"Let me top you up," Lydia said. She picked up the French press and moved behind him.
The needle went into the side of his neck before he understood what was happening. A sharp puncture just below the ear. Twenty-seven years of giving injections had taught her exactly where to place it and how deep to go. Noah jerked forward, his hand flying to his neck, but the plunger was already depressed and the warmth was already spreading.
He spun in the chair.
Lydia shifted back about three feet behind him with an empty syringe in one hand and a revolver in the other. A gun was pointed at his chest. It was an old weapon, a .38, a gun that lived in farmhouse drawers for decades and never got cleaned but always worked.
"Don't," she said as he went for his gun. The warmth in her voice was gone. What was underneath it wasn’t cold. It was tired.
“What the hell did you just give me?”
Noah's hand was still on his neck. He could feel the puncture site, the tiny bead of blood, the warmth spreading down through his shoulder and into his chest. Not pain. Something softer than pain. Something that was already starting to blur the edges of the room.
“Don’t try to fight it,” Lydia said. "Take out your handcuffs. Set them on the table."
He stared at her. The gun didn't waver.
"Do it."
He reached for the cuffs on his belt and set them on the table. The metal clattered against the wood.
"Now your duty belt. Unbuckle it. Let the whole thing drop. Then kick it toward me."
His fingers found the buckle. The belt came loose and the weight of it pulled it to the floor, his holstered weapon hitting the boards with a heavy thud. He kicked it. It slid across the floor and stopped near her boots.
"Now put the cuffs on. Hands in front."
He picked up the cuffs and closed them around his own wrists. The ratcheting sound filled the kitchen. Click. Click. Click.
She kept the revolver on him.
“Good. Don’t try anything. I will drop you right here if I have to," she said. "But I'd rather not make a mess of my kitchen. Now move."
Noah shifted. The room tilted slightly and then steadied. Whatever she'd injected was working but it wasn't working fast. Not yet. He could still think. He could still move. But the margins were narrowing.
"Where is she? Where is Fiona Spence, Lydia?"
"Walk toward the door."
"That necklace. It’s hers."
“Yeah, I don’t know how you knew that," she said. She gestured with the revolver toward the back door. "Outside. Across the yard."
Noah moved. Through the kitchen. Through the back door and out onto the rear porch. The rain hit him full in the face, cold and driving, and he squinted against it. The yard stretched out infront of him, the overgrown grass beaten flat by the downpour, the fence line barely visible, the barn to the left. And beyond the barn, across a field of scrub and thistle, a grain silo. Concrete base. Rusted metal dome. Built fifty years ago to store feed and had been empty since the farm stopped running.
Lydia was behind him. Close enough that he could hear her breathing over the rain. The gun pressed into his lower back.
“Keep moving.”
They walked across the yard. Past the barn with its hanging doors. Into the field where the grass was knee-high and the ground had turned to mud under the rain and Noah's boots sank with every step and his legs felt heavier than the ground could explain. The drug was settling in now, a warmth that spread through his limbs and made his muscles feel like they belonged to someone else. The rain ran down his face and into his eyes and he couldn't wipe it away with his wrists cuffed in front of him.
"So your son took those girls," Noah said. "Why?"
"Paul?" Lydia snorted behind him. "No. Come on, even you're smarter than that, Mr. Sutherland." She paused. "Then again, after your brothers put Lyle in prison, maybe you're not."
The field stretched ahead of them. The silo grew larger.
"It was my husband's idea. Earl. Kara Ellison was the first."
