Chapter 35
Tucker
The hotel-room phone wakes me. I grapple for it, sleep-clogged, and manage to bring it to my ear.
“Tucker,” a voice says. “I was expecting Autumn.”
“Weggers?”
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Weggers calling me on the room phone in the middle of the night—for what?
A sound cuts through the night.
Fuck. I know that frequency; I wired those alarms as part of the barn’s new security system, tested them myself.
And then I get it.
I get the fact that I’m alone. The fact that the bed around me is cool.
The fact that Weggers is on the other end of the phone.
I slap a hand on my nightstand; my AirTag is gone.
My pulse shoots sky high. I turn on the light, look wildly around the room.
Her clutch purse is gone, but on the floor, where she tossed it earlier, I spot her AirTag; it must have fallen out.
She took mine thinking she had both but accidentally left hers behind.
And thank fuck she did because if she hadn’t, I wouldn’t have known she was gone. In the dark. At night. Alone. With someone out to get her or Hanna or me…or all of us.
“Where is she?” I demand. Some part of me already knows there’s no time for fucking around.
And Weggers must know, can probably hear the alarms through the phone. Normally it would give him the utmost satisfaction to know I’d failed at my task, but something in him must sense the urgency of this situation. “In the barn,” he says.
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Let me know she’s safe,” Weggers says, and I don’t stop to ask whether he means for the purposes of the will or because he actually cares.
I’m out of bed and into my clothes. I’m out of the room, down the hall, pounding elevator buttons like that will make it come more quickly.
I give up on the ancient shitty thing and run down the hall for the stairs, take them two at a time to the bottom.
I race out of the hotel and into the dark.
The barn is a shadow in the distance, and I sprint toward it, closing the distance.
The smell of woodsmoke, acrid with burning plastic, meets my nose.
My heart pounds. I can’t fill my lungs with air.
I’m only a few yards away when I hear the soft air-sucking whoomp of fire finding new fuel.
“Tucker!”
It’s Easton. He has his phone out. “I called 911,” he says frantically. “But I don’t think there’s time. Hanna’s in there with her.”
We can hear their shouts. I shout back. “Autumn! Stay low. We’re going to get you out.”
The door is engulfed. We’re not going in that way. Easton comes tearing back around from the side of the barn, panting, eyes wild. “There’s a window I think we can break back there.”
I follow him at a run.
Right as we reach the window, the glass in it shatters.
At first I think it was air pressure from the fire eating up oxygen.
Then I see Autumn through the frame, shoe in hand.
She’s using the shoe to clear the remaining shards of glass, and then she’s boosting my sister up over the sill.
Hanna tumbles into Easton’s arms. I can faintly hear them behind me, but I can’t see anything except Autumn’s face as I reach for her, hauling her up out of the burning building, over the ledge of the busted-out window, into my arms. I drag her close, face in her smoky hair.
She’s murmuring something repeatedly, something I can’t hear. “What?” I ask, but she doesn’t answer. I hold her at arm’s length, inspecting her for damage. There’s a cut on her face, some scrapes on her arms and legs, but she looks mostly intact. Thank God.
“You okay?” I ask.
Sirens in the distance resolve into sirens pouring up the long driveway to the ranch property and then into fire engines.
Moments later firefighters leap from the hook and ladder and the smaller truck, hoses already out.
Water pours onto the burning barn, steam rising, fire crackling against the assault.
EMTs lead Hanna and Autumn away from the immediate scene and evaluate them both for smoke inhalation. Easton and I hover like mama birds.
I watch from as close as they’ll let me get, my own breath ragged. When Autumn comes back to me, I grab her too tight.
“I’m okay,” she murmurs. “Tuck, I’m okay. I have cuts and bruises, and I need to keep an eye on my breathing for twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”
“You almost weren’t.”
“But I am.”
I hold her until she pulls away, smiling up at me. “Tuck. I’m fine.”
“It must have been scary.”
“It was terrifying. I’m sure I’ll have nightmares. But the important thing is that I’m okay. Is Hanna?”
We find my sister, who has also passed the EMT inspection, in Easton’s arms. She’s sweaty and soot-streaked, as bruised and banged up as Autumn, but we both hug her anyway and demand reassurance that she’s okay, which she seems to be.
“What the hell happened?” I demand.
“It just—went up,” Hanna says. “One minute we were in there hanging photos, the next everything was burning.” She stares at the ruin of her barn, looking shell-shocked.
“Sabotage.”
“Tucker, I don’t think—”
“I do,” I say grimly. “Hey,” I call as one of the firefighters passes us, doffing her helmet and mask. “Are you calling in arson investigators?”
“They’re on their way.”
I quickly fill her in on the sabotage incidents we’ve already seen, and she nods. “That’ll be useful info to share with the team.”
“We didn’t hear or see anything suspicious,” Autumn tells me. “I think it started in the kitchen. Someone must have left something on.”
My gut knows that’s not true. It knows this fire was set. Deliberately. While Autumn was in the barn. Maybe whoever set it didn’t know she’d be there. Maybe the fire was some kind of slow-burning fuse—rags in a bucket, a cigarette butt in a garbage can—but Autumn could have been injured.
Killed.
My hands clench at my sides. My chest is so tight I can’t breathe. Someone tried, directly or indirectly, to hurt her, and I wasn’t there to stop it.
“Autumn!” a voice says. We all turn. It’s Summer. Jane is right behind her. “Autumn!”
She flings herself into her sister’s arms. “Oh, my God, what happened? I heard there was a fire! I heard you were in the barn. Are you okay? Oh my God, oh my God, are you okay?”
Summer is doing what I did a few minutes ago, checking Autumn over from head to toe, fingers in her hair, on her arms, like she needs to make sure there’s no visible or invisible damage.
“I’m okay,” Autumn says again.
“You two almost—”
Summer doesn’t finish the sentence, but the truth of it settles in my stomach.
“We’re fine,” Hanna and Autumn say at the same time.
“What the fu—”
It’s Autumn’s dad and Nessa, followed closely behind by Haru. They cluster in close around Autumn, tutting and fussing. She lets them.
I want to shout, Summer’s right! She could have died!
But I’m cold all over and the words are frozen in my mouth.