Chapter 14 - Siege of the Barn Loft
The splintering crash of oak timber reverberated through the soles of my boots, humming like a plucked wire through my bones. Downstairs, the rusted pickup sat steaming in the center aisle of the lower barn, coolant hissing against hot metal, mingling with the suffocating reek of unburnt gasoline and damp hay.
Ellis didn’t hesitate. In one fluid, practiced motion born of years of rural self-reliance, he swept his arm behind my waist, dragging me back from the edge of the loft floorboards. He pulled me into the shadowy alcove behind two stacks of curing red-cedar planks. With his right hand, he unclipped the heavy 12-gauge Remington 870 from the gun rack affixed to the central beam, racked the slide with a deafening, metallic clatter, and shoved three extra shells into my trembling palms.
"Stay low, behind the hardwood," Ellis whispered, his breath warm against my ear, his eyes burning with a dangerous, icy focus I had never seen before. "Those planks will stop buckshot. Do not stand up. No matter what Bridget says, Esther. Do you hear me?"
"Ellis, she has a gun from the transport guard," my voice came out raw, a dry rasp against the dry mountain air. "And Kyle... Kyle doesn't have a soul left to lose."
"Neither do I, if anything touches you," he replied, leveling the barrel toward the square opening of the loft ladder.
From the black pit of the ground floor, footsteps crunched furiously over broken windshield glass. A beam of blinding yellow flashlight sliced upward, cutting through the swirling dust motes, illuminating the rafters above our heads.
"Where is it, you miserable old bastard?" Kyle’s voice barked from the shadows below, ragged and panting, filled with erratic panic. "You said it was under the floorboards near the wash stall! There’s nothing here but rot and dirt!"
"Shut up, Kyle!" Richard Sterling’s voice rasped. It sounded like two dry stones grinding together. My father was alive, but the sickness and the prison infirmary had carved him down to sinew and spite. A wet, agonizing cough rattled in his chest, followed by a sickening spit. "Donald didn't bury fifty grand under plain dirt. He had a reinforced poured plate beneath the drainage trap. Find a crowbar in the back of the truck, you useless boy!"
"Forget the floor!" Bridget’s voice shrilled, vibrating with an unnatural, manic energy. Her footsteps stomped toward the wooden stairs that led to our perch. "She's up there! I saw her silhouette at the window! Esther! Come down here and face your family, you selfish little thief!"
"Bridget, stop right there!" Ellis's voice boomed down the stairwell, rattling the iron hinges of the loft. It was not the gentle voice of the man who kissed my temple in the morning; it was the thunderous command of a man defending his home. "You take one step onto those stairs, and I swear to God I will fire through the risers. Sheriff Vance is three minutes out. Drop the weapons and back out of the barn!"
A wild, barking laugh answered him. A second later, the wood near the edge of the stair landing splintered into matchsticks with an ear-splitting bang. Bridget had fired blindly upward.
"Vance isn't making it across the creek road, you backwoods hick!" Bridget screamed, her voice cracking into hysteria. "Kyle felled two hemlocks across the narrow bridge before we hit the county line! The police are on foot! We have all the time in the world!"
I gripped the cold metal shells in my fist until the brass rims dug into my palm, drawing tiny crescents of blood. The realization turned my stomach to ice. The Willow Creek bridge was barely wide enough for a squad car. If Kyle had blocked it, the sirens we heard over the phone were stalled miles away in the dark pines.
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"Esther!" My father’s voice rose from the bottom of the ladder, dripping with the same authoritarian toxicity that had dictated every miserable day of my childhood. "You listen to your father! Your sister is facing twenty years because of your spite! My business is in receivership! The bank is auctioning the family name off in pieces! You give us Donald's lockbox keys, or by God, I will burn this timber frame down around your ears!"
The smell hit my nose then—not just the dripping gas from the crashed truck, but the sharp, acrid stench of sulfur. Down below, Richard struck an old flare. A red, hellish glow bathed the lower stalls in blood-colored light.
