DEAD IN BED By Bailey Simms: The Complete First Book

PART 4, SECTION 14

Ian pulled up toward the ramshackle barn that had stood precariously by the river for as long I could remember. It was on the Hershel property, across the river from my parents' ranch. I got out to open the barn doors, and Ian parked the SUV inside, hiding it from view. 

"We'll leave it here in case anyone tries to track it," Ian explained. He locked the doors.

Bryce and I followed Ian toward the low concrete dam that spanned the river from bank to bank. As kids, my sister and I used to take our shoes off and cross by walking through the ankle-deep water that spilled over the dam's edge, but now Bryce and I just followed Ian's lead and sloshed through in our shoes, too tired and shaken to care about not getting our feet wet. I had no idea where Ian was taking us. We were more than a quarter mile from my parents' house.

My dad used to raise grain before I was born, and there was still an old corrugated tin granary left over on the flats along the river, more or less hidden behind the bluff. I hadn't even seen it for years. My dad used to make me and Danielle swear we wouldn't play inside the tall, barn-like structure that housed the old grain elevator. It was connected to a row of six squat silos, long since empty. Every surface of the granary was corrugated tin, and by now all of the tin had rusted to a dull orange. Ian walked through the weeds toward the granary's door.

"I'll take you to the house in just a sec," he said. "I just need to check in on Chris."

I looked around at the old rusting structure. An arrow-shaped weather vane creaked at the rooftop.

"Does my dad know you're using this place?"

It made me a little nervous that Ian was hiding bodies from the Home Guard on my parents' property.

"I told him I needed to use it," he answered. "I also told him I couldn't tell him why. He agreed. He swore he wouldn't tell a soul about anything going on down here. I know he won't."

Ian was right. I knew that if my dad swore not to say anything to anyone, he wouldn't. He could keep a secret, even from my mom. Once he'd taken me on a cross-country horseback trip into the mountains way beyond town, and passing through a gully we stumbled into an abandoned village of ancient native American cliff dwellings. We spent the afternoon walking up and down the stone steps and exploring the network of rooms carved into the rock. We even found petrified corncobs in one. He told me he didn't think anyone knew that the native American group who had built them had ever migrated so far north, and he didn't want backpackers ruining the place. He made me swear to keep it a secret, and he never, ever said a word about it later, not even to me. Never.

"What about my mom?" I asked Ian. I knew she wouldn't be happy about him using the granary. "Does she know you're using it?"

Ian shook his head. "No, just your dad." 

He opened the granary door. It creaked in its wire hinges.

"You don't have to come in if you don't want to. You've seen a hell of lot today. I wouldn't blame you. It's not pretty, what's been going on in here. . ." 

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