“Kick it to me,” the man said.
Liam managed to put enough of a spin on the kick that it slid to the opposite corner of the cabin, coming to rest beneath the bunk where Rebecca Hanover lay, motionless now, even her eyes still beneath their lids.
The man followed the path of the pistol with steady steps, and paused next to the bed. “Elaine.” His voice was low but audible to them all. “Oh, my Elaine. Why did you do this to yourself?”
He reached out a hand as if to brush the hair from her face, and she exploded into action, launching herself at him too quickly for him to raise the weapon. They both went crashing to the floor.
Liam went for the rifle, but the ragged man threw off Rebecca, who thudded hard into the wall, slid down and lay still. The ragged man got to the rifle a split second before Liam, but didn’t have time to aim before the rifle fired a second time. The shot boomed in the close confines of the room. Behind him Liam heard someone cry out, a soft thud as a body hit the floor. A second later, like Moses a second too late, he tackled the man and grabbed for the rifle, his hands closing around the barrel, warm from the two shots.
The ragged man was incredibly strong. They were close enough to touch, to kiss if they’d wanted to. The ragged man’s mouth was open in a rictus of a grin. He shifted his weight suddenly. Liam lost his balance and fell heavily to one side, maintaining through sheer will his grip on the rifle barrel. The ragged man snarled and the barrel inched down and there was nothing Liam could do to stop it. The rifle fired again, almost jolting his grip loose. His hands stung but he held on. One shot left.
Wy had been going for Moses’.30-06, mounted on a rack next to the door. The third shot had caught the.30-06 squarely on the breech, shattering it.
Wy cursed and hefted the rifle by the barrel in a strong batter’s grip. If it couldn’t shoot, it could club.
The ragged man twisted like a fish, dropping the rifle in a sudden movement and closing his hands around Liam’s throat. In an instinctive gesture, Liam dropped the barrel to grab for the ragged man’s wrists. The rifle was held between them by the press of their bodies, so tightly that it couldn’t fall. Liam was choking, his face a dull red, his hands clawing.
“Leave him go!” Wy shouted, and made good on her words when she swung the rifle. The butt connected with the ragged man’s skull with a satisfyingly solid smack.
His hands loosened from around Liam’s throat. He rolled to one side to lie on his back on the floor and blink up at the ceiling in a puzzled way.
Wy reached him first, kicking his rifle out of reach. “You son of a bitch!” she said fiercely.
He ignored her, turning his head to look at Rebecca Hanover sprawled in an ungainly heap, only just beginning to blink her way back into consciousness. “Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable,” he said dreamily. “Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat. My own Elaine.”
Behind them, Moses had crawled to Amelia and was cradling her in his arms. Tim knelt at his side, his face white and shocked. Blood had gathered and pooled on the floor beneath all three of them, but it had ceased now to flow.
“Goddamn it,” Moses said, in a tired voice Bill had never heard before. “Goddamn it all to hell.”
He put back his head and yelled, “You have to be right, don’t you, you sons a bitches! You just have to be right!”
Bill put her hands on his shoulders. “Hush, old man,” she said. “Hush now.”
“Goddamn it,” he said again.
He closed his eyes and rested his head on Bill’s breast.
TWENTY-TWO
Newenham, September 16
Liam came in at ten that evening. “She found it,” he said flatly, and disappeared into the bathroom.
“Would you like to sleep in the camper tonight?” she said suddenly.
His nose startled out ofThe Lost Wagon, Tim looked up from where he was curled on the couch and said, “What?”
“Sleep in the camper tonight,” she said. “That’s an order.”
He looked toward the bathroom, and when he spoke she could have wept at the effort it took him to make the joke. “What’s it worth to you?”
“A smack upside the head,” she said, grabbing for him.
He hot-footed it out of reach, not quite smiling but nearly there. He loved sleeping in the trailer, having his own little self-contained house around him.
She eased the bathroom door open and slipped inside. Liam was outlined behind the curtain, hands propped on the wall on either side of the shower head, head bent beneath the stream of steaming water. She stripped and stepped into the tub behind him.
He jumped when he felt her hands on him, but he was instantly responsive. He tried to turn, tried to reach for her, and she wouldn’t let him. It was part seduction, part subjugation and part the staking of a claim. He recognized it for what it was and the sum of all its parts, and he let her have her way with him.
She made him a late supper of cold moose roast sandwiches and Corona, and then they made love again on the living room couch, a fire in the fireplace and the curtains open to the river and sky. “My turn,” he murmured.
“Do your worst,” she whispered, lying back.
“God,” he said later, “the worst day fucking is better than the best day fishing.”
She shoved him off the couch and he landed smack on his bare ass, yelping and laughing. She hung over the side, looking at him. “Can you talk about it now?”
“Yeah.” The laughter faded. He climbed back up on the couch and snuggled next to her. Her hair was a wild tangle that tickled his nose, and her elbow was jabbing uncomfortably into his chest. He cupped a palm around her breast and trailed a finger down her spine. Her thigh was between his and pressed up against him, his was pressed against her. Marking their spots. He could live with the elbow and the tickly hair.
“We were about to pack it in for the day, but she insisted we stay out as long as there was light to see by. She spotted it up this canyon, nearly a ravine, totally overgrown. We couldn’t have made it in a plane.”
“No strip?”
“No strip. He liked his privacy, the sick little bastard. Search and Rescue had to set the chopper down nearly a mile out. We hiked in, and it wasn’t easy. I don’t know how she got away.”
“She told us. Windex.”
A faint laugh rumbled up out of his chest. “Right. Your all-purpose cleaner and killer deterrent.”
She trailed a fingertip down the crack of his behind, and he twitched, distracted, as she had meant him to be.
“Guy’s a master builder, I’ll say that for him. Everything hand-hewn, fitted together like pieces of a puzzle. And literally invisible from the air. You couldn’t even see the smoke rising from the chimney.”
“Fine, he can bid on the addition to Spring Creek. That ought to be a lifetime guarantee of work.”
“If he doesn’t get off by reason of insanity.”
“He couldn’t. They wouldn’t!”
He said nothing.
After a moment, she said, “Were there twelve graves, like she said?”
His chest rose and fell on a sigh. “Yes. There wasn’t time to dig them up this afternoon. We logged the location on the GPS. We’ll go back tomorrow with shovels and body bags.”
He rolled over, pinning her to the back of the sofa, nudging her legs apart to slide smoothly home. Something between a gasp and a moan caught in the back of her throat, and he smiled at her. “Why is it we’re screwing around on this couch when there is a perfectly good bed in your bedroom?”
“You tell me,” she whispered back, and pushed back, rolling so that she was on top. She rode him, she rode him hard, so that his only thought, at least for those precious few minutes, was of her and only of her, and when he came she was watching, waiting for it, and she whispered, “I love you, Liam,” and followed him over.