09 The Clue at Black Creek Farm (9 page)

“Bess!” I tried to shout, but my voice came out as a husky whisper.
This is like a nightmare!
With my last remaining wits, I scrambled back to the tent and reached inside for the item Sam had insisted on loaning us before he went to bed . . .

. . . a baseball bat.

The thing was aluminum and super heavy. Sam said it had belonged to Jack. I raised it over my head and forced air into my lungs, so I could shout . . .

“STAY BACK! I HAVE A WEAPON!”

The figure stopped short. He or she was just a few yards away now, down the hill. I was peering
down at the top of a dark baseball cap.
Jack?

“Nancy?”

The figure spoke in a female voice. It took me a few seconds to realize that this was a
familiar
female voice. She reached up and pulled off the baseball cap, revealing a mop of short-cropped black hair.

“George!”
I dropped the baseball cap and lunged toward her, folding her into a hug. (I'm not normally the huggy type, but it's funny what thinking you're in mortal peril will do to you.) “Oh my gosh, you scared me! What are you
doing
here?”

George pulled back and retrieved her phone from her sweatshirt pocket. “I'm sorry, Nancy! I've just been getting all these texts from you and Bess about how you were camping out here tonight. I was feeling a little left out. So when I finished my shift at the Coffee Cabin, I ran home, packed a bag, and drove over. It never occurred to me that you might think I was the bad guy. I'm really sorry.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “It's fine, George. Actually . . . I'm really glad you're here.”

George smiled. She shifted her arms, and I could see now that the heavy-looking thing she was carrying was just her duffel bag.

I took a step back toward the tent. “Come on in. It's time for me to wake up Bess for her shift.”

George raised her eyebrows. “Want me to take the next shift instead?”

“Aren't you tired?”

George shook her head. “It's the benefit of working at a place called the Coffee Cabin, Nance,” she said with a smile. “I made myself a double espresso right before I left.”

Who knows how many hours later, I startled awake to a sharp poke in the shoulder.

“Your turn,” Bess said gruffly. I'd barely woken up enough to hear George come into the tent and wake Bess at two a.m. Before I could respond, she'd already dived around me into her sleeping bag and had the blanket pulled up over her head.

I shimmied out, reached beneath my pillow for
my phone, and checked the time. Four a.m. I glanced over at the other sleeping bag and saw George snoring away.

“Did you see anything?” I asked Bess. My eyes were dying to close again so I could slip back into a dream. I shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs.

“Nothing,” Bess mumbled. “Now I'm enjoying the sight of the insides of my eyelids.”

“Gotcha.” I let out a final sigh and then drew myself to my feet and scooted out of the tent.

The world outside was dead quiet now. Even the crickets and owls had called it a night, it seemed. I breathed in the cold, clear air and looked around. The moon hung just above the horizon, ready to cede the sky to the sun. A barely perceptible glow of grayish-blue light hovered over the horizon opposite. Sunrise couldn't be far off.

The crops were quiet, seemingly undisturbed. I yawned, wondering whether this was a bad idea.
Maybe whoever's contaminating the crops knows I'm looking into it, so they're keeping quiet.
I frowned.
Maybe whoever's
behind it is sleeping right there in that house,
I thought, looking over at the farmhouse.

The house was totally dark. I moved around to make myself comfortable, leaning back against the tree and pulling my sweatshirt around me like a blanket.

Only a few more hours to go . . .

I woke suddenly to dark-blue sky streaked with orange. I jumped up:
What? Where am . . .
But then I looked around and saw the fields of crops spreading out below, the tent with my two sleeping friends inside behind me.
I must have dozed off.
I wiggled around, trying to wake up.
I hope I didn't miss anything. What if —

CRASH!

I jumped and turned toward the source of the noise. It was coming from behind the storage barn. I got to my feet, hearing the panicked clucking of chickens.
The chicken coop. Someone's spooking the chickens.

The sun hadn't yet crested the horizon, but the moon was gone. Streaks of orange and pink lit up the sky, but the world still looked dim and ink-stained. I squinted
toward the path that led to the storage barn but couldn't make out anything unusual.
Should I call Sam? What if it
is
Sam?
I pulled out my phone and checked it: 4:53.
Maybe they always feed the chickens at this hour.
Sam and Abby had made jokes the day before about how early the day started on a farm.
Why didn't I ask?

A shriek sounded from behind the coop, followed by more panicked clucking. I quickly grabbed the lantern, turned it on, and started to run down the hill, then paused.
Should I wake up Bess and George?

