Joule stepped back quickly, a reaction and not a plan. Again, she jerked at the gun as if to indicate she would shoot when it was becoming pretty clear that she wouldn't.
She’d had enough of this. So she motioned to both Paul and his daughter and gruffly demanded, “Sit down!”
As they were moving, a heavy crack sounded through the air and they all jerked in surprise. Paul fell the last foot on his awkward path to the floor, but all heads spun to the side.
Not immediately registering what had made the noise, Joule whipped back to looking at her prisoners. She was grateful she'd already gotten the other two on the ground, or they might have been able to take advantage of the noise and steal the gun away from her.
Beside her, the whinnies and angry huffs let her know that the horses were not calming down. In fact, they were getting worse, as though they could feel the tension in the air. The noise had almost definitely been one of them kicking at the stall or the barn wall. From the sound of it, he’d broken something. But what?
Though Joule couldn’t tell, she imagined she could see the wood stalls still shuddering from the impact. But the horses would have to wait.
“What's your name?” she asked the woman.
“Brenda.” It was curt and short.
“I don't want to shoot anybody,” Joule said, “but don't think that I won't. Now someone needs to explain to me what is going on.”
Paul lost all his tension then, his shoulders sagging, his head going into his hands, as if Joule’s declaration had stolen the final bit of fight from him. Now, he was not only sad, but ashamed.
“Laura and Levi came through looking for you,” Paul told his daughter. “I said I hadn’t seen you, but then I told them what I'd found in Jerry's truck, because I was surprised. Apparently, I was being an idiot, because it wasn’t about Jerry. It was about them. They played me and I fell for it.”
Brenda was nodding, putting her hand out to her father's arm, as if maybe she'd been there at the time. And sure enough, the next part of Paul's story cleared that up. “I came out to see if y’all were here. Then when I went back to the house to tell Brenda, I found Laura and Levi holding her hostage. I thought they’d left, but they had guns on us both.”
He needed a breath, but Joule waited. She had to hear the whole story.
“They told me they’d followed people to my barn and that I needed to come out and get you. They seemed to think I had a better chance of talking you into coming down the ladder. They needed to see your faces. If you were who they wanted, they said I could exchange you for Brenda.”
Joule opened her mouth to retort, “Well, that didn't go as planned, did it?” but he already knew that. He was now under threat from his own gun and he’d not exchanged anyone.
Lowering the gun, but still holding it tightly in the one hand—so she could have it at the ready if she needed—Joule put her free hand to her forehead. She needed a break from this damn day. But it wasn’t coming.
Jerry still crouched in the corner, Toto not quite warming to the idea of coming out for him. Joule almost laughed at her kitten’s stubbornness, but another loud crack shot through the barn and shuffling noises came from outside.
She looked to Paul, as if to ask, Were the horses trying to get out or the cows trying to get in? But he only shrugged in response. His concerned and confused expression meant he didn’t know, either.
Ultimately, it didn't matter. It didn’t matter what he knew or whether she could lower the gun and they could work as a team in case the Larkins came through that door again, because it was only five seconds later that Jerry got a hold of Toto. He lifted the tiny cat with a gentleness that Joule had not suspected.
As he handed the soft ball of fuzz into Joule’s waiting hand, the horses began bouncing off the walls.
“Something’s wrong,” Paul announced as he got to his feet to inspect the animals. Joule didn’t protest. She was just as shitty a hostage-taker as Paul had been.
But the older man didn’t even make it to the stalls. They all figured out why the animals were going crazy as smoke began to curl under the edges of the door.
62
Cage was ready to give up.
He hadn't seen anything, but he hadn't said anything about it, and neither had Dev. They’d been biking for miles—or else, he was starting to think like Dev did, that they’d come much farther than they actually had.
He tried calculating the odds. What did it hurt to be out here? But the answer was, maybe it did. The longer they stayed out tonight, the more likely they were to sleep through good searching hours tomorrow. The daylight had to be better than this. The more they rode, the more his muscles screamed in protest. They’d been complaining harshly for several hours now. And who knew? Maybe tomorrow, some of the roads would be clearer.
Then again, how far had they come? And how far was it back to the car, or even to Desperado’s Hideaway?
He wasn't quite sure where they were. Dev had taken his phone back again, which meant he had the only GPS, but it was a battery-eater, and Cage wasn't willing to ask his friend to use it.
“There's a light up ahead,” Dev told him.
So there’s another house, Cage thought glumly. Most of the houses had seemed empty—either abandoned to rot or the residents had fled the storms. Then again, if it was lit, maybe the people were home.
“Do you think it's worth knocking on doors?” Dev asked.
Cage was still putting effort on the pedals, still feeling the scream in his thighs with every push. His back was angry and protesting, his shoulders making rude comments at every turn of the handlebars. The pain reminded him that he still hadn't properly adjusted his bike.
His return thought was that he wasn't quite sure how to properly adjust a bike in the first place. He wasn't a cyclist. “I think we should. It'll take a lot of time, but Joule’s out here.”
