by Theresa Weir
Daniel lifted the metal latch and pushed, the bottom of the door dragging across a flat stone.
Inside, the support beams were hand-hewn, the pegs hand-carved. Old barns were a work of art, a piece of Americana that was vastly underappreciated, with more doors and hidden compartments than a magician’s box. He could tell the barn had been used for milking at one time.
Dark, slanted beams of light crept between rough boards, falling through a jagged rip in the roof. To the left were stalls that had once held cattle and horses, in the center, angled beams supported a second floor where hay bales had once tumbled off a conveyer belt to be stacked for winter. To the right was a tack room, just as dark and musty as the rest of the place.
The barn had been built on a hillside, giving it three levels, with the lower level partially underground. Beneath his feet, the wooden floor echoed hollowly, hinting of empty space below. He walked carefully, knowing how unstable the structure could be. The toe of his boot caught on something and he backtracked.
He kicked away straw to reveal a hatch. He slid a board aside, looped his fingers through a metal ring, and pulled, surprised to find that it opened easily.
Looking into the pit, he was barely able to make out a floor strewn with straw. Past the perimeter of light was nothing but a black void. He yelled into the darkness, the echo of his own voice the only answer. Then he heard a sound, a small, tiny sound. A kitten, he thought.
“Cleo?”
There was the cry again, louder this time.
Daniel grabbed a nearby ladder and lowered one end into the hole. He scrambled down, his feet sinking into the straw at the bottom. He repeated her name, thinking he’d lost his damn mind, searching the bottom of a barn for a woman who was a thousand miles away.
And then he heard a low moan that was definitely human.
In the darkness, he made out a shape on the ground, and his mind recognized lighter patterns as a person’s bare arms, a person’s bare legs.
He moved close enough to make out the curve of a pale face, the line broken by wildly curling hair. He fell to his knees in the straw. “My God.” His voice didn’t sound like his own. “Cleo.”
He touched her arm. Under his palm, her skin felt cold, bloodless.
“Sinclair?”
The question came without movement, with hardly a breath taken to carry the whispered name to his ears.
She searched, finding his hand, pulling it to her mouth, pressing it to the side of her face and holding it there. “Stay with me,” she whispered, clinging to him. “Stay with me in this bad place.”
Adrian Tyler’s words came back to him. My sister’s very fragile.
Daniel swallowed. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
She pressed her lips to his knuckles, his fingertips, his palm. “Shh,” she said, her breath against his wrist. “It’ll be okay.”
“Cleo-” He slipped his hand from her grasp, then grabbed her by both arms, pulling her to a sitting position, where she slumped forward like a rag doll, chin to chest, arms hanging limply at her sides. He could feel the bones beneath the muscles of her arms. He could feel every tendon, every sinew.
He touched a finger to her chin, tipping her face toward his. He could make out the glow of her skin. “Cleo, I’m going to get you out of here.”
She nodded, her head moving sluggishly.
He stood. Then, with his feet braced, he pulled her to a standing position.
She was boneless; he couldn’t keep a grip on any part of her. He finally managed to get her upright, but as soon as he let go of her arm, she began to sink. “Stand up,” he coaxed.
For a fraction of a second he felt her stiffen. Just as quickly, she dissolved again. Before he lost more ground, Daniel bent his knees, hitched his shoulder under her diaphragm, then straightened, locking his legs once he was upright.
With Cleo draped over his shoulder, he grabbed the ladder with one hand, his other hand gripping Cleo’s legs. He climbed one rung at a time, the muscles in his arms and legs straining. When he was two-thirds of the way through the door with his bundle, he shifted her weight, resting her bottom on the wooden floor.
Out of the pit, he let her slump to her side, her legs, from the knees down, dangling inside the opening. Two more rungs and he jumped free of the ladder.
Now that they were in better light, he dropped beside her and lifted her arm, examining the place where needles had been inserted. Somebody had shot her full of drugs.
“Who did this to you?” he asked, his voice tight, his fingertips passing lightly over the damaged skin.
“The candy man,” she said thickly, laughing softly to herself.
She raised a hand to touch the side of her face, to touch a bruised cheekbone, a gesture that made his chest feel tight, that broke his heart. With her hand still hovering limply above her cheek, the vacant look in her eyes became more focused. “Daniel?” she asked in surprise. “’S-that you?”
He lifted her legs out of the way and closed the door. Then he scooped her up and walked through the barn, out into the blinding sunlight.
She let out a gasp and brought up a hand to shield her eyes. “So bright,” she said. “As bright as heaven.”
“Keep your eyes closed,” he told her softly but firmly.
He checked to see if she was listening. Her eyes were wide open. “Are you looking at the sun?” he asked, horrified. “Don’t look directly at the sun. Close your eyes, Cleo.”
She either heard him, or once more succumbed to the overload of drugs running through her veins. Whatever the reason, her eyes drifted closed and stayed that way until they reached the truck, where he quickly secured her in the passenger seat.