Whatever was going on in the chicken coop, it clearly
wasn't
someone poisoning the crops.
I'll go check it out quickly. It could just be an animal—or a family member feeding them.
The chickens sounded upset, but my dealings with chickens so far had convinced me they weren't the brightest of animals. I wasn't ready to sound the alarm over a few angry chickens.

I shoved my phone into my pocket and scurried down the hill, trying not to make a sound. I darted into the storage barn, which was completely dark except for the glow from my lantern.

“Hello?” I asked. “
Anyone out here? Sam? Abby?”

I crept through the barn, heading toward the back door to check on the chicken coop. Halfway across, I stumbled and tripped. As I tumbled to the ground, the lantern slipped from my grip, rolling across the barn and extinguishing as it crashed into the wall. I was left in near-total darkness, with only a few bars of dim light filtering through the barn's slats.

I could make out loud sounds coming from the coop now: banging and scraping. The chickens were going crazy.

I slowly got to my feet, peering around for the lantern, but it was too difficult to make out in the near blackness. Instead I tiptoed toward what I hoped was the barn's back door, toward the sound of the clucking chickens. I felt the edge of the barn wall and made my way to the door.

I peered around the corner of the door and gasped.

The screen door to the coop opened with a creak, and a dark figure wearing a bulky black hoodie stood silhouetted in the dim light.
A black hoodie like Bob's,
I
realized. I stared at the figure, squinting to see though the gloom, but the murky darkness made it impossible to identify the person. The chickens screamed as he or she emerged, and I could see that the person was holding two chickens by the neck. A cloud of feathers puffed out of the coop after them. The figure walked a few steps and then stopped short. He or she turned slowly, and my blood chilled.

The figure was looking
right
at me. The early morning light lit him or her from behind, making it impossible to identify the person.

The figure passed one of the chickens to the other hand and pulled something from his or her waistband.

I felt my breath catch as the item caught the orange light from the sky.

It was a long, curved blade.

The figure turned the chickens clutched in his or her hand slowly, and in the dim light I could see they were stained with blood.

I choked out a gasp. Even though I knew any case could turn deadly, I hadn't really expected to find someone
dangerous
on the farm that night. Whoever was sabotaging the farm was just spraying bacteria on a bunch of vegetables. Potentially deadly bacteria, sure. But it wasn't a
violent
act in itself.

I had to get away! I closed my fingers around the phone in my pocket, but I was too late. The figure dropped the chickens—the
dead
chickens, I thought with sickening dread—and ran toward me. I yanked my hand from my pocket and ran.

I lunged away, nearly tripping over my feet in my haste to escape.
He has a knife! And he's coming after me!

I headed back toward the hill and the tent but quickly thought better of it. Bess and George were probably safe where they were. If this person even knew they were there, it would be a while before he or she could get to them. Instead I ran for the house.

The figure was just a few yards behind me, gaining fast. I willed my feet to go faster, my lungs to hold out.
Just get me to the house. . . .
It was maybe fifty yards away, over a plowed field of eggplant. There was no time to veer around the crops. I ran right through them. I was
just a few feet from the narrow backyard when my foot got tangled in a vine and I felt myself yanked down toward the ground. The impact knocked the wind out of me, and I felt the sticky, squelchy ooze of wet mud.

BANG! BANG!

I struggled to my feet, the mud letting me go with a reluctant belch.
It couldn't be. But . . .

BANG!

The sounds were shots. The figure was shooting at me.

I RAN LIKE MY LIFE
depended on it . . . because it looked like it did. I scrambled out of the mud and into the grassy yard, over the short distance to the porch, up onto the porch.

BANG!

I ducked down instinctively. But nothing sailed past me; in fact, I realized I wasn't hearing the bullets make contact with anything.
Maybe he or she is just trying to scare me off,
I thought. But it was cold comfort. I kept running.

When I hit the top step, the bright-yellow porch
light went on.
It must be motion-activated.
I ran to the door and pounded on it, then turned and looked behind me, hoping that I could identify the mysterious figure in the blaze of the porch light.

But when I turned around, there was no one there. Was he or she lingering just outside the yellow beam of light? Or had they given up?

I pounded on the door again. The house was silent. I turned and looked at the yard, which was empty.
But is the attacker still out there?
My heart thumped in my chest.

I raised my hand to pound on the door again just as it opened, and suddenly Abby stood there, wearing a blue bathrobe and a confused expression. “Nancy?” she asked. “Is everything—?”

I pushed past her through the foyer and into the kitchen. “I have to come inside!”

Abby moved aside to let me in and closed the door. “Are you all right?”

I stood in the middle of the kitchen, leaned on the table, and took a deep breath.
In. Out. In. Out.
“Did you hear the shots?” I asked.