by Darci Hannah
Picking up the conversation, I argued, “Whoever it is won’t talk if you two show up with me. I mean, you can come with me, just not inside the processing shed. I don’t want to scare the kid away.”
“Okay. But I still think you should be packing heat in case it’s not a kid.” Tay, having gone home to change, reached into her handbag. “Here,” she said, and pulled out a hefty pistol.
“Holy cobbler! I’m not taking a gun.”
“Jeez, Whit, it’s not real.” She cast me an admonishing look. “It’s an airsoft gun. Todd hides it in Char’s naughty drawer.”
“How on earth would you know that?” Hannah asked, her tone striking a note between mild disgust and delicious scandal.
“Because, obviously, I saw him put it in there. I thought he was playing in my mom’s unmentionables and called him a perv. He pulled out the gun and shot me. It stings like a sonofafudge, but it’s not lethal. See? It’s got an orange tip. Not lethal.”
“He shot you?” Hannah was aghast.
Tay shrugged.
I eyed the gun, took it, and said, “Yeah. Sure.” I shoved it in the back of my waistband like a real detective. It felt pretty cool.
We were about ready to leave my room when Hannah piped up, “I still think we should tell Jack.”
“Heck no!” Tay blurted, spinning to face her. “He’s been bewitched by a slice of Jenn’s pie. I saw him sitting at a table on the patio staring at it like he used to stare at that skanky reporter Greta Stone. Let him enjoy the moment. Besides, this is our lead to follow. Not Jack’s.”
Taking that as our cue, we left my room and headed for the processing shed.
A single light, yellow with age and choked with moths, illuminated the front entrance of the building. The sun had set before we left the inn, and now the entire blooming orchard and the processing sheds were cast in the last purple glimmer of twilight. Somehow, standing beneath the old porch light, it seemed darker. The utter quiet that permeated our senses reminded us that we were indeed alone. It was 8:59.
Hannah, seemingly fascinated with the knot of moths fluttering around the light, suddenly looked at me. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
Tay, monitoring the time on her phone, looked up as well. “Ditto. What if it’s a trap?”
“Ladies. We’ve been over this. You’ll be able to hear everything I do over the phone. Also,” I said, giving my backside a pat, “I’m packing nonlethal heat. At the first sign of trouble I’ll hightail it out this door. I promise. Until then, stay here and listen in.” With my phone on mute, I clipped it onto a short lanyard and placed it around my neck with the microphone poking slightly above the neck of my hoodie.
“Nine o’clock,” Tay whispered.
I gave the girls a nod, opened the front door of the shed, and slipped into the building.
It was black as night inside.
I stood a moment, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Once they did, I saw that the only source of light in the cavernous processing room was an exit sign above the doorway leading to the break room and Jeb’s old office. I didn’t know who I was meeting, or where, but I figured, due to the utter silence, that they most likely weren’t by the heavy machinery.
“Hey,” I called out softly, walking through the dark room. “Anybody here?”
Nothing.
My progress wasn’t swift. The deserted building was downright eerie, and the farther away from Tay and Hannah I traveled, the more the hairs on the back of my neck began to prickle. If someone was waiting for me here, they were being awfully quiet about it.
I thought of Jack then. Why hadn’t we told him about the note? He was the law around here. He was the man investigating this case. And yet here I was, walking through a creepy building where a man had been murdered the night before, all because of my competitive nature and a stupid note. I stood under the exit sign and glanced into the back hallway.
Then I froze. It was a sound, soft and insubstantial as a baby’s breath.
Someone was in the building with me.
I drew the airsoft gun from my pants and held it before me. “Hello?” I uttered tentatively, peering into the darkness. I was just about to take a step into the hallway when sound erupted, violent and vicious as a dog attack. It came from the break room. “Somebody’s in here,” I cried to my phone, and ran for the break room door.
