The girl didn’t head straight to the house, but dawdled. Something had caught her eye in the tall grass beyond the drive, and she was stepping into it, reaching down for something, missing it, reaching again.

Mrs. Bennet, who’d been about to close the door on me a moment earlier, now opened it, pushed open the screen, and stepped out onto the porch. “Katie!” she called. “You get here now!”

Katie looked up momentarily, then whatever she’d been trying to catch was trying to make a break for it, and she pounced again. “Gas hopper!” she shouted.

Mrs. Bennet was off the porch now, running up the drive. Katie, alarmed to see Mrs. Bennet moving toward her so urgently, must have figured she’d done something wrong, because she stopped going after the grasshopper and stood stock still, awaiting whatever it was Mrs. Bennet had in store for her.

But it was protection, not punishment, that was on the woman’s mind. She scooped Katie up into her arms, turned and ran back toward the house. As she mounted the porch steps, I opened the screen door so she could run straight inside with the child. Although I only had a glimpse of Katie, there was something about her too that was familiar. She certainly looked as though she could be Mrs. Bennet’s daughter. But then, Mrs. Bennet looked a lot like Trixie Snelling.

From inside, I heard Mrs. Bennet say, “There’s soup and a sandwich all ready for you in the kitchen. You go in there and you stay there till I come in.”

“What kind of soup is it?” asked Katie.

“Tomato.”

“What kind of samich?”

“Tuna.”

“Is there cut-up celery in it?”

“No, no celery. I made it just the way you like it.”

“Is Mommy here for lunch?”

Now my eyes went wide for a thousandth of a second.

“You just go in there and eat, okay? I’ll be in in a minute.”

This time, rather than talking to me through the screen, Mrs. Bennet stepped out onto the porch. “You’re going to have to go, mister,” she said. “I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong house.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “That girl, Katie.” I weighed my words carefully. “Is she Trixie’s daughter?”

Mrs. Bennet sighed, shook her head in tiny jerks of exasperation. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, mister.”

“I need to talk to Trixie,” I said. “Even if I have her name wrong, I’m sure you know who I mean.”

“I don’t. I have no idea.”

“It’s urgent. Look, I was there when they found the body in her basement. The police are looking for her. I’ve been suspended from work, my wife’s ready to leave me, and I think Trixie at least owes me some sort of explanation about what she’s dragged me into. What if you just gave her a message?”

“A message.”

“Look, I could write something down, you give it to her.” I reached into my pocket for a small notebook and pen.

That’s when I took my eyes off Mrs. Bennet.

When I glanced back up, she had the small shovel in her hand, and she was swinging it, like a baseball bat, for the side of my head.

“Hey, wh-” I shouted, putting an arm up to keep the blade from crashing into my skull.

The wooden handle connected with the bone in my forearm, and the pain shot through me like lightning.

“Shit!” I shouted.

But she was coming at me again, taking another swing, and she had this wild, determined look in her eye that told me she meant business. I jumped back and the shovel whipped past me so quickly I could hear its blade cutting through the air.

When I jumped back, I lost my footing, and fell backwards. My head slammed into a post at the end of a porch railing.

That’s when the lights went out.

THE FIRST THING I became aware of was the voices. A conversation between a man and a woman. It had to be a dream, I thought. It was the sort of conversation one might expect to hear in a nightmare.

“What are we going to do with him?” That was the woman.

“I don’t know,” the man said. “But you did the right thing.”

“It was when he looked at Katie. I got so scared.”

There was a damp earthy smell. Could you smell things in a dream? Probably. At the very least, you could imagine you were smelling something in a dream. But it was more than earth or dirt. Was it hay? Had I smelled enough hay in my life to know for sure?

I tried to wake myself up, to blink my eyes open. But the world remained dark; I couldn’t get my lids to move. There was something sticky over them.

“I can’t believe you dragged him back into the barn yourself,” the man said.

“I guess I was just going on adrenaline,” she said. Okay, I thought. I know that voice. I’d heard it recently. Just before going to sleep.

No. Not sleep. That was the voice I’d heard just before I’d hit my head on the post. Mrs. Bennet. That’s who it was.

Speaking of which, fucking hell, the headache I had. The pounding was at its worst at the back of my head, but the whole thing hurt like a son of a bitch. I went to put my hands on my head, but found I could not move them. They were restrained somehow behind me. And I was lying down. I moved my head, ever so slightly, and felt my face rub against cold earth and straw.

“I didn’t actually drag him the whole way,” Mrs. Bennet said. “I backed the van up to the porch, dumped him in, then I tied him up. Then I drove him into the barn. I had to work fast while Katie ate her lunch.”

That made sense. That explained why there was tape over my eyes, why I couldn’t move my arms. I tried moving my legs, but there wasn’t much happening down there either. I was bound at the knees and ankles. And, breathing through my nose, it became apparent that there was a piece of tape across my mouth as well.

“Mmmm,” I said.

“At least he’s not dead,” Mrs. Bennet said.

“Not yet,” said the man.

I swallowed. This was not good. “Mmmm,” I said again.

“We can’t kill him,” Mrs. Bennet said.

I waited for the man to say something along the lines of yes, that was true, they couldn’t kill me. But instead, he said nothing.

“If he’s working for them,” the man said, “if we let him go, he’ll lead them right here.”

“But what if he isn’t?”

“You want to take a chance like that? Is that what you want to do?”

I could hear Mrs. Bennet’s breathing, like maybe she was on the verge of tears. “I have to go check on Katie. She can’t know what’s going on in here.”

“Maybe take her into town or something,” the man said. “I’ll take care of things here.”

“What does that mean? Taking care of things?”

“Jesus, Claire, what the fuck do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know, okay? I don’t know!”

They both took a moment to calm down. “Where’s the car?” the man asked.

“I got the keys out of his jacket, moved it around back of the barn. You can’t see it from the road.”

“It’s her car, isn’t it?” the man said.

“Yes,” Mrs. Bennet said. “But just because it’s her car, that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Mmmm,” I said, a little louder this time.

“I knew this was going to happen someday,” the man said. “From the first day, this sort of thing, it was inevitable. Jesus.”

Mrs. Bennet, agitated: “Why don’t you go into the house then, tell Katie you’re sorry, this whole thing was a big mistake, but we won’t be looking after her anymore. Is that what you want?”

“Jesus, Claire, that’s not what I’m saying. I don’t want to do that.” His voice went quiet. “I love her. I love her as my own.” He paused. “All I want to do is make sure she’s safe, and whatever that takes, I’m prepared to do it. For Katie, and for you.”

“Including murder?”

Again, the man had nothing to say. I heard shuffling on the straw floor, the man pacing back and forth, trying to decide what to do.

“Mmmm!” I said, stirring about on the barn floor, trying to roll over.