Hardly able to detect a rise and fall to her chest, he headed in the direction of Egypt and the nearest hospital. It seemed like a hundred miles, the frantic, heart-pounding ride spent with Cleo drifting in and out of consciousness, Daniel holding the accelerator to the floor while the old truck hovered somewhere between sixty-five and seventy.
At the emergency-room door, he honked, skidded to a stop, cut the engine, and jumped out. As soon as his feet hit the ground, he circled the truck. He scooped her up and carried her through the double automatic doors, falling into an old, familiar role. “Kidnap victim,” he explained as two nurses met him in the hallway. “She’s been pumped full of something-I don’t know what.”
A gurney appeared. He put her on it. A blood pressure cuff went around her arm.
They had some trouble finding a vein. “She’s dehydrated,” the nurse said, rubbing and slapping, finally drawing blood.
The on-call physician showed up, quickly assessing the situation. “Slight miosis and respiratory depression. Naloxone,” he ordered. “Slow drip, so she won’t get sick.”
They wheeled her away, leaving Daniel standing in the empty hall.
He kept forgetting he was a cop, that he was supposed to be the one in control. Dazed, he put in a call to Jo, telling her to contact the state police. Then he found a chair and dropped into it.
He stared at the floor, skin tight, eyes gritty. He needed to call Cleo’s brother. But he didn’t know anything yet. As soon as he knew something, he would call. God, he couldn’t think straight.
A nurse appeared with a clipboard.
“She’ll be okay?” he asked.
“She’s getting fluids and Naloxone, so she should come around pretty quickly. Now for the fun part. I have all these tedious question to ask, just the standard, basic stuff.”
He gave them as much information about Cleo as he could, which wasn’t much more than her first and last name. He didn’t know if she had insurance. “I doubt it,” he said. “But the Egypt Police Department will pick up the tab.” It wasn’t his place to make such a decision, but he was pretty sure he could talk Jo into it, and she could talk the board into it.
“Allergic to any medications?”
He didn’t know.
“Next of kin?”
He didn’t know t
hat either. “Her brother, I guess.”
“Religious preference?”
He didn’t know.
“Previous surgeries? Mental illness, depression, anything going on in her life that could affect what’s happening now? When we were changing her into a hospital gown, we noticed a scar on her abdomen. Has she had a cesarean delivery?”
Daniel jumped to his feet. “I don’t know! Christ, quit asking me this shit. I don’t know!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The next morning, Daniel stood a few feet from the bed, arms crossed, letting Jo fuss over Cleo. Cleo was sitting up, a tray of half-eaten food pushed aside. Her color was better, her face a little more filled out. But she still didn’t look good, didn’t look healthy. An IV bag hung from a metal frame while a monitor digitally registered her pulse rate.
“We don’t want to bother you with this right now, dear,” Jo began, taking Cleo’s free hand in hers. “But we have to know who did this.” Jo was dressed in her police outfit, from the shiny badge to her shiny black shoes.
Muted sunlight fell across Cleo’s face, making the dark circles under her eyes more pronounced. She looked from Jo to Daniel, then back to Jo. Daniel saw her uncertainty, and wondered at it. What didn’t she want to say? What was holding her back?
“Cleo,” Jo urged gently, “you must tell us, dear.”
Cleo pulled her hand free and leaned against the pillow behind her back. She turned her face to stare out the window. From the second-story room, the only thing that could be seen was an occasional pigeon. She might have looked calm, but the digital readout on the flashing pulse rate monitor jumped from 90 beats per minute to 120.
In a flat, emotionless voice, she said, “Burton Campbell.”
Daniel saw Jo stiffen, heard her gasp.
Leaving Cleo to gaze blankly into nothing, Jo spun around, grabbed Daniel by the arm, and pulled him from the room and down the hall, out of earshot of Cleo.
“Don’t you breathe a word of this,” she whispered, her eyes intent. “ Burton Campbell! If this got out, think how bad it would make the town look.”
“What if he did it?”
“That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard. I’ve known Burton Campbell for over twenty years. He comes from good family.”
“And that makes a difference?” Daniel asked.
“You know as well as I do that Burton Campbell didn’t kidnap that woman in there.”
“Do I?”
“You want to believe her because you never liked him.”
“Maybe I always had a feeling about the guy.”
“You believe he did it?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re a bigger fool than I am. What reason would he have for doing such a thing?”
“That’s what we’re going to have to find out.”
“This isn’t Los Angeles. Don’t you think I know how bored you’ve been here? You’re just looking for excitement. Well, this kind of thing doesn’t happen in Egypt.”
“You want to keep your town on that top-ten list so badly that you can’t see a serious crime when it’s right in front of you.” That was the problem with small towns. Keeping up appearances was a priority even if it meant ignoring the obvious.
“There’s been a crime all right, but Cleo Tyler committed it,” Jo said. “Can’t you see this was orchestrated to make us look bad? Isn’t it too convenient the way she told us exactly what was going to happen to her before it happened? That’s because she knew. She did it to herself.”
“Why?”
“To blackmail us. Or maybe for the media attention.”
“So does this mean you won’t put a guard on her?”
“Of course I won’t put a guard on her!”
