Chapter 11
Evans lets out a gasp. Mrs. Foster sighs and levers herself out of her chair, moving much more easily than she did earlier.
“I don’t suppose you fellows would believe he’s slaughtering a pig in one of the bedrooms?” she asks.
Evans and I both shoot to our feet and begin backing toward the parlor door. “I think we’ll be taking our leave now,” Evans says, putting a hand to the pocket with his gun.
Mrs. Foster grins, then shouts. “Barney! Time to fill the larder again!”
I wrench open the parlor door and flee into the hall outside, Evans on my heels.
Mrs. Foster rushes after us with a screech; the infirmity of an old woman must have been an act she put on to lull us.
I catch a glimpse of her face before Evans slams the door to block her.
She’s still grinning, her teeth far whiter and sharper than they should be for a woman her age, and I curse myself for not noticing them earlier.
Footsteps pound across the upstairs hall, making for the stairs. Fortunately, the front door is right there, so I go to yank it open.
It doesn’t budge.
Locked. And the key isn’t in the hole.
Mrs. Foster hammers against the parlor door, and Evans braces against it to hold her inside. “There might be another way out the back!”
There might—there might not. Running around an unfamiliar house, looking for a door, is too great a chance to take. “Help me force this one!”
Conflicted emotions pass over Evans’s face, too fast for me to interpret. Then he abandons the parlor door and joins me. “On three.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of Barney at the top of the stairs. The ax in his hand drips blood onto the steps below.
“One,” Evans says, and I take a couple of steps back from the door to get a running start.
Without him to brace it, the parlor door bursts open, and Mrs. Foster surges out.
“Two.”
Barney charges down the stairs, ax raised high.
“Three!”
Our shoulders slam into the door, hard enough to bruise. It creaks—but fails to give.
The door won’t open, and now our enemies are between us and any escape.
Mrs. Foster leaps onto Evans’s back, gripping with her knees and clawing at his eyes. Before I can help him, Barney rushes at me, ax raised high.
I drop to the floor as the blade swings down. It bites deep into the wood of the door and sticks there.
Barney’s face is eerily emotionless as he struggles to pull it free. No anger flits across his features, no frustration. He might easily pass for a monk peacefully splitting firewood.
What the hell did that tainted booze do to him?
I take the opportunity to scramble away on hands and knees in the direction of the stairs.
A thud sounds in the hall behind me; Evans has thrown himself against the nearest wall, catching Mrs. Foster between his body and the crumbling plaster.
She lets out a pained grunt. “Barney, you lump! Stop them!”
Barney abandons the ax in the door and comes at me with big hands outstretched. I scramble back, my shoulder knocking into an umbrella stand. It falls in a clatter, spilling out a walking stick and a tattered umbrella with a bent arm.
Of the two, only the umbrella is in reach. I grab it and swing it in front of me in a desperate attempt to keep Barney away. Not much of a defense—he’ll surely just knock it aside, then lock his hands around my throat.
He doesn’t. Instead, he jumps back, as though I’m holding a knife instead of a broken umbrella.
I’m so shocked I just gape at him. He doesn’t make any further move toward me, though, as if he’s somehow forgotten what he’s doing in the last few seconds.
“Barn—” Mrs. Foster starts to shout—then she hits the floor on her back, flipped up and over Evans’s shoulder.
“Don’t just stand there!” Evans pulls out his gun and points it at them both. “Use the ax and chop the door down.”
I grab the handle only to discover it’s slick with blood. Wiping my hands off on my trousers, I try again, this time getting enough of a grip to wrench it free of the door.
On the floor, Mrs. Foster struggles to sit up. A trickle of blood comes from her mouth, perhaps from a bitten tongue. “Barney, stop them!”
Evans points the gun at him, and he takes a step back. The impassive expression on his face doesn’t change.
I bring the ax down with all my strength, aiming for the area around the doorknob. I hit it again, then again—and the wood splits, the entire mechanism popping loose.
The door swings open. “Good work,” Evans says, even as he grabs my wrist with his free hand. He hauls me out behind him, and we both break into a run.
It’s still raining, but I don’t give a damn. We flee back to the road, the sound of Mrs. Foster raging at her son fading into the darkness behind us.