Whisper Creek

Prologue

He had to wait until the hail stopped and the family slept before he could access the barn. And still, he waited another hour just in case, standing in a thicket near Whisper Creek with a clear view of both the barn and the house beyond it.

This wasn’t the first time he had sabotaged someone’s property. It wasn’t even the first time he had sabotaged this particular barn. Some people were too stubborn for their own good, and now he had to force their hand.

Time was running out. He’d thought for sure after John McKenna died last year that Ellen would have the common sense to do what was right for her family. But she was just as stubborn as her husband.

Guilt crept up his spine and he slammed that shit down. John died in an accident. An accident. Freak thing, not his fault, it shouldn’t have happened.

He didn’t mean for it to happen.

No one had needed to die.

He pulled out his flask and drank half the bourbon inside. Even the expensive liquor burned on the way down. He screwed the cap back on and slipped it into the pocket of his lightweight jacket.

Now, he told himself. Stop stalling. Nothing has changed.

He crept a hundred yards to the side door of the barn. No one locked their barns; there was no need. Some people secured their storage sheds or garages—equipment was valuable and far easier to steal, though theft was rare out here, where everyone owned guns and a truck could be heard a mile away.

Which is why he had come on foot.

He unlatched the door and entered quietly.

The barn wasn’t silent. Sheep bayed in their sleep. A horse softly nickered. The rustle of hay as the dairy cows shifted. The creak and groan in the rafters as the wind whistled through.

The storm may have passed, but another was brewing in the northeast and would dump far more water into their valley than the first.

Now was the time to push Ellen McKenna. Hard.

He shifted the heavy backpack onto both shoulders, then climbed the ladder to the hayloft. Something rustled to his right and for a minute he thought it was the kid, sleeping in the barn as he himself had done with friends when he was little.

He shifted, a cat yowled when he stepped on its tail and bolted along a beam to the far wall.

He sensed more than saw the dark cat run down tack shelves to the floor below.

The sheep bayed loudly, and he really hoped they didn’t cause a commotion.

If the family heard, they might think a coyote had got into the barn.

But a minute later the sheep settled down, and he crossed to the loft door.

It opened above one of the gutters. Quickly, he removed and unzipped his backpack and extracted two cans of expanding foam.

He looked over at the house sixty yards across the way.

A faint light was on in the kitchen, but he’d noticed that it was on all the time.

He didn’t see or sense anyone moving inside.

Still, he worked quickly. He sprayed the foam into the gutter, leaning over to make sure the foam went down the hole of the downspout on both corners of the building.

He then gathered straw from the loft and tamped it down onto the foam that was quickly hardening.

It would take normally twenty-four hours to cure, but the warm air and humidity would accelerate the process.

When he was done, he closed the loft door, walked to the corner, crouching when the roof sloped downward.

He removed a handsaw from his bag, knelt, and carefully cut a narrow strip through the wall that wouldn’t be easily seen because it was behind the gutter.

He then pushed hay up against the half-inch slit to conceal it.

He repeated the process on the opposite side.

The water from the next storm would seep into the barn from the now-clogged gutter, saturate the loft, the hay, the walls.

The barn would slowly flood. Mold and mildew would grow quickly in the humidity.

Feed would be contaminated. The barn would have to be fixed, if not completely rebuilt.

The animals sold, or they’d have to pay to board them while the barn was being repaired.

One more major expense in a long line of expenses that put pressure on the McKenna family.

This had to work. Time was running out.

Satisfied that the job was done, he left the loft. He hadn’t wanted to use the foam because once the barn flooded, an inspection could reveal the sabotage. But by that point, the damage would be done and no one could prove he’d had anything to do with it.

As soon as he opened the side door, the cat he’d stepped on earlier ran out into the night, nearly tripping him. He swore under his breath, closed the door, and left the way he’d come.

When he reached his truck more than a mile away, he called in.

“Done.”

“If this doesn’t work, we escalate. We only have a week.”

“It’ll work,” he said, sounding more confident than he felt.

He didn’t want anyone else to die, so he prayed hard that he was right.