Dana Stabenow - Nothing Gold Can Stay

He squirmed in her embrace. “Mom, c’mon.” He slanted a sideways look at the girl across the table.

Liam’s eyes went to the woman lying in the bunk. “Who is that?” he said sharply.

She didn’t stir, but Bill snapped, “Keep your voice down.”

“Who is it?”

“We don’t know. She staggered in here about four hours ago and passed out.”

Liam nudged Wy. “Is that her?”

She tore her eyes from Tim and walked over to the bunk to look down into the woman’s face. “Yes. This is Rebecca Hanover.”

“Is that her name?” Bill said.

“Is she armed?” Liam said.

Moses surveyed him with an irritated expression. “ ‘Is she armed?’ She’s damn near dead, is what she is.”

“Her husband is dead. Murdered. Blasted away with a shotgun.”

They all looked at Rebecca Hanover. Her eyes moved restlessly beneath closed lids. Her skin was waxen, her hair tangled with twigs and pine needles. She whimpered a little, stirred, one hand half raised in a protective gesture. They could see the broken nails, the dried blood and dirt beneath them. One shoulder was bandaged. She subsided again into an uneasy sleep.

“Sanctuary,” Tim said.

Everyone turned to look at him. He flushed. “That’s what she said. It’s the only thing she said after we got her into the bed. ‘Sanctuary.’ ”

“What’s that mean?” Amelia said.

“In olden times,” Tim said, “people who were being chased could run into a church and the cops couldn’t get them. Sanctuary. I read about it in a book once,” he added.

“Oh.” Amelia had never read anything that hadn’t been assigned as homework. “Could bad guys run into the church, too?”

Tim looked at Bill. “Yes,” she said. “Bad guys could run into the church, too.”

Amelia looked at Rebecca Hanover, and with the devastating single-mindedness of the young said, “So just because they ask for sanctuary doesn’t mean they didn’t do it.”

Liam started forward, hand out to wake Rebecca Hanover. Moses got in his way. “I’ve got to talk to her, Moses,” Liam said.

“No you don’t,” Moses said. “She didn’t kill anybody.”

The voices tell you so? Liam wanted to say. “At the very least,” he said, “she’s a material witness to the death of her husband. I have to talk to her. Let me wake her up.”

“She’ll wake up in her own good time,” Moses said flatly. “And no,” he said pointedly, “they didn’t. They haven’t been real mouthy on this trip.”

Liam cleared his throat and couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Standoff.

“No one is going anywhere in this pea soup anyway,” Bill said practically, defusing the tension. “You’ll have plenty of time to wait for her to wake up. She’s not going anywhere. Amelia, make some more coffee. Tim, get down two more mugs. Are you hungry? How about a tuna fish sandwich? I’ll just-”

“What’s that?” Wy turned her head, listening.

“What?” Bill moved forward a step, and cursed the apprehensive note in her voice. She was nervous. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been nervous. She couldn’t have said why she was now.

Into it floated a voice, high, thin, thready. “Elaine. Elaine the fair. Elaine the lovable. Elaine, the lily maid. Come out, Elaine. Come out.”

On the bed, Rebecca whimpered without waking, her legs pumping against the blankets.

“What the hell?” Moses said, and went to the door.

“No, wait-” Liam said.

But Moses was before him and pulled the door open. “There’s no one named Elaine in here, but come on in and get out of the snow!”

The door pushed open against him and a man stood there.

“Gun!” Liam shouted, and Moses dropped into form one second too late. The weapon fired, the noise of the shot deafening everyone in the cabin, and Moses, foot half raised in something Liam recognized as the beginning of Kick Horizontally, crumpled to the floor without a sound.

Bill made a sound low in her throat and moved forward.

“Hold it,” the man said.

She either ignored him or didn’t hear him, dropping to her knees next to the old man, who suddenly looked infinitely older, whose blood welled red from beneath the fingers pressed to his side.

The man had a brown, seamed face surrounded by a halo of tangled, dirty gray hair, hair repeated in the collar of his shirt and on the backs of the hands gripping the rifle. A Browning, Liam noted. A semi-automatic,.270 maybe, or a.30-06. What did one of those hold, four rounds? Three, in magnum. He looked Moses, at his wound. Not magnum. Three left, then.

“Uuiliriq,” Tim breathed. “It’s the Hairy Man, Mom.”

Amelia’s eyes were enormous in her small face.

Mad eyes looked at Liam, saw the weapon strapped to his side and raised his rifle. “Lose the gun, son.” The words sounded rusty with disuse.

Liam didn’t move.

With uncanny instinct, the man took two steps forward and jammed the barrel of the rifle beneath Wy’s chin. She rose swiftly to her feet, to stand on tiptoe. Her eyes were wide but she looked more angry than frightened. His Wy. His own Wy, nobody else’s. Liam felt an answering anger kindle inside him.

The smell of the man filled the cabin, woodsmoke, dead fish, dried blood, sweat. Later, Liam would think it was that smell more than anything that made him pull out his weapon and lay it on the floor.

“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.