Expose

by Saranne Dawson

  She also recalled Sam’s utter amazement at how they could spend ten minutes discussing nothing more than the weather. Rural America was more foreign to him than Africa or the Middle East.

  But everyone had liked him. People always liked Sam—which, of course, had made her feel even guiltier about ending their marriage. And the result of all that guilt was that she had found even more to dislike about him.

  She shot him a quick glance as he stood there staring down at the farmhouse. Why was she having all these insights now, when there were far more immediate concerns—like finding out if Charles Scofield was actually down there?

  “Having second thoughts?” Sam asked hopefully, turning to her suddenly and catching her staring at him.

  She shook her head. She was having second thoughts, all right, but not the kind he meant.

  “You wouldn’t admit it if you were,” he said with a smile. “Because that would mean admitting that I’m right.”

  There was definitely some truth in his words, so she ignored them. “Let’s go. They must be asleep. That light is probably on all night.”

  “I want you to know that I wouldn’t be doing this for just anybody,” Sam said as they started down the hillside, moving carefully in the darkness.

  “I appreciate that,” she replied dryly. “Now shut up, because sounds carry in a quiet place like this.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he whispered.

  They were halfway down the hill when the moon emerged from behind the clouds. Kate felt suddenly vulnerable—not to mention foolish. Sam was right. This was a chance they shouldn’t be taking. But it was too late now—or so she told herself.

  They moved quickly down the remainder of the slope. She didn’t know what Sam was thinking, but she could almost feel a bullet ripping into her. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling.

  And then they reached the small yard behind the house. The moon vanished again, and the only light was the faint glow from inside the house. Sam took her arm. She started nervously, immediately hating herself for letting him see how frightened she was.

  “Stay here,” he whispered. “I’m going to skirt around the house to see if anyone’s downstairs.”

  At the moment, her legs were shaking so badly that she doubted she could have moved in any event, so she merely nodded. Sam moved off into the darkness, and as soon as he was gone, she became even more terrified. Damn him anyway. Why was he so calm and cool, when he was the one who’d fought against her idea?

  Half her lifetime went by before Sam suddenly reappeared on the far side of the house, once again startling her. She decided that it was a good thing that he was the one with the gun—a fact that didn’t escape his attention, either.

  “It’s a good thing you’re not packing any heat, lady—or I’d be dead,” he whispered. “I could see in all the downstairs windows and no one’s there. I’m beginning to wonder if the place could be empty. All those lights could be on a timer. Even out here, you’d think that people would draw their drapes or put down the shades at night.”

  For just a second, Kate found herself hoping that was indeed the case. But then she reminded herself that an empty house wouldn’t offer the proof she needed.

  Sam was staring at the back porch. “Look, why don’t you stay here and let me go up there?”

  She shook her head vigorously, even though she’d have liked to do just that.

  He shrugged. “Okay. I had to try. I’ll go first, and then I can help you up.”

  He climbed the steps to the porch, found a foothold on the railing and began to shinny up the post to the roof. The gutter protested with a loud squeak as he clambered onto the sloping surface. Kate held her breath as she balanced on the railing, ready to ascend behind him. But there was no sound from inside. No lights came on. No faces appeared at windows.

  She struggled up the post until Sam clasped her hand and began to pull her up after him. The gutter squeaked even more loudly, this time sounding as though it was about to give way. They both crouched on the roof, waiting. Sam had drawn his gun, and she thought that he looked like he did this every night. Those lost years in distant war zones came back to her, and she cursed herself silently for having dragged him into this.

  He gestured silently to the two windows that were accessible from the roof. Both were open. They hadn’t been able to tell from down on the ground.

  Sam walked crabwise across the sloping roof to the neater of the windows and peered in. She moved cautiously behind him. The screen, she thought. How are we going to get in? Why didn’t I think about that?

  But Sam obviously had thought about it. First, he tried to raise the screen, and when that failed, he produced a small pair of wire cutters and set to work.

  “It must be all that Boy Scout training,” she muttered.

  He turned to her briefly, holding a finger to his lips, then went on cutting out the screen. Still no sounds from inside. She was more and more convinced that Sam had been right in the first place—the kids had been moved. She wavered between frustration and relief.

  He cut around three sides of the screen, then folded back the top part and climbed into the room. She followed, peering into the darkness.

  The room was empty. The bed was neatly made, but there was no indication that anyone occupied the room. Sam peered into the closets while she opened the dresser drawers. Nothing.

  The other bedrooms were just as empty. There were towels in the two bathrooms, together with various toiletries, but all the closets and dressers had been emptied.

  “Looks like they flew the coop, as your granny says,” Sam stated when they’d searched the entire second floor.

  “Let’s go downstairs. Maybe we’ll find something there.” Now that she knew the place was empty, Kate’s bravery surged once more.

  “What are you expecting to find…a forwarding address, maybe?”

  “No, but they could have left something behind—something incriminating.”

  “I doubt it,” Sam replied as they started down the stairs. “I have a feeling that these people are very careful.”