I thrust it open with my shoulder. The moment I did, the door on the far side of the room closed. But someone was still in the room, someone or something that was flopping against the hard tiles like a gaffed fish thrown onto the rocks to die. With heart pounding, I pressed a hand to the wall, searching for the light switch. I found it, flipped it on, and gasped in horror.
There on the floor, foaming at the mouth and seizing with a violence I’d never before seen, was Cody Rivers. The poor boy had been beaten to a pulp. Beside him, and somehow even more unsettling, was another creepy twig face.
I ran to him, took out my phone, and turned it off mute. “Hannah! Tay, are you there?”
“Whit, My God! What’s happening?”
“It’s Cody Rivers. I think he’s been poisoned. Call an ambulance, and call Jack. I’m going to try to make him vomit. Then we need to get him out of here!”
“Copy that.”
I left Cody for a moment to search the kitchen drawers for something I could use to trigger his gag reflex. He was convulsing too violently for me to use a finger. I grabbed a thick-handled wooden spoon, held him tightly against my chest, and pried his mouth open. Once the nasty business of purging was over, I left him on the floor while I went to find the wheelbarrow. Cody was a tall, well-muscled young man and there was no way I could carry him out of the building alone.
With Todd’s gun in hand, I left the break room and headed for the processing room. The way this time was backlit by the lights I’d turned on, yet this caused the heavily equipped room to appear cavernous and dark. I’d barely stepped across the threshold when I heard footsteps. They were moving fast along the far wall, behind the extra storage bins and the forklift. There was still somebody in the building. Ten-to-one it was the murderer. Shaking, I aimed the gun at the sound. Then I saw it briefly, a hulking, shaggy shadow flitting across the wall toward the break room. I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.
A flash like a bomb exploded in the darkness. The impact launched me off my feet, flinging me across the cement floor on my backside. “Holy cobbler!” I cried, momentarily blinded and stunned. I sat up, shook my head, and looked at the pistol gripped tightly in my hand. Nonlethal? Really? That’s when I realized that fire was raging through entire front of the building. The thing belonging to the racing footsteps was nowhere to be found.
“Oh my God!” It was Hannah. She was screaming over the phone that was still dangling around my neck. “Whitney! Are you all right? There’s fire!”
“Sort of,” I cried, scrambling to my feet. I dropped the gun and ran for the wheelbarrow. “I guess that means you guys aren’t coming in here to help me.”
“We tried,” Tay replied, sounding frantic. “The door was locked. What happened?”
I grabbed the wheelbarrow and was about to dash for the kitchen when I slowed down. “I’m not sure. Guys, this is important. Did you happen to see anyone leave the building?”
“No. I told you, the front doors are locked. We can’t get in. We’ve been here the whole time, trying.” Tay fell silent, then said, “Oh my God, Whitney! Is somebody in there with you?”
“Maybe,” I said, and for the first time in my life, I understood what real fear felt like.
∞
Smoke was filling the room, billowing on the ceiling while the fire spread like a voracious hunger. This was not the time to panic, I told myself. Killer or not, I needed to get Cody in the wheelbarrow and out the back exit.
Pushing the wheelbarrow toward the break
room, two things crystalized in my mind. Someone had started the fire, and that same person had beaten and poisoned the boy, using, no doubt, the cyanide that had killed Jeb. What the hell was going on here? No wonder the kids were acting so strangely. They were afraid to talk. They were afraid to be seen with Jack or me. Now I understood why. Even though Cody had taken precautions by passing that note, someone had found out, and that someone had gone to extreme measures to silence him. Once back in the break room, the sight of the handsome kid alone on the floor, bloody and unconscious, made me sick with guilt. Thankfully there was no sign of the other.
“Hannah,” I said, having muscled the boy into the wheelbarrow. “I’m bringing Cody out the back exit. Can you meet me there? Tay, stay and wait for Jack. Also, we’re going to need the fire department.”
“Got it.”