“Do you plan to question Campbell?”
“Listen to me, Daniel Sinclair. I stuck up for you when the whole town was on my back about hiring you. I’ve put up with your nonconformist, radical ways. With your refusing to wear a uniform, refusing to arrest teens for underage drinking. But I’m the chief of police. I tell you what to do. Understand? And I don’t want an investigation launched. It would make us the laughingstock of the county. I don’t want people to know I was taken in by a con artist from the big city.”
She ran her fingers over her brown tie, making sure it was straight, then turned and marched away.
There had been a time when Daniel had had some influence over Jo. But she’d quit listening to him ever since some pot she’d confiscated had vanished. She’d accused Daniel of smoking it. Truth was, she’d seized a joint from a sixteen-year-old. The boy would have been put away for a year, so Daniel flushed the evidence.
He wasn’t cut out to be a cop. All the damn rules-that was his problem. He could never obey blindly, not when a rule didn’t make any sense. But there had been one time when that tendency to disobey rules had caused the death of four people…
Daniel walked back to Cleo’s room, rapping on the open door before stepping inside. She was exactly as they’d left her, staring out the window at the expanse of sky.
“I knew nobody would believe me,” she said in the monotone she’d used before.
“Did he give you any reason for abducting you?” Daniel asked.
“I guess it’s all for the best,” she said, her mind apparently still caught up in Jo’s reaction. “Now I can just leave. No tedious questions. No statements to make.”
“Cleo, I believe you.”
She turned. There was no relief in her flat eyes. “Why? Why now?”
“I just do. Accept that so we can concentrate on putting together enough evidence to bring him in.”
She was silent a moment. Then, “He said I knew something about him. Something he didn’t want anybody to know.”
“What?”
“I have no idea. That’s what I told him. I don’t know anything. But he insisted I do, and that it will eventually come out.”
“Is there anything else you can think of? Anything at all?”
“He said something about not meaning to hurt somebody.”
Daniel approached the bed and checked the IV. It would be empty in a few hours. “The nurse said this is your last bag of fluid. When it’s finished, I want you out of here. It might not be safe.”
Her skin grew paler. “I can’t go back to that motel.”
“I want you to come home with me.”
At first he wasn’t sure she’d heard him.
“That’s ridiculous.”
He rushed on to explain. “I want to keep an eye on you. You can use my mother’s old room.”
From behind him came the soft-soled footsteps of a nurse. “Your brother’s on the phone,” she said. “Do you want us to transfer the call to your room, or tell him to call back later?”
“I’ll take it.” Cleo pressed her hands against the mattress, shoving herself higher. The nurse left, and Daniel picked up the receiver from the bedside table and handed it to Cleo.
“ Adrian.” There was a softness to Cleo’s voice Daniel had never heard before.
“I’m fine,” she said. There was a pause. “I swear.”
Daniel turned and walked slowly from the room, the murmur of her voice carrying into the hallway. Or maybe his ears were just tuned to her frequency.
“No, Adrian. Don’t do that. Please. I’m fine. You don’t need to come.” Another pause. “You must wonder if it’s always going to be like this,” she said sadly. “Do you wonder if I’ll always be a burden to you?”
He must have answered in the negative, because her voice grew soft again, less tense. “I love you.”
That was followed by a long silence on her part. Daniel could imagine her brother asking questions Adrian didn’t want to ask.
“Yes,” she said. “They know who did it. They’ll find him… No, not yet, but they’ll arrest him very soon. I’m not in any danger… Yes, people are watching out for me.”
Another question. “No.” Her voice dropped. “I wasn’t raped. I swe
ar. And even if I had been, well, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, would it? Worse things have happened and I’ve gotten though them, haven’t I?” She was using a tone of voice Daniel was becoming familiar with-the bubbly bluff.
Then she told him again that she loved him and said goodbye.
Daniel left with a heaviness in his chest that he didn’t understand. The first thing he did when he got home was call Campbell ’s house. When no one answered, he called Campbell ’s office.
“Dr. Campbell is out of town,” the receptionist told him.
“Where’d he go?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Surely he left a number where he can be reached.”
“I’m sorry. The only number he left was his associate’s, in case of an emergency.”
“Isn’t that unusual?”
“No. They always take care of each other’s emergencies. It works out very well for both of them.”
Daniel hung up then put in a call to the state police.
“Crime scene was picked clean,” the head of investigations told him. “Nothing there.”
“Shit.” Daniel followed that with a few words of thanks then hung up. He left the station and headed for the hospital, stopping to pick up some clothes for Cleo on the way.
The IV monitor was beeping when Daniel appeared, two shopping bags in his hands.
“Clothes,” he said, dropping the bags on the bed. “No sign of your suitcase yet, so I figured the only stitch of clothing you have to your name is what you were wearing yesterday.”
“It wasn’t mine.”
“What do you mean?”
“The black slip. He gave it to me to put on.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
The nurse finally showed up to shut off the beeping machine. “We can take that needle out now,” she announced.
“Do you know what happened to her clothes?” Daniel asked.