C. Box - Nowhere to Run

Her eyes widened in fear and she raised a balled fist to her mouth.

“What?” he asked.

She said, “This isn’t good.”

“That I may have hit them?”

“That you may have wounded them.”

Joe felt his scalp twitch. “So why did you help me?”

“I told you. The wedding band. I assume you have a wife.”

“Yes.”

“Do you love her?”

“With all my heart.’

“Kids?”

“Three daughters.”

She pursed her mouth again and shook her head. “I’m a sucker for wedding bands. And it may turn out to be the death of me.”

“That’s why you helped me?”

A quick, regretful nod.

“Are those pictures of your family?” Joe asked, gesturing up to the shelf behind her bed.

Her eyes flared, and she rose to her feet so quickly her chair shot back. She strode across the floor and turned each frame facedown. When she was done, she returned to the chair and sat back down and glared at the spot on the wall above his head. She’d yet to make direct eye contact, which didn’t bode well, he thought. Like she didn’t want to empathize with him. Like she thought he might not be around much longer. Or.

“Are you blind?” Joe asked.

She did a quick snort and her mouth clenched. “Of course not.”

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, “Since you wouldn’t look at me, I thought. ”

“I saw you earlier. I know what you look like. I know what you stand for. You work for the government.”

“ State government,” Joe said.

“Still.”

“It’s different from the federal government.”

“So you say.”

“Really.”

She swiveled in her chair and wrapped her arms around herself. “Hmmmph.” As if it were final.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said. “So you know them-the Grim Brothers.”

“Of course.”

There was something about her face, Joe thought. Something familiar about her. He knew he didn’t know her personally and hadn’t met her before. But he’d seen her face. Or a photo of her. He wished his head were more clear.

“Have we ever met?” he asked.

“I sincerely doubt it.”

“Are you from around here originally?”

“No.”

“So how long have you lived here?”

She was obviously annoyed by his questions. “I told you-long enough.”

“How do you know the brothers?”

Her eyes finally settled on him. He felt it was a small victory.

“They come by. They bring me firewood and meat. They look out for me. All they ask from me is my silence and my loyalty. You’re making me betray them.”

Joe said nothing. How much further should he push? he wondered.

“Did they bring you elk meat recently? Like a week ago?”

“I don’t recall,” she said icily.

He said, “If you’ll give me my gun, I’ll leave.”

“They’re not all bad,” she said, once again looking away. “They provide me protection. They understand why I’m here and they’re quite sympathetic.”

“Why are you-”

“They don’t ask for much,” she continued, cutting him off. “They could demand so much more, but they don’t. They respect my need for privacy.”

“Tell me your name,” Joe said.

She hesitated, started to speak, then clamped her mouth shut.

“I told you mine,” he said.

“Terri,” she said finally. “My name is Terri Wade. But you don’t know me, and it doesn’t matter.”

The name was unfamiliar to Joe. “Look,” he said. “I know this cabin shouldn’t be here. This is national forest, and there shouldn’t be any private dwellings. The private land is all in the valleys. Aren’t you worried forest rangers will find you and make you leave?”

She stared at a spot near Joe’s head, as close as she would get to eye contact.

Terri said, “I told you-the brothers protect me. They wouldn’t let that happen. This is my cabin. These are my things.” As her voice rose, she gestured by jabbing her right index finger into the palm of her left hand on the word my . “No one has the right to make me leave if I don’t want to leave.”

Said Joe, “So why are you here?”

“I’m here to wait out the storm. I’ll go back when it finally passes. And that’s all I’m going to say about it.”

“What storm?”

“That’s all I’m going to say.”

“About this storm. ”

“You keep asking me questions. Look, I’m here to try to reassemble my life,” she said. “I don’t put my nose into anyone’s business, and I expect the same from others. Including you,” she said, again jabbing her finger into her palm. “ Especially you.”

“I understand,” Joe said.

Wade suddenly sat up straight and lifted her chin to the ceiling. “Hear that?” she whispered.

Joe shook his head.

“There’s someone on the roof,” she said softly.

He looked up when he heard the sound. The ceiling was constructed of adjacent rough-cut pine planks. The wood looked green and soft and showed evidence of recent repair work on the structure. As he stared, one of the planks bowed slightly inward, then another did the same about a foot away. Fine dust from between the planks floated down and sparked in the light of the lantern. There was someone heavy up there. A board creaked loudly enough that whoever was on the roof froze for a moment. More dust filtered down through the light.

Joe rocked forward, his leg screamed silently, and he reached out and touched her hand. He mouthed, “Where’s my gun?”

Her eyes glistened with tears, and she shook her head as if she didn’t want to be involved.

“My gun,” he whispered.

Again, she bit her lip and shook her head, but when she did so she inadvertently revealed a tell with an unconscious glance toward the trunk under her bed.

He raised one finger to his mouth to urge her to stay quiet and scuttled across the rough floor and his makeshift bed to the trunk. He slid it out and unbuckled the hasps with his back to her so she couldn’t protest. When he raised the lid, he found the Glock and his belt on top of folded piles of worn clothes. Despite the situation in front of him, Joe felt a twang of deep sadness for whatever situation had brought her here to live like this.

He worked the slide of his handgun and ejected a live cartridge. Another was in the magazine. So he still had two rounds. When he looked up at her she seemed distressed, as if she wished she had taken the bullets. He nodded to thank her for not taking them and let the magazine drop and loaded the loose cartridges again and jacked one of them into the chamber. Two shots, he thought. Just two shots.

They both jumped when there was deep voice outside the door. “Terri, do you have company in there?”

Joe recognized the voice as Camish. The smart one. Which meant Caleb was on the roof. Which also meant that he wasn’t dead and certainly wasn’t wounded badly enough to take him out of production. Unless, Joe wondered, there were somehow more of them. The idea of more than two Grim Brothers gave him a sudden spasm in his belly.

He caught Wade’s eye, asked in a whisper, “Is it possible there’s more than the two brothers?”

She shook her head. He thanked her with his eyes for the answer, and she looked away as if feeling guilty for a new betrayal.

“Terri?” Camish repeated. “I know you heard me.” His tone wasn’t unkind. In fact, Joe thought, it was resigned, like a father’s voice when he had to reluctantly reprimand a child.

“Not now,” Terri said loudly toward the door. “Leave me alone.”

“Oh, Terri, it doesn’t work like that. We know he’s in there.” Again the sad, reprimanding tone.