Enoch stepped forward. “Do you have a gun I can borrow? I didn’t think I’d need one today.”
Nelson reached behind the counter and pulled out a shotgun.
Enoch took it and nodded his thanks, then checked the chamber. Loaded and ready.
Every instinct screamed at him to charge down that hallway right now, but the sheriff was right. One wrong move could get Mandie killed.
His pulse hammered as they crept down the narrow hallway, the floorboards creaking a little under their boots despite their efforts at stealth. The smell of old whiskey and dust grew stronger with each step.
At the back door, Enoch tried to let James inside, but the door was locked.
The sheriff positioned himself at the storage room door, pressing his ear against the wood. Enoch moved in to listen too.
Clayton’s voice sounded inside, too low to make out words. Then a woman’s muffled cry. Enoch’s vision went red around the edges. That was Mandie’s mother, he was almost certain.
Enoch pulled back when Hawkins did, and the sheriff held up three fingers in a countdown.
Enoch breathed in a steadying breath.Help us, Lord. Protect the women.
Two fingers.
He raised the shotgun and aimed.
One finger.
The sheriff lifted his boot and slammed it into the wood near the handle. The door exploded inward.
The small room erupted in chaos—shouts, a woman’s scream, bodies pressed together in the cramped space.
Enoch surged in behind the sheriff, his eyes searching frantically through the dim light for Mandie. There—pressed against the far wall, held by a blighter with stringy hair and beard, her gown torn at the shoulder.
“Nobody move!” Sheriff Hawkins trained his pistol on Clayton.
But Clayton was already in motion, lunging toward Mandie with something glinting in his hand—a knife. “You’ll not have her, Balfour!”
Enoch aimed the shotgun far enough away that stray buckshot couldn’t hit Mandie, then pulled the trigger. The weapon bucked in his hands, the boom deafening in the cramped space.
Clayton spun sideways, clutching his belly, the blade clattering to the floor.
Enoch turned his gun on the goon who held Mandie, but the man was already releasing her. She surged away from the snake, nearly knocking him back into a stack of crates.
Mandie. Enoch held out an arm for her, keeping the shotgun steady in his other.
As she neared him, another gunshot cracked through the chaos—this one from Clayton’s direction.
A woman screamed.
Enoch’s insides nearly exploded. Had she been hit?
But Mandie closed the distance between them, crashing into his side.
The sheriff grunted and staggered, pressing his left arm against his middle, but he kept his weapon raised. “Drop it, Beaumont!”
Enoch wrapped Mandie tight with one arm. As much as he wanted to hold her, he had to get her out of danger.
He pressed his mouth near her ear. “Go out to the hallway till it’s safe.”
He had to almost shove her away from him, but at last she let go and slipped away.
