The Piggy Farmer (The Barrington Patch Book 3) by Emmy Ellis (smart books to read .TXT) 📕

eyes, and it ramped up Doreen’s anxiety. Key sorted, Lou wrenched at the handle, but the door remained closed.

“Undo the pissing bolts!” Doreen hissed.

Footsteps. The crunch of glass beneath shoe soles.

“He’s coming!” Doreen wailed. “Fucking hell, fucking hell…”

She grabbed a carving knife from the drawer and faced the internal door, sick to her stomach that the night had turned into this. The handle moved down over the top of the chair, and she slapped her free palm over her mouth. The chair wobbled, pressure applied from the other side, and the sound of one of the bolts raking across the back door gave her hope.

Walking in reverse, the tip of the blade jabbed outwards, she stood by the window next to Lou, who’d gone down on her haunches to yank the other bolt. It had always been sticky, and tonight it was no different.

“It’s bloody stuck,” Lou said, breathless, a sob tagging onto the end of her words.

“Keep trying.” Doreen’s hands shook, the blade shivering.

The chair shifted forward in slow motion, then he crashed in, kicking at it so it skittered towards the dining table, time speeding up. Doreen screamed behind her hand, and Lou shot to standing, pawing the handle to open it, desperate for an escape route.

Stalker held a gun up, his gloved finger curled around the trigger. His eyes. God, they were such a startling blue she shuddered. They weren’t natural.

“I wouldn’t leave if I were you,” he said, his Yorkshire accent thick. “Stay. With me.”

Lou ignored him, so frantic she couldn’t grasp the handle. Doreen, out of her mind with panic, rushed forward, and in the split second it took for her to get to him, she asked a God she’d never given a shit about to stop Stalker releasing the bullet. His eyes widened as she sank the blade in his stomach, and he dropped the gun, the sound of it hitting the lino weird—not a heavy thud, not loud. She pulled the knife out, jumping back, horrified by what she’d done—she hadn’t intended on doing it, it’d just happened. But it would be classed as self-defence, so she wouldn’t get in trouble, would she?

A terrible voice in her head whispered, “But it’s still murder…” and she lurched into the table behind, staring at the blood on the knife, then back at him.

He clutched his stomach, blood pumping out, between and over his laced fingers, so much red. “Why don’t you love me?” he said to Lou, whining. “Flowers are supposed to make you love me.”

“Oh God, you fucking weirdo.” Lou reversed to the wall, pressing her back to it. “Shit, Dor, what are we going to do?”

Doreen didn’t think, just acted. She raced back up to him and sliced the knife across the side of his throat, blood spurting out and covering her face, hot, metallic. He sank to his knees then fell sideways, and she went down with him, watching the light fade from those wrong-kind-of-blue eyes that seemed to plead with her to help him. Doreen looked away, disgusted by the sight of him and the smell of copper, and gave the knife her attention, her hand, red splashes all over it, her wrist freckled, dots over the sleeve of her blouse.

“Shit. Shit!” Lou came over and peered down, a hand clamped to her chest. “He’s still breathing. Oh God…” She held out her hand for the knife. “Give it to me.”

Doreen passed it over, thinking Lou took it to stop her from slicing him again, but Lou knelt, held the handle in a double grip, and plunged the steel into his heart area. It stopped halfway up the blade, something resisting, so she leant all her weight on it until only the wooden handle was on show. She let go, watching him, her hands up as if that was proof she hadn’t stabbed him.

Doreen, locked in this surreal world, scooted backwards on her arse, coming to a stop at the kicked-away dining chair, the end of a leg digging into her side. She stared across at Lou who’d bent her head so her ear was above Stalker’s mouth.

“He’s dead now.” She turned to look at Doreen. “We’re going to have to get rid of him.”

“How?” Doreen swallowed bile then heaved, the stench of blood getting worse, clinging to the summer-thickened air. “We don’t even have a car, and he’s too heavy to carry far.”

“Fuck.”

Lou pulled the knife out and dropped it as though it burnt her hand. She came and sat beside Doreen, and they kept their attention on Stalker, Doreen convinced he’d get up any second, grab the gun, and shoot them. Hot tears fell. Lou sobbed. They were in a right mess, no doubt about it, and with no one to turn to, no one they could tell, Shit Creek was the waterway they floated on.

Minutes passed, the only sounds their ragged breathing and the thud of Doreen’s pulse filling her head. How had this happened? She couldn’t process the events from when Lou had seen him run past the window to now. Her mind seemed to have erased it to protect her. Then it came rushing back, her brain regurgitating every terrible second.

Doreen whimpered.

“The well,” Lou said.

And Doreen knew exactly what she meant. The one at the bottom of the garden, built with stone covered in moss from years of being outside, the little wooden roof a triangle, grey and faded from the sun. It had been there for over fifty years, according to the landlord, dried up, no use to anyone, just an ornament now. “And did you know, it goes down about a hundred and thirty feet?” No, they hadn’t known, and at the time hadn’t given a fiddler’s fuck, but now that information was gold.

“It’s a long way down,” Doreen said.

“So no one will