Read Online Broken Angel by Sigmund Brouwer - Free Book Online

try to leave through the window?”
    “I’m seventy-two.”
    “Yes ma’am,” Billy said. “I’ll wait in the kitchen.”
    The kitchen jutted out from the house. From there, he’d still be able to see the door in the hallway. As well as the neat yard outside. If she actually did try to escape, he’d see that too.
    “Don’t forget the cookies, then,” she said. “Not much sense letting them go to waste.”
    She closed the door.
    Halfway through the second cookie, Billy thought he smelled kerosene. Then smoke.
    He frowned, glanced around him.
    Black smoke curled from beneath the door down the hallway.
    It only took a single punch against the door to force it open. He saw her on the floor. Limp. A small vial had fallen from her hand, and little pills were scattered on the floor. Flames were rising around her, already crackling and devouring a pile of books in the bathtub. The door to the cupboard under the sink was open and empty.
    Billy faced a grim choice. Find a way to fight the flames. Or carry Mrs. Shelton away from danger.
    He lifted her onto his shoulders and ran back down the hallway.

TEN
    B ack and forth,” Theo said, his head cocked as he listened intently. “Across the valley. Each pass brings them closer to us. Three sets of hounds. Maybe four.”
    Caitlyn and Theo had found an overlook that still shielded them from view of the men climbing down the rock face behind them, at the head of the valley.
    “What are the dogs’ names?” Caitlyn said.
    “How in the world could I tell that from what I’m hearing?” Theo said.
    “It’s a joke, skunk boy. You seem to know so much else about them.” The words felt bitter on her tongue. She knew she was being unnecessarily cruel to him, trying to find an outlet for her grief.
    “Oh, very funny. Do you find it funny that they are squeezing us in? Unless we figure out a way to fly.”
    Unless we figure out a way to fly.
Caitlyn shivered at the thought.
    “If we time it right,” Theo said, “we can slip past the dogs and end up safely on the other side of them.”
    “No,” Caitlyn answered. “The dogs will cross my scent. They’ll know it’s fresh. And I have no doubt that I’m the one they want, not you.”
    “At the factory, everyone said all you have to do is walk through water to lose the dogs.”
    “Wrong. In pools, the scent stays on top of the water,” Caitlyn said. “Where the scent is broken up by fast water, they’ll send teams up and down both sides of the creek until they find where we stepped out again.”
    She knew this because Papa had explained everything about bloodhounds to her. They’d been on the run from Mason Lee for three days, but it wasn’t until the final two days that Mason was able to put bloodhounds on the trail. That’s when it was over. Papa had used every trick possible, but all it had done was slow the hounds.
    “Okay, then. What if you climb a tree and cross over to another tree, branch to branch, and keep going until you are far enough away?”
    “Skunk boy, you can’t see well enough to count your own fingers. Think you’ll make it up the first tree without falling?”
    “You do it,” he said. “Leave me here. If you can get away, you should. Better that one of us makes it Outside than neither.”
    He sounded so pathetic yet brave that Caitlyn felt her first twinge of affection for him. “Have something to eat.”
    She found an energy bar in her backpack and gave it to the boy.
    His hands shook so rapidly as he attempted to tear open the wrapping that she sighed, took the bar from him, opened it, and handed it back.
    “Besides,” Theo continued, barely understandable because he’d crammed so much into his mouth, “you said they were looking for you, not me. I’ll hide in the valley and eat more crawfish and worms. That’s better than going back to the factory.”
    His words echoed.
“You said they were looking for you, not me.”
    This was true. Papa explained how bloodhounds follow a trail.