I wheeled Cody out of the break room with caution. I then peeked into the hallway. Once I was certain no one was there, we ran for the back exit. I spun the wheelbarrow around, intending to pull it out of the building behind me, and depressed the door handle. However, when I threw my shoulder against the hard metal slab, it didn’t budge. I did it again. I did the same thing two more times, all with the same result. The door wasn’t locked, but it didn’t budge. Something was blocking it.
“Hannah!” I cried. “Hannah, are you there?”
She screamed my name, alerting me that she was. “Oh my God! The door’s blocked! One of the Gators has been backed into it and I can’t find the key.”
Then she echoed the words that were already ringing in my ears. “Whitney. My God! You’re trapped in there!”
Now I knew what the killer had done. I was confident that whoever it was, they were no longer in the building with me. They were no longer here because it was a trap, and Cody, the poor boy, was the bait. The twig face glaring up from beside him had been my warning. I was trapped in a burning building with a dying young man. There was no way Hannah could pull a vehicle as heavy as a Gator away from the door by herself, and I doubted we had time to wait for help. I might survive it, but Cody would die for sure. There had to be another way.
Then I remembered the forklift.
It was risky, but it was our only chance. With a new plan running through my panic-stricken brain, and my friends crying at me over the phone, I wheeled Cody back to the kitchen. There I soaked all the towels I could find and threw them into the wheelbarrow with him. Once Cody was covered, I pushed him into the burning, smoke-filled room and made for the forklift.
With a burst of adrenaline strength, I hoisted him onto the narrow floor of the forklift, rearranged the wet towels, and climbed onto the seat. I then wrapped a towel around my own head as well. It had been a while since I’d last operated the forklift, but it all came flooding back. Driving a forklift isn’t at all like driving a car. In fact, because of its compact weight distribution and the fact that it steers from the back wheels, it works almost the opposite. I remembered that much at least, and turned it on. I threw it into reverse and backed up into the room as far as I could while aligning myself with the burning front door. Then I stopped, put it in drive, and took a deep breath.
“Tay,” I cried above the roaring fire into the phone. “Stand clear of the door. We’re coming through!”
Twenty-Seven
Smoke filled the building, stinging my eyes and burning my lungs. I propped Cody up, making sure he was safely inside the forklift. Holding him firmly with one arm, I gripped the steering wheel with the other. There was only one chance to get this right. If I missed, or if the fire hadn’t weakened the door enough, we’d crash and burn. It was a terrifying thought, but there was nothing else for it. I raised the fork to the level of a ramming rod and said a quick prayer. Then I stepped on the gas.
The forklift rocketed toward the blazing door. Anticipating the jarring impact, I stomped hard on the pedal and screamed.
We hit with a force like a compact car running headlong into a parked semi. A loud crash, a rush of swirling fire, a moment of weightlessness anchored by a white-knuckled grip, and more screaming. Then I felt the cool night air on my skin and opened my eyes.
I was still screaming. So were Tay and Hannah. Then I saw Jack standing beside them, and stopped. Relief swept through me at the sight of them all. My madcap plan had worked. Jack was beside the forklift the moment it came to a halt.
“Christ, Whit,” he cried, his face red and contorted with anguish. “You should have told me about the note!” That was all he said on the matter because his entire focus then turned to the unconscious boy slumped at my feet.
“What the hell happened?” he demanded, lifting Cody down.
“Poisoned, I think. And beaten. He was convulsing and foaming at the mouth when I found him. I made him vomit, but he’s in a bad way.”
“I can see that. Christ, he’s not breathing. I’m going to start CPR. Tay, help me. Hannah, get the hospital on the phone. Whitney, are you okay to run?” I nodded, feeling I could run for miles with all the adrenaline pumping through my blood. “Good,” he said. “You’re the fastest we have.” He then tossed me his keys and sent me for his cruiser. The ambulance was coming all the way from Sturgeon Bay. Jack’s plan was to meet it on the road. It was the best plan we had.