“She may have stopped at one of the farms back there. We might have already passed her.” Dev’s words echoed Cage's thoughts from earlier.
It was plausible that people were in most of the homes they passed, but they were simply shutting off the lights for the night. It wasn't like the suburban neighborhoods where people lit up their houses for display. There weren't even lights on the road. Everything they saw was from the moonlight and the headlamps that they bought…except for the light up ahead.
It glowed with the yellow of an old sulfur lamp, twinkling until they biked a little closer and saw that it was actually more orange.
The light grew in size as they got closer and Cage wasn't sure exactly when he realized what he was looking at. He picked up speed and yelled. “Dev! It's on fire!”
63
Joule hadn’t seen the smoke earlier, maybe because it had grown dark outside relatively quickly as night settled. The only light filtering in through the cracks in the barn was coming from the moon, or maybe a lamp somewhere in the distance, she guessed.
But while they’d been arguing among themselves, the thick, acrid smoke had begun rolling in like a predator, all but impossible to miss. They were now trapped inside the barn with fire coming for them. She had heard the murmuring voices beyond the doors, but there had been nothing she could do about it. The bigger threat had seemed to be Paul holding the gun on them.
Now she had the gun, but it no longer mattered. She couldn't talk a fire out of killing her or have Jerry take it out with a good side tackle.
The four of them turned, almost as a unit, and looked at the smoke as if to decide what to do about it. It curled under the doors, coming for them. And Jerry asked, “Now what?”
But Paul was already on his feet and moving. No one else budged. Checking the doors was pointless. There was something burning on the other side, and Joule had heard the Larkins doing something to the doors. They all had. She was confident they were chained inside.
They could see flashes of fire through the cracks and under the door now—not just smoke. So even if they managed to get the doors open, they wo
uld jump directly from the smoke into the flames.
As she had that thought, she saw fingers of orange reaching under and grabbing for the hay on the floor. A few of them caught, small sparks lighting small fires, the size of a matchhead. Joule ran over and quickly stomped on the two she saw, though she was certain that wouldn’t stop anything. It might make it take another minute to get a good foothold—but a minute could change everything, she knew. She stomped on another spark and another as Paul called out.
“There's another door over here!” He raced to the other side of the barn to open it, all three of them following along.
But though the old-fashioned metal latch gave under his thumb as he pressed it, and he tugged on the door, it didn't move more than an inch.
“Damnation!” he yelled. Joule noticed again that this was a man who wouldn't fully swear even when fire was threatening to kill him. “I think they've barricaded this one, too.”
Joule was already right behind him and stepped in to yank at the handle. She was about to put her face to the crack she’d made, wondering if the Larkins had simply slid a board through the door handle to block it or something like that. If they had, maybe she could reach through and jimmy it out. But she felt the fire already eating at the other side of the door.
She sensed heat at her feet. Smoke curled in through the crack. And she only watched for a moment before she got smart enough to shove the door shut and let go of the handle that was already growing hot.
Behind her the horses screamed in a hellish choir and her heart kicked at the horrifying noise.
Were they surrounded by fire?
She turned back and saw three pairs of eyes looking at her, all wondering the same thing.
Her brain scrambled and her hand once again darted into her pocket, feeling for the kitten and grateful to find he was still there. If they couldn't get out through the doors, they'd have to get out through the walls. She decided to do what she did best: Get bossy.
“We know there's a fire there and here.” She pointed to the large double doors and then to the one right behind her. Even as she said it, she quickly stepped away. She wasn't sure how fire would act, not on a barn like this.
The barn construction was plain with exposed studs. Maybe it wouldn’t be too much work to get through it. She turned to Paul. “How thick are the walls?”
“It's exactly what you see. Just a barn.” He shrugged as if he didn’t know what else he might add. “The animals provide the heat. The structure just kind of holds it in.”
Right now the fire was providing the heat and the animals were providing terrified and terrifying noises. Sharp cracks indicated hooves kicking at the stalls. Joule didn’t like any of it, but she stayed focused.
She nodded. That was good. “We need to find a place where there's not a fire on the other side. Check for heat!”
The four of them dispersed in different directions, moving to opposite walls and placing their hands flat against the wood to check the temperature. They stomped out tiny embers as they saw them, fighting against time to slow the fire. Again and again, Joule saw them either jerk their hands back or shake their heads.
She found a few spots she couldn’t be sure about. Most felt warm to her.
“Here!” Jerry called out excitedly, pointing to a spot he still held one palm to, as if to prove it was cool enough.
“That side leads into the paddock,” Paul replied quickly, as he headed toward Jerry. But halfway across the space, he turned and changed directions. He darted into the small alcove near the front and hollered out, “Let me grab some tools! Maybe we can get through!”
Joule still loosely held the shotgun in her hand. “You got more shells for this thing?” she asked as she held it up.
Paul patted his pockets before nodding, but came toward them and handed out a crowbar, a pitchfork, and a shovel. Jerry and Brenda were now armed with farming implements. But as the three of them pulled in close behind her, Joule said, “Step back.”
