Old World Murder - Kathleen Ernst [100]
“Chloe!” Joel was approaching the stable. She was out of options.
Chloe threw her weight against the side of the heavy bin. She managed to shove it across the doorway with an ear-splitting screech.
“Chloe!” He was right outside.
As Chloe retreated from the door her heel hit something hard. Oh, God. Had she kicked the ale bowl? She spun around. The ale bowl was untouched. But instead—
Joel wrenched the door open. He appeared in the doorway, visible waist-up above the bin. The academic face Chloe had seen glow when regarding his fiancée had settled into hard lines. His dark eyes glinted behind his horn-rimmed glasses. His right hand held a gun. It was pointed at her.
He slapped his left palm on the grain bin. “Move this damn thing.”
“Joel—”
He slammed his hip against the bin. It shuddered several inches into the room.
Chloe stooped, came up swinging the fire extinguisher, and banged the canister onto the grain bin for balance. After years of safety training at historic sites, the motions came instinctively. Pull the pin. Aim the nozzle. Squeeze the handle.
Joel’s face disappeared beneath a cloud of dry chemical powder. He stumbled backward with an indistinct bellow. And his right hand jerked. The shot deafened her. The glass window in the front wall exploded.
“Shit!” Chloe gasped. Bowl or no bowl, she needed out. Climbing over the grain bin would land her in Joel’s lap. Jagged shards of glass lined the front window. Last option: the back window.
A wooden peg held the six-pane window closed. Chloe yanked it free and shoved the window up with a thud. Adrenaline fueled her launch and she skidded through the window, scraping her belly, wildly kicking her feet.
She landed painfully in an oozing black slurry of mud that coated her hands, soaked through her pants. She heard the grain bin being heaved aside. Joel was already back on his feet.
Muck sucked at Chloe’s shoes as she scrambled to find footing, aiming toward the fence separating her from the breezeway. Joel wanted the ale bowl more than he wanted her. The padlock was still in her pocket. If she moved fast enough, she could lock him into the stable. That would buy her a few more minutes.
But she’d forgotten the two Ossabaws. They reached her before she got to the fence. One knocked against her thigh. She fell again, landing painfully on the same elbow she’d smacked earlier. “Get away, you stupid hogs!” she hissed. “I don’t have any food!” One hog stared her down with dark glittering eyes. The second nudged her again, its bristles scraping roughly against her bare arm. She shoved it away and struggled back to her feet.
Joel stood at the fence separating the hog pen from the breezeway. A grayish-white residue was visible in his hair and on his forehead, on his throat and shirt, but he’d wiped his mouth clear. His glasses, now smeared, had protected his eyes from the worst chemical blast. He held his gun in one hand, and Gro’s ale bowl—carelessly, by one carved cow head—in the other.
“Could you at least hold the bowl with both hands?” Chloe panted. One of the hogs butted her in the knee. She widened her stance.
Joel jerked his head like a dog trying to shed water. The fire retardant was probably irritating his skin. “Just shut—up.” He balanced the hand holding the gun on the top of the fence. The muzzle’s dark round hole looked huge.
Oh, God. If he shot her now, the damned hogs would eat her.
Chloe did not want to die in a hog pen. “You have the bowl,” she said. “Just go. Don’t make things worse.”
“You already made things worse.” Joel coughed, then spat some chemical residue. “I didn’t want any of this.”
“Then why are you here?” Chloe raised her voice to be heard over the hogs’ insistent squeals. “I don’t understand—”
“Shut up!” Joel snapped. His hand jerked. Chloe closed her eyes. And one of the Ossabaws slammed into her, knocking her to her knees.
No shot came. When Chloe looked