CHAPTER NINE THE BATTLE AT HOME
CHAPTER
NINE
The Battle at Home
Cora jerked awake, her heart spluttering, disoriented to find herself not at home. The scent settled her nerves before her brain could catch up and remember. She was with Lee.
She smiled down at his sprawling form beside her, his breath coming in slow rhythmic pulls.
There was something deliciously sensual about the unguarded expression of his sleeping face.
She traced the muscles of his chest with her fingertips before easing herself back down next to him.
She snuggled in close and shut her eyes, relaxing into the feel of him next to her, skin to skin.
Before she could even begin to drift off, she heard a noise outside and realized that this was what had woken her.
She blinked, trying to adjust her sight to the dark, and shook Lee, who woke instantly alert, like an ever-ready soldier.
‘I heard something,’ she said.
He rolled over and held aside the gray-green curtain covering the window. A white pickup truck sat not twenty yards away. Its tire tracks ran through the scrub grass alongside the gravel drive.
After the two men came making trouble, they had asked Uncle Drew for advice on what to do.
Together they decided to move valuables and anything irreplaceable over to Uncle Drew’s so that they could run at a moment’s notice, and to take down the sign to Green’s Whiskey so they’d be hard to find.
They also dragged fallen branches over the drive, disguising it and blocking it off, or so they’d thought.
It seemed that last precaution had backfired.
The gravel drive would have noisily announced the truck approaching.
Lee took one look outside and sprang out of bed, throwing on heavy jeans and his work boots in the time it took Cora to swing her feet to the floor.
Her hands trembled as she nudged the curtain away to peek again out of the window.
Two men got out of the cab of the truck and three more hopped out of the back.
Lee already had his T-shirt on and rummaged under his bed as Cora pulled a dress over her head.
He dragged out his old baseball bat and catcher’s chest guard, and she realized the men were too close for them to run, and that Lee meant to fight.
Her heart hammered so hard it rang in her ears. ‘Don’t go out there,’ she breathed, fear strangling her voice.
‘If I don’t go out, they’ll come in, and that will be worse.’ He kissed her and held her for only a moment. Then he was strapping on his old catcher’s gear. He struck his stomach, testing the protection.
‘They’ll just bash at your head if they see that.’ Cora’s whisper squeaked under the strain of her panic.
Searching his room, Lee grabbed his army jacket, putting it on over the chest protector and zipping it closed. ‘I’ll be all right,’ he said, as she shook her head at him.
‘Lee!’ She grabbed his arm, tears stinging her eyes.
He pulled her close and kissed her hard, mashing his lips against hers. ‘Lock the door behind me. Don’t let them know you’re here. Hide if you have to and don’t come out no matter what.’
He let her go but she held on tight. ‘Lee, no.’
‘I love you,’ he said. Then he picked up the baseball bat and went out to meet the danger.
With the door locked behind him, she scampered over to the window, crouching below the sill and drawing back an inch of the curtain corner. Lee stood, head high, chest out, with the bat swung over his shoulder, facing five men gripping crowbars and tire irons. One had a hammer.
An almost full moon bathed them in a ghostly light and a strong wind up from nowhere pulled at the trees.
‘You fellas looking for something?’ Lee kept his voice nice and easy, like he might be on his way to a ball game in the middle of the night.
‘Is that him?’ one asked.
‘Yeah. That’s him, all right,’ another said. She recognized the man from the last time, less drunk now, looking even meaner sober.
Cora prayed under her breath, ‘Jesus, God, help him.’ She bargained and bartered that if He’d make those men go away and never come back, she would give Lee up. Go back to her husband. Never break another commandment.
She dropped the curtain and sank to the floor clenching her hands, her teeth, listening to the grunting and cursing and sounds of metal hitting wood.
She clamped her hand over her mouth to hold in her scream.
The loud crack of breaking wood made her blood go cold.
She scrambled back to the window, lifting the cover of the curtain.
The swirling wind had ripped a branch from a dead tree too far from the barn to worry about cutting it down.
It dangled limp and crooked like a broken limb.
On the ground, the five men spread out, trying to circle Lee.
Cora let the curtain fall and backed away from the window.
She had to help him. She knew she couldn’t go out there and fight, but if she could just get over to the whiskey barn, she could use the telephone to call for help.
The lean-to door opened to the front, so she crept to the back window and eased it open.
Her stomach knotted tighter when she heard the grunting and scuffling and taunting insults coming from the front as she lowered herself out.
When her bare feet hit the ground, she landed on a sharp rock and nearly cried out. She should have thought of shoes.
With her foot stinging and smarting, she limped to the side of the lean-to and peeked around the corner to make sure no one was looking.
They weren’t. The men were all focused on Lee.
They had circled him, attacking from every side.
Lee swung as they surged, fighting back the three in front of him.
Behind him, one of them struck his back with a lead pipe while another took a club to his legs.
He staggered and stumbled, and Cora pressed her hand against her mouth to keep herself from screaming.
She ran to the warehouse, left foot exploding in pain with every step. The back door was locked, and she picked up a rock, striking it again and again against the lock, not caring about the noise and the risk. She had to get Lee help before they killed him.
The lock screws holding it in place on the door strained against the worn wooden frame, but the metal lock barely had a scratch. She pulled at the screws, trying to dig them loose, but they held firm.
From the front of the warehouse came the sound of glass smashing. She squinted through the slats of the wood-plank door and saw flames licking at the desk and spreading to the papers stacked neatly to one side. Water, she thought as she attacked the lock again. First call for help, then get water.
‘Fire,’ she heard Lee shout from out front. ‘Fire, fire.’
The men laughed. ‘Yeah, we know.’
He was warning her, thinking she was still in the lean-to and wanting her to get out before the blaze spread.
With a final crack, Cora smashed the screws from the weathered wood. The metal lock still held, but the door opened when she shoved at it.
The fire was spreading up the front wall and creeping sideways toward a neat row of stacked whiskey barrels and jugs. Sixty percent alcohol and flammable as hell.
Through the broken window she could see Lee on the ground, his arms raised to protect his head, his legs flailing and kicking at the men.
She rushed past the window, picking her way through the glass, whimpering each time a shard sliced into her feet.
When she got to the telephone, she grabbed the receiver and pressed it to her ear.
She heard nothing but the crackling and popping of the fire behind her.
‘Hello?’ She pressed the call leaver once, twice, three times.
‘Operator, are you there? Can you hear me?’
Outside an engine revved and the men whooped. She turned her head to look, and the air rushed out of her in a shriek.
‘No.’ She could form no other thought. ‘No, no, no, no.’
Lee lay on his stomach behind the truck. They’d bound his hands together and strapped them to the back bumper. His head hung limp between his arms.
The last of the men hopped into the truck bed and they pulled away whooping, dragging Lee behind them.
‘No!’ Cora screamed, as she sped out of the front door, her whole body going numb.
They picked up speed as they cleared the driveway and turned onto the road.
Cora ran after them on shredded feet, stumbling, falling, running again until she could no longer see them in the distance.
Then, behind her, an explosion shook the ground.
A column of flames shot into the air as Green’s Whiskey burned.