  And as they searched the first floor, it appeared that he was right. There was food in the cupboards, but not in the refrigerator or the big matching freezer. And not a single personal item could be found anywhere. When they’d finished their search, Sam stood in the living room, which was lit by a lamp that was indeed on a timer.

  “If it’s any consolation, I think you’re right about this place. Why would they leave and take everything with them? Even the wastebaskets have been emptied.”

  “The big question,” she said disgustedly, “is where did they go? You can’t just pack up kids like that and move into a motel or something.’’ A sudden thought struck her and she shivered involuntarily. “Sam, do you think they could have killed those kids?”

  Sam quickly shook his head, but Kate could see that the same thought had crossed his mind.

  “They’ve tried to kill me and they may have killed Tony,” she persisted. “And if I’m right about this all being some sort of experiment, these kids were their failures.”

  “Yeah, but from their point of view, that could make them even more valuable. They’ll want to know why they failed.”

  “This is sick, Sam! I think I’m changing my mind about capital punishment.”

  “We don’t know that that’s what’s happened,” Sam countered. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Kate shook her head. Now that she’d raised the awful specter of the kids having been killed, she couldn’t get it out of her mind. “I want to check the barn before we leave.”

  Sam stared at her. “If they did kill the kids, they wouldn’t have been stupid enough to leave their bodies around.”

  “I still want to check it,” Kate insisted. “Maybe they left something that can be tied to New Leaf or to one of the boys.”

  Sam’s expression told her that he considered that to be highly unlikely, but he shrugged and followed her as they left the house.

  T
he big old barn sat several hundred yards from the house—a dark, weathered wooden structure that hadn’t seen paint in years, if ever. With the moon now totally obscured by clouds, it loomed menacingly in the shadows beyond the reach of the outside floodlights.

  As they approached it, Kate could see that its wide door was closed. A padlock caught the beam of her flashlight, but before Kate could work up a sense of frustration, she saw that it wasn’t locked. Sam slipped it from the hasp and slid the door open.

  They both stood in the doorway as Kate shone the flashlight around the cavernous space, sneezing as the mingled scents of hay and manure tickled her nose and reminded her of childhood excursions to her uncle’s dairy farm.

  The barn appeared to be completely empty—except for one thing. Just inside the door sat a black Ford pickup!

  Sam drew the gun from his waistband and began to circle the truck while Kate stood there trying to contain her excitement as she wondered why it would be here now. Clearly, it belonged to the man they’d seen earlier—the man she believed was her would-be assassin.

  “My guess is that he left it here when they took the kids,” Sam said after he had circled the truck. “Make a note of the license plate so we can check it out.”

  Annoyed with herself for not having thought of that immediately, Kate took out her mini cassette recorder and read off the numbers and letters. Then they moved deeper into the barn and began to check the stalls. Kate’s pleasant memories of her uncle’s farm fought with her fear of what they might find.

  But in the end, they found nothing. Then, just as they were about to leave, the open doorway was suddenly illuminated! A moment later, they heard the sound of an approaching car.

  Kate froze—at least until Sam grabbed her arm urgently and pointed toward the wooden ladderlike steps that led up to the hayloft. As they scrambled up the rungs, she could hear two doors slam outside.

  They crawled into the back of the hayloft, behind piled-up bales of hay. “They’ve probably come back for the truck,” Sam whispered into her ear. “Our car isn’t in sight, so they’ll think we’ve gone.”

  She was about to ask how they would know someone had even been here when she realized that the open barn door would give them away. Dumb, she thought—really dumb. But how could she and Sam have anticipated that anyone would be coming now?

  Sam motioned for her to stay where she was and then began to move carefully toward the edge of the loft. She ignored his instructions and followed him, wanting to get a look at the men, whose low voices could now be heard as they came into the barn.

  “You probably left it open yourself,” said a male voice, sounding unconcerned.

  “I told you I closed it. I didn’t lock it because I didn’t want to go back to the house to look for the key.”

  “You telling me you think she came out here?” the first man asked in a jeering tone. “C’mon. Let’s get out of here. It’s late and I’m beat.”

  “She could have come out here with him—the guy I told you about. I think she was with him when I saw him out on the road. He’s some big-shot TV guy.”

  In the silence that followed, Kate gritted her teeth in helpless anger. So they thought that she—a mere woman—wouldn’t come here alone? She was tempted to tell them a thing or three, but instead, she was forced to concentrate on not sneezing. The hay was getting to her.

  “Well, maybe we’d better look around the house, then,” the first man said. “If they did come out here, they must have tried to get in there.” He paused. “I don’t like this and I don’t mind saying so. I didn’t sign on for this kind of trouble.”

  “Well, trouble is what we’ve got, so you’d better get used to it. The boss says that we can ride it out, but I ain’t so sure about that.”

  More followed, but by this time, they had left the barn and Kate couldn’t hear it. She turned to Sam.

  “The one man must be the owner of the pickup—the one who tried to kill me. I wonder who the other one is.”

  “Didn’t you say that this place was owned by a couple?”

