Soulless The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,56

or maybe a posse of angry badgers.”

I looked at him in confusion. “Badgers form posses?”

“They do in this state.”

Scott led the way through the door, his hand extended in case trouble presented itself. He paused and looked at Reed. “You want to check the barn?” Scott turned back to look into the house. “It’s not looking like much in here.”

“Sure,” Reed said, and looked at me. “You?”

“Yeah, I’ll go with you,” I said.

Scott frowned, looking back over his shoulder at us. “That’s okay. I’ll just check out this creepy old farmhouse all by my lonesome.”

“That’s the spirit.” I gave him a barehand slap on the back, causing him to jump and then look at me with a stern face. “We’ll meet you outside.”

Reed and I walked to the barn, an old, decaying structure that looked to be in just about as good a repair as the farmhouse. The silo looked as though it had collapsed years ago, now nothing more than a bed of concrete blocks laid out across an overgrown field, green grass sprouting around the white of the blocks like tombstones in a graveyard.

“You think this is it?” I looked at Reed to see how he was holding up. He looked calm enough.

“Probably not,” he said as he opened the barn door wide, letting loose a foul, disgusting smell that caused me to cover my nose and gag.

“What is that?” I asked

“I think something died in here.” He tucked his shirt over his nose and walked forward, looking around until he stopped in front of one of the animal stalls. “Yep. Something died here.”

“Ugh.” I retreated from the barn, moving back to a comfortable distance where the smell started to fade. I could still see him looking around within, but after about a minute he came back to me, popping his head out of his shirt and taking a deep breath. “Why did you think this wasn’t the place even before you opened the door?” I asked.

He pointed to the ground in front of the barn. “No sign of vehicle tracks or footprints, here or in the main driveway. I don’t think anyone’s been here for a long time. Now, it could have been Omega doing a really excellent job of covering things up, but now that I’ve looked around, I’m inclined to believe it’s just an old farmhouse.” He wrinkled his nose. “Complete with remains of an old farm animal.”

I stared off into the distance, where the sun was up off the horizon, casting its light on the green, rolling fields that surrounded us to the trees that covered the horizon. “We’ve got a few more to check. I kinda hope the next one is it, though; I’m sick of these dead ends.” I turned and started walking back to the farmhouse, where I saw Scott emerging from a side door, brushing his shoulders off with enough emphasis that I suspected spider webs might have entangled him.

“I don’t know,” Reed said, taking one last look at the barn. “It might be the next one, it might be the one after that, but I kinda hope it’s none of them. I know Omega, and I shudder to think about what kind of secrets they’re hiding out here.” He made a face. “I suspect it’ll make us long for an abandoned farmhouse with old rancid animals.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But whatever they’re hiding, I need to find out.” I took a deep breath, trying to enjoy for just a moment the feel of the sun’s rays beating down on my arms and my hands. I felt like I was soaking them up, taking in the heat. “There’s a lot riding on this, a lot we’ve sacrificed to be at this point, to take the assignment this far.” I tried to hold my chin up. “Whatever’s waiting for us, we’ll find a way past it.”

“You sure about that?” He raised an eyebrow at me. “You’re talking about the organization that threw both Wolfe and Henderschott at you. I doubt they’re gonna just let you waltz into one of their most closely guarded secrets.”

“I doubt there’ll be much waltzing, at least not until afterward,” I said. “But whatever they’re going to throw at us, whatever’s waiting, we’ll get through it.” I smiled. “After all, how bad could it be?”

Reed rolled his eyes at me. “Jinx.”

Chapter 17

Someone Else

It was bad. Worse than I expected. Guards walked the perimeter of their so-called Site Epsilon, black-clad figures that wore tactical vests and hid behind tall