“They’re down there, toward the silo,” Trent said, pointing, trying to stay clear-headed as he swayed and clung to the post for support. “Someone tried to kill me and I think Cassie’s here.” But his mind was swimming; he wasn’t certain of anything.
Craaack!
A gun went off and the horses went nuts, shrieking and kicking in terror. Hud, who’d been cowering somewhere in the shadows, let out a mournful howl and belly-crawled to Trent.
“Stay!” Trent said to the dog as Carter took off running in the direction of the gunshot and Trent, moving slowly, followed.
A woman’s scream tore through the barn.
Cassie!
His heart turned black with a dread as dark as all of hell, but he kept moving and ignored the pain ripping through his body. Holding onto poles, bracing himself on sawhorses, propelling himself forward and dragging his useless leg, he wasn’t about to wait and cower in the shadows.
If something had happened to his wife, damn it, if the assassin had wounded her or killed her, he’d take the son of a bitch out himself.
Adrenaline firing her blood, Cassie started climbing the ladder, the sounds of a struggle above.
“You murdering bitch!” a woman yelled, a new voice, one that rang deep in Cassie’s soul.
Allie? Allie was here? Alive? In cahoots with this other sick sibling?
Gritting her teeth, her hands sweating from the exertion, her fingers slipping on the rungs, Cassie hauled herself up by one hand.
“Like you weren’t in on it.” The other woman. “Come on, Baby Sister, admit it, you liked to see your mother squirm and your sister”—she hissed the word—“freak out and end up in a mental hospital.”
“But no one was supposed to die!” Allie yelled.
“Oh, get real. You set it up. You were the one who planned the shooting on the set. You just needed me to do the dirty work.”
“I talked about it,” Allie said. “I didn’t mean for it to actually happen.”
“Then why did you disappear?”
Good question, Cassie thought, pulling herself up, wanting to strangle both of her siblings, the murderer and Allie, freaking Allie who had let everyone believe she was dead.
Upward she climbed through the darkness, dragging herself, the dust from the silo suffocating, her own breathing and pounding heart making listening to the conversation impossible. Only a few more rungs.
“Fuck!” one of the women said, the other one, not Allie, the familiar but unnamed voice. “Do you hear that? Sirens! What the fuck did you do?”
“Nothing.”
Cassie was close to the top now, the half-light spilling into the silo’s shaft just over her head.
“But the cops! Oh, shit!”
Blam!
A gunshot fired, rocking the building. Cassie nearly lost her grip, but she clung on, her lower body swinging off the ladder for a heart-stopping instant. She had to clench her jaw to keep from crying out. Agony ripped through her shoulder and she squeezed her eyes shut, willed her body back and forced her toes to find a rung.
A long, low moan ripped through the building.
She thought of Trent. No, it couldn’t be.
But her fear drove her upward.
Fighting the pain in her shoulder, dragging herself upward, rung by rung she climbed. She had to make it! She had to get to him! At the opening, she peered through and, saw a body on the floor. Her heart collapsed. Was it Trent? Allie?
Standing over the wounded person her back to the opening was a woman, while holding a gun pointed at the already wounded victim. Jesus God, the shooter was Allie, her victim Laura Merrick! With the hideous mask half-on, half-off her face, Laura writhed on the floor and groaned in agony. Allie aimed her gun at Laura’s ever moving forehead, as if she were planning to shoot her literally right between her eyes.