  Kate nodded. “Right. I never met the husband—only the wife. That’s probably him and he doesn’t sound happy.” She started to rise to her feet. “Let’s get out of here. They’re going to find the screen you cut.”

  Sam reached up and drew her back down again. “They’re assuming that we’ve gone. We’re safest up here, where we’ve got the advantage.”

  She dropped down beside him, not at all certain that he was right, but unwilling to argue at the moment. Sam drew her close to him with one arm, while he held the gun in the other. He kissed her.

  “Thanks, Kitty-Kat. I’ve really missed living dangerously.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You are?” He arched a brow in surprise.

  “Yes, I am,” she replied tightly.

  “But you’re not going to promise not to do it again, are you?”

  She was trying to think of a reply to that when they heard the two men’s voices again, and then their footsteps as they returned to the barn.

  “…find anything because there was nothing to find. We made sure of that. But the boss had better figure out a way to get rid of them—and fast.”

  “I don’t want any part of that.”

  “Nobody’s saying you have to. But you sure didn’t object to taking the money.”

  “We were just taking care of the kids.”

  “Sure. But you knew why you were taking care of them.”

  A brief pause followed, and then the man Kate was sure was the pickup owner spoke again. This time, it sounded as though he were directly beneath them, close to the ladder. She felt Sam tense before he released her and gripped the gun with both hands.

  “What’s wrong?” the other man said. “You think they could be up there? There’s no car around anywhere.”

  “Someone’s been on those steps. See the prints?”

  “The kids go up there—or they did, until I started to lock the barn. The condition they’re in, they could’ve fallen off the ladder.”

  Kate held her breath. Sam lay totally still, the gun aimed at the ladder. She was shaking, but his hands were perfectly steady. The gun didn’t waver.

  “Yeah, okay. Let’s get out of here.”

  Kate rolled over onto her back and flexed her taut muscles as the pickup’s engine filled the barn with noise and exhaust fumes. Sam didn’t move until they heard the big barn door slide shut. Then he set down the gun and bent over her.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she lied.

  “I would have gotten him first. He had a rifle and that would have taken longer to aim.”

  She sat up and stared at him. “How can you be so calm about this? Could you really have shot him?”

  “You’d better believe I could have,” Sam replied, getting to his feet and reaching down to help her up. Then he bent to pick up the gun and stared at it. “That’s the really scary thing about guns. They’re too damned easy to use.”

  Kate didn’t want to think about it. She looked down over the edge of the loft into the darkness. “What if they locked the door?”

  “They probably did,” Sam said, picking up her flashlight and starting down the ladder.

  “Now what?” Kate asked in exasperation as Sam tried the door.

  “Maybe there’s another door.” He began to search the barn with the flashlight, finally spotting a smaller door on one side.

  Unfortunately, that door, too, appeared to be padlocked from the outside. While Kate sneezed, he played the light over the rest of the barn, then started back up the ladder.

  “What are you doing?” she asked between sneezes.

  “Seeing if we can get out from up here,” he called back to her.

  Kate scrambled up the ladder and followed him over to the far side of the big loft where he was already pushing open a large portion of the wall.

  “We’re in luck,” Sam stated as he trained the flashlight outside on something belo
w them. “A nice, soft landing.”

  “Not as soft as you think,” Kate said, peering over his shoulder at the bales of hay piled on the ground. She’d jumped once at her uncle’s farm and had sprained an ankle.

  “Okay, I’ll go first, and if I don’t break my neck, you’ll know it’s safe.”

  Then, before she could say anything else, Sam leaped from the loft and landed with a soft thud, scattering the bales. He climbed out of them and shoved them back into place, then gestured for her to follow.

  Kate hesitated, remembering that sprained ankle and all the other bruises. “Keep yourself loose,” Sam ordered.

  Dammit, she thought, if he can do it, so can I. And before she could consider the lack of logic to that, she jumped.

  Sam climbed over the bales to help her up. “Sorry we don’t have time right now for a roll in the hay,” he said, grinning.

  Kate sneezed—-which, given her thoughts at the moment, was probably for the best.

  KATE PUT DOWN THE PHONE. “There was a message from Lisa. They found Tony’s car in long-term parking at Dulles.” She sank down in the old-fashioned glider on the screened porch and stared out into the darkness surrounding the cabin. “He’s dead, Sam. I know it. I could hear it in Lisa’s voice, too.”

  Sam nodded. “You’re probably right. With everything else that’s been going on, I forgot to tell you that I talked to the people at the camp in Virginia where he worked. They gave him a great reference. I pushed them a bit on his emotional stability—things like that—and they had nothing but good things to say about him.”

  “Lisa said that the police are acting as though the fact that his car was there proves that he decided to take off. I’m going to talk to them tomorrow morning.”

  “How much do you intend to tell them?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know yet. Whatever is necessary to help them find him.”

  “Well, think it over carefully because they’re going to be asking a lot of questions.” He wrapped an arm around her and drew her close. “Let’s go to bed and forget about this for a while.”