morning. She’d be wearing shorts. Any damage would be visible. Same went for Bart and Ben. For sure, she would go climbing with Ben in the morning. His tight climbing shorts would reveal any marks on his legs. How she’d deal with the attacker once they were identified, she wasn’t sure. If they’d only been after the archives, they wouldn’t attack again, no matter how much her PTSD feared they would.

  Something bumped beyond the office door. She angled her head and listened. Was that only another creak of the cooling building, or a footfall on the stairs? Were Cheryl or Ike coming back to their apartment for the night?

  The creak occurred again. Someone was definitely coming up those stairs. She eased out of the chair, moved over to the door, and waited to see if they’d try the keypad. The footsteps came right up to the door and stopped.

  Andy’s voice called, “Lacey, are you still in there? I saw the light as I came across the terrace.” She tapped. “Lacey? Can we talk? Please?”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yep.”

  “Come on in.” Lacey turned the handle, releasing the electronic lock. Andy stepped into the room, her posture relaxed and unthreatening. She was still in shorts, and her long, tanned legs were unmarred. “Take a chair.”

  “Ben said you’d be back in an hour, but you weren’t.” Andy looked at the scattering of papers that Lacey hadn’t yet picked up, the smear of blood under the desk lamp. Then she looked at Lacey. “Oh my fucking God. What happened to you?”

  Clearly, Lacey hadn’t done a thorough job of cleaning up her face. “I tripped and face-planted on the desk.”

  “You poor thing. Come on home, and I’ll get you some ice for that cheek. You’re gonna be sore.”

  “Yeah. Like I’ve been in the wars.” Lacey reflexively pushed her tongue against her swollen lip. She wasn’t ready to leave this cloistered room and walk through the shadowy woods. Not even with Andy for escort. “Did you want to talk to me about anything in particular? Because if so, this place has no recording devices in it. For sure.”

  Andy looked around the small room again. “All this equipment, and no recording devices in here?”

  “That’s what I said. I think only Orrin ever came in here apart from Wayne’s monthly maintenance checks, and he was busy recording what everyone else was doing.”

  Andy perched on the far corner of the desk. With one foot, she pushed the door shut. “I just wanted to apologize to you for freaking out this afternoon. I don’t usually scream at people and throw shit.” She nibbled her lower lip. “My only excuse is that I’m ovulating and trying to get pregnant. A little nervy from hormones. And stress.”

  “There’s enough stress to go around, that’s for sure.” Lacey rinsed the metallic taste out of her mouth again with her last sip of water.

  “I wish I could tell you everything,” said Andy sadly. “If I knew Orrin wasn’t coming back, I would. But it’s not just me who’d be in the shit. I want us to be friends, Lacey. I want us to trust each other. Can you trust me enough that if Orrin isn’t back in two weeks, I’ll tell you the whole truth?”

  The whole truth about what, exactly? Lacey parked her shoulders against the wall while she tried to dissect what Andy meant. She didn’t want to get anybody in shit with Orrin? That was a given. As for being friends, did she mean that as sincerely as it sounded, or was she trying to get on Lacey’s softer side? This was where all those years around male coworkers had messed up Lacey’s instincts. The women she hung with nowadays — Dee, Jan, Marie — were all straight talkers. If they had something on their minds, they put it right out there. But she’d seen enough women who weren’t like them to know there was a real possibility she was entirely misreading Andy’s level of sincerity. All she could do was play along and see where the conversation led.

  “I really want us to be friends, too,” she said, “and I’m trying not to be intrusive as your house guest, because heaven knows you’ve had enough intrusions living around Orrin. Will you trust me enough to answer my questions now, and I’ll tell you in two weeks what I’m really doing this week?”

  Andy put her hand on her head. “I think that sentence broke my brain. What I think I heard is you’re not telling me the whole truth about why you’re here now, and you know I’m not telling you the whole truth, either, but we’re going to trust neither of us is doing anything to hurt the other, and we’ll spill our guts in two weeks. Is that right?”

  “If Orrin isn’t back by then, we can,” said Lacey, trying not to predict how fast Andy’s friendliness would evaporate once she knew Lacey was spying all along. “If he is back, well, we’ll deal with how much we can each safely tell when it comes to it. Okay?”

