Chapter Twenty-Six #2
Cordelia yanked open the door the rest of the way and grabbed two hooks off the wall. She didn’t have time to freak out about tetanus, but the amount of rust coating those old tools hadn’t escaped her notice. She’d bathe in hand sanitizer later.
Raising her arm high over her head, Cordelia tossed the hooks into the scrub. Daisy followed her lead, grabbing more hooks and flinging them into the night. They hit the dirt with a soft thud. If one didn’t know where the sound originated, they almost sounded like footfalls.
The door from the opposite structure burst open, and Sean’s Irish lilt split the air. “I told you someone was following us. Find them.”
Daisy and Cordelia both let loose another series of hooks, and Sean pulled a gun from his waistband and began firing into the night.
Daisy squeaked, the noise muffled by the sound of a bullet ricochetting off a rock.
A tall man with a stooped build and a wide-brimmed Stetson followed close behind him.
Cordelia flung another hook farther than the previous one.
“They’re getting away.” The man dashed ahead of Sean, who followed on his heels, gun still drawn. “I can’t see a damn thing out here.”
“Let’s go,” Cordelia whispered.
They had a five-minute window, if that, to get in and get Edna out.
Sean and his partner had left the door of the larger building wide open.
Just inside the entrance, Edna was tied to a wooden chair, a dirty cloth stuffed into her mouth.
She’d already freed one hand from the rope that bound her and was quickly working on the other.
Her forehead crinkled at the sight of Cordelia and Daisy, and she began violently jerking her head from side to side.
Cordelia crouched beside her and began untying her left hand. “We’re going to get you out of here, but if I take that cloth off and you start screaming, you’re on your own.”
Edna nodded, her eyes wide with shock.
Cordelia pulled the cloth free as Daisy went to work on the rope that bound her ankles to the chair. “Who is that man with Sean?”
“Jameson.” Edna spit the taste of dirt and oil from her mouth. “He owns a pawnshop in Three Oaks and fences a lot of stolen property for Sean.”
“We can get to know everyone later,” Cordelia said. “We don’t have much time as is.”
At the sound of the two men approaching, they all froze. They were too late.
“What now?” Daisy whispered.
They had all but one of Edna’s legs untied from the chair and no time to make a run for it. The only thing they could do was fight their way out. In the dark, in an unfamiliar territory, against two grown men with guns. How could this possibly go wrong?
Cordelia instructed Daisy to loop Edna’s arm around her shoulders and half drag her away from the entrance. Cordelia grabbed a rusted rake with an ancient wooden handle that was propped up against the wall and waited in the shadows.
As soon as Sean’s large frame filled the door, Cordelia swung the rake, cracking him across the temple. He went down like a sack of potatoes, his head lolling to the side. A trickle of blood cut a path across the dirt floor, moving slower than snail slime.
“What the hell?” Jameson stopped short at the sight of Sean and didn’t see the rake coming. Cordelia swung wide, and his teeth rattled together like a BB in a boxcar. He went down in a heap of dust next to Sean.
“Oh my God, Miss Cordelia. You never told me you played baseball,” Daisy said.
“I don’t.” Cordelia tossed the rake to the side, a little frightened of what she’d done. She’d never so much as swatted a fly in her life. Her hands shook as fear and fire coursed through her veins. “Let’s go before they wake up.”
They dug through Sean’s pockets until they found Edna’s keys and tossed them to her.
Just in case, Cordelia relieved both men of their guns, holding them by her thumbs and index fingers, like they might go off if she wrapped her palms around them.
Once they stepped outside, she tossed them into a nearby bush.
They’d be impossible to find in the dark.
“Should we call the police?” Daisy asked.
“No,” Cordelia and Edna said at the same time.
They stopped and looked at each other, unsure of why the other said no.
Cordelia didn’t want to involve the sheriff because she was certain he’d been the one to delete the pictures off her phone.
But what did Edna have to gain by keeping the police out of this?
She’d been the one who’d been thrown in a trunk, after all.
She had to know Sean would come for her again, and maybe she wouldn’t be so lucky next time.
“Why did Sean take you from the festival?” Cordelia asked. “And don’t bother lying, I saw the two of you in that alley. That’s how we ended up out here.”
“You were spying on me?” Edna’s eye bulged with indignation.
Daisy’s nose scrunched. “And you’re welcome for it, you ungrateful bi—”
Cordelia put a hand on Daisy’s arm to still her. “Why is he so convinced the Chickadee land is holding oil? You owe us that much.”
Edna released a deep sigh as she glanced between them and the building where her abductors had been knocked out. “Let’s get out of here first. If you follow me back to my house, I’ll explain everything. I swear.”