For Sandy

He’s right behind her. She can hear his booted feet splashing through the muddy puddles of the yard even as she slips through the door to the barn and slams it shut behind her. There’s no way to lock it, but that’s all right.

Heart pounding, terror the bitterness of bile in her throat, she welcomes the pursuit.

She wants him to follow.

Her sister was always the tomboy, Sandy’s love of the farm the reason Mom and Dad willed it to her in the first place. No one expected them both to die in a tragic car accident so young, though. That didn’t keep Sandy from taking over the place and giving her the chance to finish school, go to college.

Donna was still grateful for the opportunity to get out of their little rural town and make something of herself, always feeling a bit guilty she left Sandy behind to run the farm. But they were both happy, at least that’s what she told herself.

She eases back toward the steel shelving near the parked tractor, knowing the inside of this place by heart. They’d played here as children, all those long, lazy days after chores were done, jumping down into the grain piled beneath the chute, lying in straw forts made from rough bales that smelled like summer even when winter forced them into snowsuits.

She’s barely to the back bumper of her father’s old pickup, no longer working and parked here, left to rot, when she hears the door open, and his voice carry over the crack of thunder matched in time with the flash of lightning that lights up the barn through the opening.

“Let’s just talk about it.” There’s enough threat in his tone she knows there won’t be any words if she lets him catch her before she’s ready.

“Like you talked with Sandy, Greg?” Donna feels for the ladder to the loft, finds the bottom rung against her hands, catching a splinter on the uneven edge. She hisses as she sucks her thumb from the pain. He’s already approaching, his shadow making its way through the dark barn. She’d purposely left the lights out and the idiot failed to turn them on himself, so hopefully she’ll keep her advantage long enough.

She only needs luck, now, for Sandy.

His voice again. Closer, more cajoling. “You have no idea what you’re saying.”

He’d never been friendly, Donna feeling unwelcome on the farm from the moment they met, Sandy’s wedding a small, private thing, elopement followed by a quick note to her sister in the city bringing Donna to investigate. She hadn’t stayed long. Greg made sure of that. But Sandy seemed happy, and Donna had her own life to live.

If only she hadn’t been so selfish.

Cold water drips down the back of her neck, making her squeak in nerves as she climbs the ladder as fast as she dares. She has to get in position before he finds her, or this has all been a waste. She lured him out here, after all, with a text telling him she knew what he did.

Was going to call the cops.

“It’s all there in her cloud account, Greg.” Donna pauses on the ladder, right at the top, to be sure he sees her. Catches his shadow near the tractor below, sees him look up as lightning flashes again, illuminating his sneer. Thunder rolls over the barn, shaking it, the storm right on top of them, dust choking her. She scrambles the rest of the way up, one shoe slipping on the last wooden rung, landing her with an oof on the edge of the front hatch, breathless. Panic reawakens as she scrambles for purchase. It’s been years since she climbed this ladder and while she goes to the gym regularly enough, terror and fury and a softer living than her sister has her fumbling to push her shaking legs to her final destination.

Donna received Sandy’s email before the sheriff’s call. She stared in curiosity at the website link her sister sent her the day before—why was she only getting to it now?—while the phone rang. And she was still staring when he told her he was sorry for her loss.

“Sandy died,” he said. “A terrible car accident.”

Donna had hung up, dazed, in shock, as her finger clicked the mouse and a video played. A video her dead sister had sent to her from beyond the grave. She found out later that Sandy made arrangements. That if she passed her lawyer would immediately send that link to Donna via her email. But Donna didn’t find that out until later, until she watched the video over and over, taking far too long for the contents to absorb, for the truth to sink in, for her grief to turn to rage and then cold calculation.

Because her sister had sent footage of her own death, a beating at the hands of her husband. The same man who’d taken Sandy’s dead body, put it in truck and let it roll off the cliff, making it look like an accident.

The same man now grunting his way up the ladder after Donna.

Everyone always assured Donna Greg was so good to Sandy. Any time she visited town—and it wasn’t often, to her eternal regret—townsfolk would rave about how nice he was. Not much of a farmer, leaving that to his wife, but a good man.

They had no idea.

“I know about the insurance policy.” Donna lets that lure him onward as she skirts the side of the loft, the square bales not yet in for the winter, most of the space wide open, if covered in a thick mat of shed straw. So dark up here, and yet she remembers it as if she’d been twelve only yesterday, the pathway to take, the cubby at the end of the far wall, the perfect place to crouch and wait.

For her sister’s murderer.

“Of course we had insurance.” Now he’s trying to sound reasonable, his shadow rising at the edge of the ladder hatch. He takes his time, clearly uncomfortable with heights and unfamiliar with the space. She’s counting on it.

“She didn’t tell you about the nanny cam,” Donna says, voice shaking, hands clenched at her sides. This is it. Make or break, for Sandy. “I saw it all, Greg. I saw you hit her on so many occasions. She recorded it all. And I saw you kill her.”

He stops, feet shuffling over the boards silent now as his large, lurking shape lights up, outlined by lightning for a heartbeat. “She fell,” he says. Sullen, angry.

“You punched her in the chest,” Donna shoots back, nearly sobbing now. A hiss from above her makes her jump despite the fact she knows the source.

“She fell on the coffee table.” Wheedling, explaining his sins away. But still murder. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“You killed my sister.” Donna moves sideways as he approaches, drawing him forward on purpose, with purpose and he obliges. “You killed Sandy and I have proof, Greg.”

“If you did,” he says, voice dropping, almost to her side, “you’d have gone to the cops by now, Donna.” He lunges at her, but she’s ready. Had planned this out, for Sandy.

It’s the least she owes her sister.

Greg stumbles, curses, his shoulder hitting the back wall of the barn as Donna slips away. As he straightens to try again, an ungodly screech, high-pitched and multilayered by multiple voices, cuts through the air of the loft like an audible scythe.

He screams in shock, hands clutching at his head, this time falling backward. It’s Donna’s turn to leap, to straight arm him in the chest, both palms hitting him with the full force of her weight behind her, shoving him backward.

As he’d shoved Sandy.

Lightning has the good grace to flash while he falls, the open hatch to the concrete floor and hay bale fork below in clear view as he lands square on the metal spike, gurgling once, body twisting as death takes him. He sighs out his last breath while the thunder swallows it in a distant rumble.

Donna steps back from the edge, looking up at the nook where the family of barn owls nests, the two adults shaking their wings and hissing at her, furious at the disturbance. Just like barn owls had nested there since she was a little girl.

Sandy’s favorite. And hers, for as long as she could remember. And granted a home there against their father’s wishes due to his daughters and their begging.

“You know what, Greg?” Donna shrugs, drained and empty now, trembling gone, body still. “You’re right.” She looks down one last time at justice done for Sandy. “I think I will call the cops.”

The owls hiss in agreement.