Then she walked up as close to the wall as she dared and aimed, right around her own chest height. Closing her eyes, she pulled the trigger.
64
Cage raced his bike down the long, gravel drive, Dev right behind him. The jolts and jars of the uneven ground clacked his teeth together and jarred his spine as he tried to go even faster.
He was no fire expert, but he would say that the barn wasn't fully up in flames yet. It seemed to have several lines of fire around the outside. And from what he could see, he was pretty certain this wasn’t a fire that had occurred naturally or even by accident. It seemed clearly designed to kill the animals inside.
His immediate next thought—as he hit a rock and almost went flying over the handlebars before managing to right the bicycle again—was to wonder what else might be inside.
The cracking boom pulled him and Dev up short. They sprayed gravel as they skidded to a stop in a slick move that Cage would have been proud of at any moment other than this.
Someone was shooting.
“What the hell?” Dev asked, but Cage had no answers.
They were close enough to the barn that they were likely faster on foot now. So Cage swung one leg over the bike and jumped free, letting it clatter to the gravel. He was already several feet away before it hit the ground.
He'd covered half the distance to the barn with Dev right behind him as the second boom echoed through the night. He pulled up short, stepping back for a moment, as though the bullets or shot wouldn’t have already whizzed by him if they’d come his way.
But he still couldn’t see anything. Whatever was happening wasn't happening on the side of the barn facing the drive.
He gave the barn a wide berth as the flames licked at the wood. If the fire made it inside the barn, it would probably go up like a tinderbox. Weren't barns full of hay and other wonderfully flammable things?
But as he rounded the corner, he was certain his eyes were deceiving him. One of the walls appeared to bulge for a moment and then it went flat.
It was surely a trick of the moonlight, and he dismissed it as he heard a noise over his shoulder. He looked back to see Dev was close behind him. But as he turned back to look at the barn, he again saw the wall bulge again.
Only this time, the wood cracked.
“Again!” a voice yelled from inside. Followed quickly by, “Step back.”
It took only those three words for Cage to recognize his sister's voice.
His chest swelled with both relief and fear.
Cage beelined for the spot where someone was breaking out of the barn. Joule must have someone with her, as she was shouting orders. Could it be Izzy?
He and Dev were close to where he’d seen the wall move when the next crack split the air around him. This time, he felt something shift in the air molecules next to him.
Holy shit, he thought, they were shooting their way out.
He immediately jumped back. Surely, his sister had this in hand.
Also, if he stepped in front of her shots, and took a bullet or buckshot, that would not be the happy ending that he'd done all of this searching for. His arm shot out across Dev’s torso, like a mother trying to hold her child back in the seat next to her as the car slammed to a stop. The move was probably about as useless.
Dev had surely already figured out what was happening, the same as him. The two of them backed up in tandem as the barn wall cracked, splinters of wood flying. He watched as a pitchfork came through first, tines out, ready to skewer anyone on the other side.
It must have been feet kicking at the wall next. The wood swayed and bulged, and eventually gave way right about waist height. Again, a few splinters flew, but this time a bigger chunk of wood also moved. It seemed hinged slightly at the top, but finally, there was a hole. He watched hands and tools come through as those inside worked frantically to make it bigger.
“Joule!” he cried out, wanting to help but knowing that getting shot was the wrong response. Her excited response of “Cage?�
�� bloomed in his chest. Any last doubt that it was wishful thinking faded away. He had found her!
“We’ll help get you out. Don’t shoot us. What should we do?”
But he didn't hear her answer.
Instead, he felt the muzzle of a gun against the side of his head. Just as he recognized what he was feeling, he heard the words, “You're not going to help her. You're going to stand real still until I tell you what to do. Or it'll be the last thing that you ever do.”
65
Joule pushed everyone else out through the hole before her. The fire was spreading faster than she had anticipated. She would swear she could hear the crack and whoosh as whole hay bales went up in flame.
Fingers of flame raced along the floor, as if the fire was actively searching for her. There wasn’t time to make the hole bigger or cleaner. She shoved Paul out first, because he was the oldest. He'd likely be the hardest to get through the hole. She wasn’t sure how well he could climb or land on the grass on the other side.
Even as he forced himself through the small space, he turned back to Brenda and yelled, “Open the stalls!”
Jerry was next, as the biggest. The hole had to fit him, and she wasn't going to leave him behind just because the smaller people went first. Brenda had dashed around behind her as Joule helped push Jerry through, and she must have opened all the stalls, because now there was a herd of frantic horses in the main room of the barn with them.
“We have to go quickly!” Brenda told her, and Joule refrained from answering “No shit.”
Then, with just her and Brenda left, she put her hand on the other woman's back and pushed. But Brenda pushed her first, yelling over the heat and flames and wild whinnies. “The animals know me!”
As if that meant anything.
It only occurred to Joule then that it might look selfish to go last, to let the others clear the debris out of the way. But it didn't matter now. The fire was close and breathing was difficult. Stepping one foot high, she put her dirty sneaker out through the hole, following awkwardly with her torso and finally hopping ungracefully into the cool night air.
The Tempest Page 27