I took the keys and ran, bolting down the gravel road and plunging into darkness. It struck me then that Cody’s attacker was still out here. Fear scoured my nerves once again, but I pushed it aside. There was no time to be afraid. A kid’s life hung in the balance. With tears streaming down my cheeks, I made for the lights of the inn.
I was halfway down the road when I saw the shortcut. It was a lit pathway connecting the orchard to the parking lot. Without another thought I turned off the road in favor of the narrow, winding trail instead.
It might have been a mistake. The trail wound through a wooded stretch, and although it was lit, dimly, with decorative lampposts, the thick pines that lined the path appeared black and spooky. It made me run even faster. Only when the trees thinned and I caught sight of Jack’s police-issue SUV in the parking lot did I breathe a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, that was when I caught a whiff of cigar smoke.
“What’s the hurry, Ms. Bloom?” a languid, vaguely familiar voice said from the darkness. The voice startled me. And when I saw the shadow emerging from the pines, I grew scared. It was the shadow of a man, and it was blocking my path. I was running too fast to stop and was too afraid to try. I left it up to the spooky shadow to move, and it didn’t. I ran full-tilt into the solid, cigar-smoking form of Brock Sorensen. The impact sent us both reeling to the ground.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” I cried, scrambling to my feet. “What the devil are you thinking, jumping in front of me like that?”
“I … crap!” he breathed, grabbing his cigar from the walkway. He gave it a little flick, then put it back in his mouth. “I thought you’d stop,” he said, straightening. He took a puff and brushed the pine needles off his pants.
“Well … I didn’t. I couldn’t! And I’m sorry, but I can’t stand here and chit-chat. There’s been an accident at the processing shed. I have to get Officer MacLaren’s cruiser.”
“Jack? Is he okay?”
“Jack’s fine. It’s a young man,” I told him, and took off for the parking lot, aiming the key fob at the SUV as I ran. The doors unlocked. The lights came on. I jumped into the front seat, buckled up, and stuck the key into the ignition. I was just about to throw the car into reverse when Brock jumped into the passenger seat beside me.
Pulling the cigar from his mouth, he tossed it on the pavement and shut the door. “I’m coming with you.”
My heart was still racing, and I didn’t have time to argue. Every second I delayed was a second Cody couldn’t afford. Sorensen was the business manager, after all. He’d probably hired the kid to begin with and had every right to tag along. So why was I so unsettled by his presence? Because moments ago
a boy had been beaten and poisoned, and the processing shed set on fire, and this man had been standing off the pathway in the shadow of the pines smoking a cigar. He’d looked unfazed.
What did I know of Brock Sorensen? What did any of us know of him? He was new to Cherry Cove and therefore a mystery. What if he was the man behind everything? What if he was coming with me to finish off the poor boy, silencing him once and for all? Everything was a possibility, and yet everything seemed so absurd. Besides, I didn’t have time to think on it further. Cody was dying. I threw the car into gear and stepped on the gas.
∞
The moment I pulled up to the burning processing shed, Jack gathered the young man into his arms and ran to meet us.
“Oh my God!” Sorensen cried. “It’s Cody Rivers!” He jumped out of the cruiser and ran to assist Jack.
The fire truck was just arriving when we left. Hannah and Tay volunteered to stay behind and bring everyone at the inn up to speed on what had happened. With Jack and Brock in the back of the SUV again performing CPR on Cody, I turned on the sirens and raced toward Door County General. The moment I spotted the ambulance on the highway speeding toward us I flicked my high-beams and pulled over. They knew we were coming. I prayed they were prepared.
“I’ll ride with the boy,” Sorensen volunteered, climbing into the back of the ambulance with the EMT. The pallor of his skin was ashen, and he looked scared … or perhaps, I mused darkly, it was guilt we were witnessing. I hated myself for doubting a man Dad had put his faith in, but I couldn’t help it. Somebody had pummeled Cody’s body and forced him to ingest poison. I had narrowly missed the killer. And then I found Sorensen lurking in the shadows off the pathway—almost as if he’d been waiting for me.