Revealing the cane’s secret, that it was a sword cane, concealing at least two feet of fine Italian steel, with a needle point that could go through a person like a barbecue spit going through a hunk of beef. It was good for close-quarter combat, to terrorize or impress an opponent—for who would expect such a weapon to appear?—and I was eager to use it.
About a foot of the shiny steel came out, and—
Stopped.
Stuck.
I tugged again.
Still stuck.
Dave laughed.
I swung the cane by its lower shaft, catching him in the chin, and he yelped and fell back. I scooped up the flashlight, switched it off, and with another swing of the cane, I smashed the overhead dangling light bulb.
The cellar flashed into darkness.
I stumbled and ran as best as I could up the stairs, hearing Dave groan behind me, and at the top of the stairs, where the main fuse box was located, and I slapped the door open and tossed the main circuit breaker, at the same time yelling, “Paula! Get down!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The house was plunged into darkness. From the other side of the first floor, Marjorie yelled, “Hey! Hey! What’s going on?”
I moved forward in the blackness of the kitchen, hand out, and found one of the backed stools I use to sit at the counter. I dragged the stool back to the cellar door and shoved it hard up against the doorknob, blocking Dave’s escape.
Good job.
But the scraping noise of me putting the stool into place identified where I was, and that was a bad job indeed.
A hollow sounding boom! tore through the living room as I fell back against the floor. Glassware shattered and broke, and I think Paula screamed. I yelled out, “Paula! Quiet as you can, get safe!”
I crawled on the floor, my fairly useless sword cane behind me, hoping to scurry across to the left, to the living room and the shelves and where the phone was. I moved as quickly as I could, my ears ringing from the shotgun blast, the room smelling strongly of gunpowder.
“Cole!” Marjorie yelled. “Stop it, stop it right now.”
Closer.
Okay. Close enough to reach the phone now. An old-fashioned landline but I was an old-fashioned landline kind of guy. My fingers found the power cord and the phone line that snaked up the side of the counter.
But what?
Another shot, another flare of light, and I spotted Marjorie standing in front of the closed and locked door.
Another scream from Paula.
“Cole!” Marjorie shouted out. “I was co-captain of my high school skeet team, I know how to use this. Lights or no lights, I’ll just start shooting from one side of the room to the other, spraying everything out there with double-oh buckshot. Got that?”
I ran my fingers up the phone line and power cord, tried to keep my voice even and clear.
“I got that,” I said. “What do we have to do to calm everything down?”
Wood creaking out there in the night. Was Paula crawling away, or was Marjorie stepping closer to where she thought I was?”
“Where’s David?”
“In the cellar.”
“David!” she yelled. “You okay?”
There was no answer, and she yelled louder, “David!”
Again, relative quiet. More wood creaking.
“You—what did you do to my David?”
“Sorry,” I said. My fingers were on the base of the phone. I managed to pick up the receiver and hold it tight in my shaking hand. “I bopped him in the head with my cane.”
“Did you hurt my David?”
“I guess I did,” I said. “But he started it.”
More wood creaking and something metallic being clicked. Marjorie putting more shells into her shotgun magazine?
“You … you hurt my David? That sweet man, he’s kept me alive, he’s kept me going. To hell with you. I’m going to kill all of you.”
I lowered myself down to the ground, got the phone—
Dropped it on the floor.
Well, damn.
I fumbled around, my hand moving frantically, and there was that bone-marrow chilling sound of snick-snack, of a fresh shotgun shell being chambered. I found the phone, I found the phone, and God bless whoever came up with numerals that glow in the dark; I punched in 9–1–1 and tossed the phone in the direction of Marjorie, just as she fired off another blast.
Somewhere on the other side of the room, Paula screamed.
I scuttled like a bug across the floor, trying to get to where I thought Paula was.
Another snick-snack, and Marjorie’s taunting voice. “Sometimes high-priced shotguns are known as street sweepers. This ain’t a street sweeper, but it’s close enough.”
A metallic sound again, and—
I bumped into Paula, trembling and shaking.
I wanted to whisper to her, tell her to hold on, but I didn’t want to make a sound.
Instead I crawled around so I was over her, holding her, shielding her, as I waited for what was coming next—which was not what I was expecting.
Light came in from somewhere, a woman’s voice said, “Hey!” A heavy thump, followed by a heavier thump, and the lights came on.
My eyes hurt. I blinked. Blood was on my hand. I stayed where I was, protecting Paula.
I looked to the door.
Mia Harrison, the waitress from across the way, was standing there, eyes wide, face pale.
“I think I hurt her,” she said. In her right hand she held a chunk of my boulder-strewn front yard, with blood on it. Marjorie Hudson was on the floor.
“I think that’s just fine,” I said.
“Okay,” she said, voice light. “I’m going to drop this on the floor. Okay?”
“Absolutely.”
She dropped the boulder, denting my wooden floor—like I cared—and then came the sound of the sirens.
Chaos arrived, and then sorted itself out into something nearing controlled chaos. I stayed with Paula, who was bleeding from her forehead—I couldn’t tell if it was from a stray shotgun pellet or from falling on the floor—and I held her and kissed her on the cheek and told her she would be all right, and she didn’t say anything, even when the Tyler Fire Department EMTs bandaged and bundled her up and took her out.
I
