Chapter 50
She dropped to one knee and reached beneath the desk, finding cold iron where everything else radiated heat. The brass handle seared through her glove anyway, but she locked her fingers around it and pulled. It scraped against the floorboards, jammed against a warped plank, and refused to come farther.
A beam overhead gave a sharp crack.
Henrietta jerked her head up.
Burning pitch dripped from the ceiling.
Outside, Calvin swore again. “I am coming in.”
“No!” The word tore through her smoke-raw throat. “You take one step through that door and I’ll break the other leg myself.”
There was a silence so brief she could almost hear his temper deciding whether terror overruled obedience.
Then Calvin shouted, “That would require both of us to survive the next minute!”
The beam above her groaned.
Henrietta shoved the burning ledger aside with the toe of her boot. Its leather cover split open, sending a whirl of blackened paper upward like startled birds. She leaned both hands around the cashbox handle and pulled until pain flashed through her wrists, shoulders, hips, and knees.
Nothing.
“No,” she whispered through clenched teeth. “You are not staying here.”
She changed her angle, planted one heel against the desk leg, and hauled sideways instead of straight back. The warped plank cracked loose. The cashbox lurched free so suddenly that Henrietta fell onto one hip, pain bursting white through her lower back.
The ceiling answered with another crack.
This one was louder.
She dragged the cashbox toward the door.
Calvin appeared through the smoke.
He had somehow crossed the yard with no cane and no crutch, his ruined leg wrapped in its splint, one arm braced along the doorframe. Snow clung to his hair and nightshirt. His face was colorless except for two fever-bright spots high on his cheeks, and when he saw her still inside the burning room, something in him looked close to breaking.
“Give me the box.”
“You cannot stand.”
“I did not ask whether I could.”
“You’ll fall.”
“Then drag me too.”
Another shower of sparks rained between them. Henrietta seized the handle again and shoved the box forward until it struck the threshold. Calvin bent despite the agony twisting across his face and caught one side with both hands.
The roof beam came down behind her.
Henrietta heard the collapse before she felt the blast of heat. Fire exploded across the rear wall, sucking the air from the room, and Calvin lunged forward with the desperate strength of a man who had forgotten his own body. He caught her wrist, yanked her over the threshold, and both of them tumbled into the snow as the doorway filled with flame.