PART ONE
The gravel crunching beneath the tires of Beth Sanders’ SUV was a sound that usually signaled relief. It was the acoustic signature of home, of the Dunn family farm in rural Ohio, United States, where the horizon was wide enough to swallow the claustrophobia of her city life. Today, however, the sound felt intrusive, like a cough in a library.
It was Friday afternoon, a little after four. The late October sun was already beginning its descent, casting long, bruised shadows across the harvested cornfields. Beth had left Columbus three hours early, skipping a client meeting and ignoring two calls from her boss, all to surprise her mother, Carol, for her sixty‑fourth birthday.
In the back seat sat a bouquet of expensive lilies and a box of artisan chocolates, small guilt‑ridden tokens from a daughter who hadn’t visited in six months. She parked near the house, a white clapboard structure that had been repainted so many times the wood grain was lost beneath the layers. The farm was quiet.
Too quiet. Her father, Richard, would usually be on the porch in his wheelchair at this time of day, watching the county road as if it were a television channel, but the porch was empty. Beth stepped out, stretching her stiff back.
The air smelled of drying leaves and damp earth. She reached into the back for her bag, but stopped. Something caught her eye near the machine shed, a large, rusted, corrugated‑metal building about fifty yards from the main house.
There was a shape tucked behind the old tractor bay. It was covered by a blue polyethylene tarp weighted down with cinder blocks. The tarp was new.
The bright blue clashed violently with the muted browns and grays of the farm. Curiosity pricked at her. Her father hadn’t bought new equipment in years, not since the stroke took his right side and his speech eighteen months ago, and her mother certainly wasn’t buying machinery.
Beth abandoned her bag and walked toward the shed. Her boots sank slightly into the soft ground. As she got closer, she recognized the silhouette.
It wasn’t a tractor. It was low, sleek, and distinctly urban. A sudden gust of wind lifted the corner of the tarp, revealing a flash of metallic silver paint and a distinctive alloy rim.
Beth froze. She knew that rim. She knew the scratch on the bumper just above it, a scar from a parking‑garage pillar in downtown Columbus.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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