“I guess it won’t be so bad. Right?”

“Right,” she said confidently. And then mentally called herself a liar.

CHAPTER 14

W

hen Alex woke up, the first issue was the soreness. Unconsciousness had given her a break from the pain, and that period of relief, though welcome, made the awakening to reality worse.

The room was pitch-black. She assumed there was a window somewhere behind the boxes, but it must be covered with a blackout shade. Kevin wouldn’t want too many lighted windows at night. Better to keep the house looking only partially inhabited. As far as any locals knew, Arnie was the sole occupant.

She rolled out of the cot, groaning when her left shoulder and hip hit the wooden edge, and then felt her way to the light switch. She’d cleared a wide path from the cot to the door so that she wouldn’t add to her injuries fumbling around in the dark. Once the light was on, she disarmed the leads and then removed her gas mask. Given that there were people here that she didn’t want to kill, she’d used a pressurized canister of knockout gas.

The hall was empty, the bathroom door open. There was one damp towel hanging on the rack, so Daniel must already be awake. That was no surprise. She’d been up pretty late with her memory list, despairing, even as she continued typing, at the probability of recalling in a week’s time what any of her cryptic notes stood for. As she worked through it, she noted plenty of secrets worth killing over, but none specific to her or Barnaby. There would have been other victims if any of those particular secrets were the root problem. From what she’d been able to track in the news, her death and Barnaby’s had not been followed by any other names she recognized. Nothing public, anyway.

While she shampooed her hair, she thought about how she could narrow down the time frame. She usually did her best creative thinking in the shower.

Barnaby had always been paranoid, but he hadn’t started acting on that paranoia until two years before his death. She remembered that initial conversation, the first time she’d realized she was in actual danger. It had been late fall – around Thanksgiving. If that was not a random change, if there had been some sort of catalyst, maybe Barnaby had been reacting to the case that was the issue. She couldn’t be sure of the timing, but she was fairly positive about the interrogations that had taken place after that change – in her memory, they were all riddled through with the new stress and distraction. So those could be ruled out. And she knew all the cases from her first year easily, when everything had been horrifically new and awkward; those could be set aside as well. It still left her three years of work to sort through and two of the nuclear scares, but she was happy to have even the slightest measure of containment.

She appreciated the fluffy towels the bathroom was stocked with. Kevin apparently enjoyed his creature comforts. Or maybe it was Arnie who liked things plush. Whoever it was had also stocked the bathroom with all the toiletries a hotel would provide, only in full-size bottles. There had been shampoo and conditioner in the shower. Toothpaste, lotion, and mouthwash were all set out on the counter. Nice touch.

She took a swipe at the mirror with the towel and quickly confirmed that she was still unfit to be seen. The black eyes were mostly a sickly green color now, with some of the darker purple in the inside corners. Her lip was starting to deflate, but that only made the superglue more obvious. The bruises on her cheeks were just barely beginning to yellow around the edges.

She sighed. It would be at least a week before her face could go out in public, even in makeup.

After dressing in her least dirty clothes, Alex gathered the rest, balled them up inside a T-shirt as an improvised laundry bag, and set off in search of the facilities. It was empty and quiet downstairs. She could hear barking in the distance. Daniel and Arnie must be out dealing with the animals.

She found the spacious laundry room tucked away behind the kitchen. She noted the back door – always good to be familiar with the exits – and the large plastic attachment to the bottom half of it. It took her a minute to realize it was a doggie door – a huge doggie door, big enough to let Khan in. She hadn’t seen any dogs in the house so far, but it must not always be off-limits. She started her load, then went to find breakfast.

The cupboards weren’t much more helpful than the refrigerator had been. Half were full of cans of dog food, and the other half mostly empty. There was some coffee left in the pot on the counter, thank goodness. She also found a stash of Pop-Tarts, which she pilfered. Apparently Kevin and Arnie cared less about food than they did about towels. She found a mug from a Boy Scout camp circa 1983, chipped and faded. The time frame didn’t fit either of the men who lived here – must be a secondhand acquisition. It worked just fine, regardless. When she was done, she loaded the mug in the stainless-steel dishwasher and then went to see what was on the day’s agenda.

Lola and Khan were on the front porch, along with the Rottweiler whose name she couldn’t remember. They all got up like they’d been waiting for her and followed as she headed out to the barn. She patted Lola a few times as they walked; it seemed like the polite thing to do.

North of the modern outbuilding was a big run full of animals, Arnie in the center of them all, calling out commands to the frolicking dogs. It didn’t look like many of them were listening to him, but a few played teacher’s pet. She couldn’t see Daniel anywhere. She wandered into the outbuilding, went down the length of it to where the supply room was. Kevin and Arnie stocked the place much better for the dogs than for themselves. Daniel wasn’t there, either.