“You have any more of those?” Vaughn said, indicating Officer Horowitz’s mask.
“Delaney said it’s okay now, used this handheld thingy to check the air. It’s just in case.”
“You have any more?” Vaughn repeated.
“In the car.”
“Grab them.”
Delaney exited the barn around the same time that Horowitz returned with masks.
“Let me help you with that.” Vaughn took one of the masks and slipped it over Ivy’s head. Tightened the straps. “Should stop fogging in a few seconds.”
Vaughn put his own mask on and said, “Ready?”
Ivy felt her pulse pounding in her throat.
No, not really.
“Yeah,” she lied. “Ready.”?
?Chapter 37
Vaughn wasn’t keenon the idea of bringing Ivy into the crime scene. Liked the idea of sending her home alone less.
He entered first. Scoped it out before indicating for Ivy to follow.
His first impression was that the interior of the barn was eerily similar to the first. Same unpainted walls. Same vent, same speaker. Cheap doors, expensive locks. Hint of rotten egg smell, muted by the mask, but still detectable.
This is where the similarities ended, however.
No boxes, broken or otherwise. No numbers.
As Delaney had told them outside, the first room they entered contained a generic table. A chair, too. Tipped over, lying in the dirt.
A tarp masked the outline of a body half under the desk.
Sitting atop the desk were two raised buttons roughly the size of drink coasters: one green, one red. Opposite the desk, hanging from the wall, a digital display, like a stock ticker, three feet long, maybe ten inches high. It showed green and red dots in a line. Ten of them. No apparent pattern.
To Vaughn, anyway.
“What the hell is this?” he said quietly. His words rebounded off the mask, echoed.
The door they entered, the one that Delaney had said they’d used a crowbar to open, was on one side. There was an identical door on the other.
Like the first, the frame had also been splintered near the lock on this one.
“Delaney, you—” Vaughn was turning as he spoke, but stopped when he saw Ivy. Her eyes were locked on the tarp-covered body on the ground. “Ivy?”
She stood in place, unmoving.
“Ivy.” He placed a hand on her shoulder and she jumped. “Don’t look down.”
A slow nod.
She obliged, raising her head, and Vaughn addressed Delaney again.
“This door,” he said, pointing at the one to their right. “You crack it open?”
