C. Box - Nowhere to Run

“Please,” she said. “Come back later. Come back tomorrow.”

“You mean after he’s gone?” Camish asked, and Joe detected a slight chuckle. “You want us to come back when he’s gone? That’s a crazy notion, Terri. He really hurt my brother. And you know the situation. We can’t let him go. You know that.”

“I don’t want any violence,” Terri said toward the door. “I told you before I don’t want violence. You promised. You promised me.”

Camish said, “Yes, we did. We promised you. And there’s no need for any violence at all. We just want that government man inside your place.”

Joe thought, Government man?

Then he looked at her and saw nothing other than torment. Her hands were knotted into white-knuckled fists and her shoulders were bunched and her mouth was pursed into a shape that reminded him of a dried red rose. She was in agony, and it was because of him. He felt sorry for her, grateful she’d displayed kindness and humanity toward him, and he wanted to save her.

He wanted to save himself as well.

Camish said, “Then we have no choice, do we?”

She asked, “No choice to do what?”

Joe thought, They’re going to burn us out .

Then Camish said, “Let the fumigation begin!”

Fumigation ?

Suddenly, the cabin filled with acrid, horrible steam. Joe looked at the door at first for the origin, then realized it was coming from the wood stove. Terri sat back in her chair and buried her face in a napkin to try to avoid the foul-smelling steam that reeked of meat and animal fat and sulfur.

Joe recognized the odor from his youth, shook his head, and whispered, “Caleb is urinating down the chimney pipe.”

She looked at him with undisguised alarm.

He motioned for her to get down on the floor by motioning with his open hand.

“I can’t. ” she said, glancing toward the closed door and Camish outside.

“Get down,” Joe hissed. “I don’t want you hurt.”

He didn’t want to threaten her with the gun to make her respond. Not after what she’d done for him. But she seemed frozen, conflicted. He said, “GET DOWN.”

Too loudly, he thought. Caleb no doubt heard him on the roof. Which resulted in a strong stream coursing down the red-hot chimney, a giggle from Camish outside, and a thick plume of horrible steam inside the cabin.

Joe angrily ignored it all and thought of Blue Roanie and Buddy and noted two particular ceiling planks bending downward from Caleb’s boots and visualized him up there, legs spread on either side of the chimney, aiming down the hot pipe, smiling at his brother outside and letting loose.

Joe raised the weapon, calculated the height and stance of his target on the roof, acknowledged that the last time he’d shouted a warning it had resulted in an attack on him , aimed the muzzle at what he guessed would be Caleb’s chest, and squeezed the trigger.

The.40 Glock barked, but not where he’d aimed, because Wade screamed “No violence!” and launched up at him from the floor and hit him clumsily with her shoulder in his wounded thigh. The impact threw him back and the slug thudded into a log chest-high inside the cabin.

It was as if her action had somehow downshifted the pace of the confrontation into slow motion, as if time had slowed down for Joe Pickett. Not that it aided him necessarily, but he suddenly felt like the almost incapacitating terror of the situation had been stripped away as well as the fog of uncertainty, and he could see things clearly as they happened, even if he could do nothing to prevent them.

Joe fell back into the woodstove from the tackle and the back of his thighs were singed on contact with the woodstove and the pain was startling. He fell forward to his knees with both hands still around his gun, fully cognizant he had a single bullet left for the Grim Brothers and, God help him, for Terri Wade if she came at him again. He could smell the acrid odor of burnt hair from the back of his legs, but he was pretty sure the burns were superficial.

He raised his weapon and peered down the length of it toward Wade’s forehead. She was crying, and tears streamed down her cheeks and pooled under her chin. Her mouth sagged open as she cried and he thought it was horrible, that he’d rarely seen a human in so much pain before, and he thought he’d be damned if he felt it necessary to hurt her to save himself. And he lowered the gun and wondered what Marybeth would counsel.

Camish shouted: “Terri, get down!”

She dropped to her knees with her eyes locked in sympathy with Joe, then stretched out on the floor and covered her head with her hands.

Joe looked up.

The thick cabin door rocked with the force of a shotgun blast. A softball-sized hole at eye level was suddenly there, as was gun smoke inside the cabin and half-inch splinters of wood on every flat surface. Joe flung himself backward, away from Terri Wade, away from the stove. He remembered the small curtained window over her bed in the back of the cabin. He wondered if the window was wide enough for his shoulders to fit through since there was no back door. With Caleb on the roof and Camish in front of the cabin, it was his only escape route. Unless, of course, there was someone else with them.

Another blast punched a second hole through the front door. Wade screamed, begging them to stop, telling them they could come in and get the government man. The pellet load dislodged the shelf in the back of the cabin and the picture frames were scattered across the floor. One of them settled between Joe’s hands and he caught a glimpse of it. The photo was of a family-not including Terri Wade-enjoying themselves on a beach. It was obviously staged and generic-looking. The price of the frame-$9.99-was printed within the photo. He didn’t have time to figure out why she’d never put her own choice of picture in the frame, but left it as-is from the store where she’d purchased it.

And Joe thought, once again, Government man? He didn’t like to be thought of that way. He wasn’t a government man-he was a wildlife man.

The front door blew open. Caleb had come off the roof and broken it in with his shoulder. The hinges burst before the knob and deadbolt, which made Wade say, “Oh!”

And Caleb stood in the threshold for a moment, eyes wide and mean, a blood-sodden bandage around the lower part of his face, and Joe realized he’d clipped the end of Caleb’s chin off the day before and he thought, Good for me!

Except he hadn’t finished the job, which put him in a much worse situation now.

Joe raised his Glock, centered the front and back sight on Caleb’s chest, and fired.

Caleb winced and took a step back, but didn’t drop. He held the.308 at parade rest and seemed momentarily incapable of raising it and aiming at Joe. Joe thought, Why didn’t he go down?

Camish blew through the front door, and when Terri Wade rose and threw herself at him, he greeted her with a stiff-arm that quickly got her out of the line of fire without flinging her to the floor.

Joe reared back and pitched his weapon through the glass of the back window and followed it.

Camish yelled, “Hey, stop!” and raised his shotgun.

Joe glanced over his shoulder as he stepped on the bed and saw the O of the muzzle and steeled himself for the force of a shotgun blast in his back. A double-ought shell contained nine lead pellets over a third of an inch in diameter. At this range, it would be over quickly: a full load of it could practically cut him in half. But again, Terri Wade rammed Camish the way she’d thrown herself at him. The shotgun exploded, but the load smashed into the wall near Joe’s left shoulder.

“Damn you, Terri,” Camish yelled as he shoved her aside again. He could have clubbed her with the butt of the shotgun and Joe expected it, but he didn’t.