  “O-kay!” Andy lunged over and hugged Lacey around the shoulders, carefully avoiding her bruised cheek.

  Feeling like a massive hypocrite, Lacey turned her face away and patted Andy gingerly on the shoulder.

  When released, she said, “Now, since we’re friends, and you’re going to trust me that I have a reason that you’ll know about eventually, can you tell me where you were all evening from when we got back from this afternoon?”

  Andy’s smile drooped. “Arguing with Bart in the cabin, mostly. He thinks we should tell you everything. Ben thinks we can trust you, too. I think we can, but I’m paranoid about Orrin. Plus, I’ve been kind of on an emotional tornado ride today, and I don’t think I’m capable of making a really good decision tonight.” One of her tanned hands rested on her stomach. “I might be pregnant already and not know it. If what I say now ends up messing up my child’s life, I’d never forgive myself.”

  Lacey stared at her. Trying to get pregnant. Ovulating this week. Screwing Ben in the workout room while Bart carried on his affair with Rob. “Holy shit!”

  “What?”

  Lacey reached past Andy and closed the office window. If her guess was correct, this was dynamite that Earl would use to blow both the twins out of the inheritance race. She leaned close to Andy.

  “You’re trying to get pregnant by Ben so the baby will pass for Bart’s.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Dawn brought a text from Jan and one from Wayne. Lacey rolled over in bed and picked up her phone. Jan’s message said Insomnia, and almost sure now that you’re looking for a woman who walked beside that Porsche Macan, wearing a balaclava. Wayne’s read I will have that replacement drive for you by noon. Can you meet me midafternoon in Cochrane to collect it? After texting them both back, she climbed into her shorts and T-shirt and headed downstairs to find the coffee ready.

  Ben stood by the machine with two mugs. He looked her over carefully. “You don’t look as bad as I expected.”

  “Andy told you about my face plant?”

  “Yeah. You didn’t damage anything except your cheek, did you? Are you fit to climb?”

  “Sure. I’ve been much worse off than this.” She hoped he wasn’t going to ask for details. Between her RCMP decade and her past year’s crime-solving, she had quite a collection of old injuries. “Ribs are a bit bruised, but hopefully that won’t ground me.”

  He filled her mug and handed it across the counter. “We don’t have to climb if it hurts. We could go for a run instead. Or a walk.”

  “I can run anywhere. This is the first time I’ve ever had a climbing gym and an instructor at my disposal.”

  “Cheers, then.” He came around the island and sat his neon-covered butt on a stool to watch her take her first, appreciative sip of coffee. She watched his shins over the rim, saw no bruises there, and examined his muscular thighs up to the edge of his tight climbing shorts. There was no damage on his legs at
all. Relief swept through her, stronger than she had expected. Ben was not her attacker any more than Andy was. Two of the people she liked most here were cleared.

  That left Bart. She looked up as the other twin sauntered in wearing lightweight, full-length pyjama pants. He reached for a mug.

  “I thought I heard voices. Glad you’re back, Ben. I was in the office yesterday and heard some things we should talk about. Got a minute now?”

  “Should I leave?” Lacey asked, hoping they’d let her stay. She hadn’t heard anything from Wayne about a possible business motive for Orrin to disappear, and in all yesterday’s drama she hadn’t followed up on Bart’s morning at work.

  He shook his head. “We’re not keeping secrets from you any longer.”

  “You’d find them out by Friday, anyway,” Ben added. “I hate to discuss company shit on an empty stomach — or at all — but today I’ll make an exception. What’s on your mind, bro?”

  Bart pulled up a stool. “First, Lacey, nobody was going to admit to me if they’re happy Orrin’s not around. Anyway, there aren’t any big deals hanging that will be materially affected by him being out of contact. Lots of drilling, but it’s all handled by the usual people. So whatever you were thinking, it’s probably nothing to do with work.”

  Ben eyed her over his mug. “You thought somebody at the office wanted to bump off the old man? Nah. His top people have been with him for decades. They’re all getting filthy rich on his coattails.”

  Lacey lowered her eyes. So much for keeping her suspicions on the down-low. “If we’re going to be another few minutes, can I have my coffee topped up, please?”