"I'll take you," J.L. offered. "Then we can drive together. I have a bag in my trunk."
"This is where we're going." Barker handed J.L. a sheet of paper with some information on it. "Olivia, I'm sure you're wondering why I want you on this case. The fact is, something bizarre is going on here. All the people are dead, but there's no sign of any struggle."
"Weird," J.L. muttered.
"You can say that again." Barker gave Olivia a wry look. "And when it comes to weird-assed crap, you're the expert."
She smiled grimly. "Thanks."
Forty-five minutes later she dropped an overnight bag in the trunk of J.L.'s car. She set another case containing her laptop and webcam on the backseat. The webcam was just wishful thinking, she realized. Most probably she would miss the usual nine o'clock meeting with Robby. Just as well. He'd missed the last two nights.
"Let's go." J.L. climbed into the driver's seat.
She slid into the passenger seat and buckled up as J.L. took off. Robby had called briefly on the phone the last two nights. He'd sounded rushed and admitted something urgent was happening at work, but he wouldn't explain what. He'd confessed that he might not be able to come see her Friday night after all.
Now it looked like she was in the same boat. "Do you think we'll be back by tomorrow night?"
J.L. shook his head as he pulled onto a freeway. "I doubt it."
She sighed and called Robby on his cell phone. As usual, he didn't pick up, so she left a message. "Robby, I've been sent out of town on an assignment. It doesn't look like I'll be home tomorrow night. Call me, so we can work something out. Love you. 'Bye." She hung up.
J.L. glanced at her. "You had a big date planned?"
"Yeah." She slipped her cell phone into its pocket inside her handbag. "He was going to tell me something important."
"About himself?"
"I guess." She set her holster containing her sidearm in her handbag. It felt awkward, wearing it in the car. She was glad she'd worn one of her more comfortable pantsuits today. The linen pants and jacket were navy blue, and her T-shirt was white with little red stars, making her look patriotic. In her apartment, she'd exchanged her navy pumps for a pair of black Nikes.
"So Robby has a deep, dark secret." J.L. zoomed past a car on the freeway. "How interesting."
She scoffed. "What makes you think it's deep and dark? Robby is a sweet guy."
"He carries a freaking claymore on his back, Liv. And he's built like a bulldozer."
"Thanks."
J.L. shrugged. "Could be worse. He could be hiding something bad, like he's a kleptomaniac."
"I don't think so."
"Nymphomaniac?"
She snorted. Though J.L. might have a point, if Robby made a habit of always going three rounds.
"I've got it! He escaped from a mental ward."
She shook her head.
"From the zoo?"
She punched J.L. on the shoulder.
"Hey, watch it. I'm driving."
"You're speeding."
"We've got a long way to go." J.L. passed another car. "I want to get there while it's still daylight."
"What's the latest news on the missing guard and Yasmine?" Olivia asked.
"There is no news. They did a good job of disappearing." J.L. glanced at her. "Did you learn anything useful?"
"No." She'd spent the last two days interviewing the other guards at Leavenworth. They all insisted they had no idea Joe was helping someone sneak in to see Otis Crump. And they were all being honest.
She yawned. She hadn't slept well the last few nights. She was still upset about Yasmine's betrayal and still worried about Robby.
"Do you need some sleep?" J.L. asked.
She yawned again. "Don't you want me to navigate?"
"I've got my handy GPS. Go ahead and rest. I have a feeling we're going to be up really late tonight."
She removed the clip from her hair so she could lean back against the headrest, then closed her eyes.
Sometime later J.L. shook her shoulder. "Hey, you want a hamburger, fishburger, or chickenburger? Those are the choices."
She blinked awake and realized they were in the drive-through lane of a small fast food restaurant. "Uh, chicken." She glanced at the digital clock. It was 7:38. "Are we in Nebraska?"
"Yep. We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto." J.L. lowered his car window and placed their order. He reached for his wallet.
"I'll get it." Olivia rummaged in her handbag and passed J.L. a twenty dollar bill. "How much farther?"
"We should be there in about thirty minutes." J.L. paid for the food, handed the paper sacks to Olivia, then set their drinks into the cup holders. "I passed Harrison and Barker on the highway about fifteen minutes ago, so I figured we had a little time to spare."
They exited the parking lot and in a few minutes, they'd left the town behind. Fields of corn flanked the road. Olivia estimated the plants were about five to six feet tall. She finished her chicken sandwich, and the view hadn't changed. She shared some of J.L.'s fries and sipped her drink. The cornfields stretched on and on.
"Lots of corn," she muttered.
"Yep." J.L. drank some cola. "It was starting to make me sleepy. I needed some caffeine."
Shortly after eight, they arrived at the small town where Barker had reserved some rooms. Olivia and J.L. checked into the motel just as Harrison and Barker pulled up.
Olivia used the bathroom and tossed some cold water on her face. In five minutes they were on their way to the cluster of farmhouses where the dead bodies had been discovered. Barker had called the sheriff, requesting that he meet them there.
They turned onto a dirt road that dissected two large cornfields. Olivia noted the sun nearing the horizon. They would end up doing some of their investigation with flashlights.
"There's the sheriff's car." Olivia pointed as J.L. sped past it.
He pulled into a driveway that led to an old wood-frame farmhouse, and they exited the car. Olivia strapped her holster around her waist and wedged her flashlight under the belt. She wound her hair on the back of her head and secured it with the clip.
As they walked back to the sheriff, she noticed there were four farmhouses, two on each side of the road. Farther down the road she spotted two red barns. Each farmhouse was two stories high and painted white. Each house had a wide front porch. Their only distinguishing feature was the color of the shutters. One had black shutters, one had dark green, and the other two were slate blue and maroon. Each house had a big shade tree in the front yard. Surrounding the cluster of farmhouses and barns, green cornfields stretched for miles. The sun hovered on the horizon, painting the sky with shades of pink and gold.
