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She listened for sounds of life but could hear no footsteps, especially over the excited, frantic barking now coming from the back of the house.
Nothing from within.
“They gotta hear us,” Noah said. “Their dog’s loud enough to wake the dead in the next three counties . . .”
Remmi rang again, but a cold premonition had crept over her. Noah stepped closer, reaching around her to pound on the door.
Again, nothing but the sounds of the night: the sough of the wind, rustling the dry leaves still hanging onto the branches of the surrounding trees, and, farther away, the hum of traffic. The dog was baying now.
“They have to be home, their cars are here . . . ,” she said, half expecting someone to start yellin
g at the lab to pipe down. It didn’t happen. Even though she told herself that Ned and Trudie could have other vehicles, or that they could have caught a ride from friends and gone out, she was starting to get a bad feeling about this. A very bad feeling.
Noah tried the knob, and the door swung open. “Hello?” he called loudly into the interior, but no one answered. Remmi felt the hairs on the back of her neck raise. “Hello?” Even louder.
Nothing.
No sounds of life from within.
She peered inside, where the lights glowed against the honey-colored wood floors of the living room. Remmi saw the flicker of a television, muted and tuned to a football game, mounted over a fireplace cut into a wall of brick that rose to a soaring, beamed ceiling. Furniture was clustered around a rug, positioned to view the TV or fire, but all of the chairs were empty, and the house felt as if there was no life within its walls.
There was no point in standing on the porch. “I’m going in.”
“Wait! No,” he said. Then after a beat. “Hear that?”
“The dog. Yeah. I know—” But there was more. Beyond the barking dog and the sough of the wind, she heard a low moan, barely audible, seeming to emanate from the same spot as the dog’s constant noise.
“It’s outside.” Suddenly Noah was grim, all business.
Turning toward the breezeway, he withdrew a pistol from his pocket. “Stay here.”
“You have a gun?” she whispered, surprised.
He nodded. “Yeah. It was in my truck.” He had stopped by his Silverado, “to grab a dry jacket,” before they took off. “Just wait here.” He was already walking, skirting around the corner of the house, bending to keep his body low as he kept close to the shrubbery that edged the grass.
No way was Remmi staying put. Inching her flashlight out of her pocket, she was only one step behind Noah as he slipped through the dark breezeway. Then, as the backyard opened to him, he sucked in a breath and whispered, “What the hell?” Then, over his shoulder: “Call 9-1-1!”
“What?”
But he was already sprinting forward. Clicking on her phone, Remmi saw the bodies stretched out in the grassy area that stretched from the house to a barn of some sort. Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my God.”
“Just call! Now!” he ordered, reaching what appeared to be a woman.
Remmi was already punching in the numbers, her fingers shaking.
“Get to the car! Lock the doors!” He was bending over the woman, while the dog, crouched in the shrubbery, howled mournfully.
Neither of the two people were moving, not an inch, and there was blood, on the grass, on their clothes, every damned where. Remmi thought she might be sick. She didn’t recognize the couple in the dark, but they had to be . . . Oh. God. Oh. God. Ned? And Trudie? Oh dear—
“9-1-1,” a female voice said, bringing her out of her panic. “What is the nature of your emergen—?”
“We need help! There are two people injured here. Badly. We need an ambulance! Do you hear me? An ambulance. EMTs!”
“Please identify yourself and give me the address.”
“Yes. Oh. My name is Remmi Storm and . . . and . . . Oh, God, um, we’re at the Ned Crenshaw place, about four or five miles outside of Sacramento.” She blurted out the address and the fact that two people appeared dead or near dead. When the operator told her to stay on the line, that an officer was being dispatched, Remmi clung to the phone and, on shaking legs, hurried closer.
“Stay back. Crime scene!” Noah barked as the officer on the line said something Remmi didn’t comprehend. It, along with the dog’s yowling, was just noise in a shrinking, horrible world. Her gaze was riveted to the bodies. Unmoving. Close together. On the ground where they’d been attacked. Her heart twisted painfully.