Harrison had parked behind the sheriff's car, and Barker was already discussing the case with the local officer. J.L. and Olivia introduced themselves.
"I'm telling you it's downright strange," the sheriff said. "I can't make any sense of it. These were good, God-fearing people. Who would want to kill them all?"
"Let's have a look," Barker said.
"Come on." The sheriff led them to the nearest house on the right, the one with slate blue shutters.
A breeze ruffled the cornfield as Olivia passed by. When she heard the rustling sound, she realized how quiet everything else was. No farm equipment being used. No mothers calling the family home for dinner. No sounds of a television filtering through the open windows.
Inside the house, the sheriff showed them the bodies. A man and a woman were stretched out on the wooden floor in the family room. Their throats had been slashed, but there was no pool of blood beneath them.
Olivia swallowed hard. She wasn't accustomed to working the actual crime scene. She usually stayed at the office where she could interview suspects to see who was lying.
"They must have bled out somewhere else," Harrison said. "Then the killer moved them here."
J.L. paced around the bodies. "There's no sign of them being moved. No trail of blood. No scuff marks from their shoes. And I bet there was more than one killer."
Olivia pressed a hand to her stomach. She shouldn't have eaten that chicken sandwich.
Barker leaned over for a closer look. "No defense wounds. They didn't fight back."
She turned away from the gruesome sight and noticed the toys in a plastic crate by the television. Oh God. "Are there more bodies here?"
"Nope, this is it," the sheriff replied. "You want to see the other houses?"
Outside, they decided to split up since they were quickly losing sunlight. The sheriff and Harrison crossed the road to the farmhouse there. Barker, J.L., and Olivia went to the second house on the right side of the road.
Just like the first house, they found a dead couple lying on the floor, throats slashed but no sign of blood. They found an elderly woman in the kitchen, same story.
They went upstairs to check the bedrooms there.
"Come and look," Olivia called from a bedroom.
"Another body?" Barker asked as he and J.L entered the room.
"No." She motioned to the floor where toys were scattered about. "The first house had toys, too."
"Damn." J.L. grimaced. "Where are the children?"
"I don't know." She pulled back the Priscilla curtains and peered out the window. The last rays of sunlight illuminated a small backyard with an old rusty swing set. Behind it, fields of corn went on as far as she could see. "I can't sense any emotions other than our own and the guys across the road."
"Maybe the kids escaped," J.L. suggested. "If a murderer came to my house, I'd run and hide in the cornfield."
Olivia shuddered. The killers might have kidnapped the children.
"I'll see if I can track any of them." Barker grabbed a child's discarded T-shirt off the floor. "You two stay here." He left the room and clambered down the stairs.
Olivia and J.L. exchanged questioning looks. They heard a door bang shut.
"There he is." Olivia pointed out the window. Barker was holding the T-shirt to his face as he strode into the cornfield. "What's he doing? He could get lost in the corn. It's like an ocean."
"Weird," J.L. muttered.
Olivia watched as Barker disappeared and the last of the sunlight died away. Darkness enveloped the house. She reached for her flashlight, but then a bright light went on in the backyard.
"Great." J.L. looked relieved. "They have automatic outdoor lighting. If Barker gets lost, he can just head for the light."
She nodded. "Let's see how Harrison is doing."
They went to a bedroom at the front of the house and peered out the window. Outdoor lighting gleamed in front of each farmhouse, but a dark abyss separated each home.
"Creepy looking," J.L. whispered.
Olivia shivered. She didn't even want to think about the terror these poor people had gone through before dying. And what if the killers were still nearby? They could be lurking in a field or in the barns. "You told me once that if our lives were ever in danger, you would tell me what your initials stand for."
"We're not in danger."
"Are you kidding? There's a mass murderer around here somewhere. Maybe several murderers."
"I think they're gone," J.L. said. "They did the job and moved on."
She sighed. "I hope the children are all right."
"Look." J.L. motioned to two lights emerging from a house across the road. "That's got to be Harrison and the sheriff."
"It is." Their emotions were so intense, Olivia could feel them from a distance. The sheriff was devastated, for he was mourning people he had known. Harrison was pissed.
The two men walked back to the road, using flashlights to light their way.
"Let's go meet them." J.L. headed for the bedroom door.
"Wait." In the distance she saw two more lights. "Someone else is here."
"What?" J.L. returned to the window and peered out.
The two lights came closer, passing in front of the first farmhouse, and thanks to the outdoor lighting, Olivia could make out the forms of two men. She gasped.
"What the hell?" J.L. whispered.
The two men were wearing kilts. They stopped in the middle of the road. Harrison and the sheriff walked toward them, then stopped.
"Are they talking?" J.L. asked.
"I don't think so. I don't see their mouths moving." Olivia realized all of a sudden that she could no longer sense any emotions from Harrison or the sheriff. They'd gone completely blank. And she couldn't sense anything from the men in kilts.
The sheriff strode past the kilted men, climbed into his car, and drove away. Then Harrison drove away, too. J.L. made a noise of disbelief. "What the hell?"
The kilted men turned toward them. Olivia and J.L. quickly plastered themselves against the wall on each side of the window. A beam of light shot through the window as one of the strangers aimed a flashlight in their direction.
Olivia held her breath. Her heart raced. Who were those men? She recalled a photo she'd seen of Robby in a kilt. There couldn't be any connection. He was in New York. But on the other hand, she couldn't read him. He was blank like the two kilted men in the road.
J.L. flipped open his cell phone and punched a number. He waited, then whispered, "Harrison, leave your phone on, dammit. And why did you drive off like that? Get back here now." He hung up and jammed the phone into his suit pocket.