Nell shook her head at the voices shouting on the other end of the cell call. Trophy had fired a guide for showing up drunk for work. Standard procedure was to give six sick days a season, and most guides took them for drunk or hungover days. Buster, aka Roger Pennings, had used all his sick days in the first two months, and when he clocked in for work drunk, he was fired on the spot.
Buster wasn’t willing to let it go and had showed up at the Nantahala shop this morning making a stink. Trophy had called the cops and they had hauled Buster off to jail for being drunk and disorderly. Then his father had showed up, also drunk, and so Trophy had called the cops again. Now Mrs. Pennings was in the shop, wailing in the background about how she couldn’t afford to bail them out and how her life was ruined and how she was going to burn down the shop if Trophy didn’t get them out of jail.
“Is she drunk too?” Nell asked.
“As a skunk on moonshine.”
“Call the cops,” Nell sighed. “Again.” She stepped from behind the counter and paced the length of the customer-service and retail part of the shop, using the phone time to check inventory on T-shirts. Multitasking. She had to order more shirts with the phrase Paddle Faster. I Hear Banjo Music silk-screened on back. She jotted the order number on a scrap of paper and began to count the shirts with the silhouette of a kayaker on the back, Rocking River in graphics beneath.
“Jason’s calling ’em now. Oh, crap, that drunk old woman just knocked over the postcard rack.”
Nell heard the clatter over the phone. “When the cops get there, tell her that if she goes home quietly we won’t press charges. But if she cuts up, we’ll throw the book at her and her entire family. They won’t get outta jail till Jesus comes. And if the shop happens to catch fire, remind her that the cops now know where to find the culprit. Let me know what happens. And Trophy? You jist earned yourself a bonus.” Nell grinned at the whoop on the other end and hit the end button.
“You are certainly generous with my brother’s money.”
Nell whirled, phone in one hand, pencil and paper in the other. Robert Stevens stood in the doorway, the heavy double-paned glass door propped open, heat and the sound of eighteen-wheelers seeping in, cool air and Nell’s good mood seeping out.
“Robert.” Nell stomped back to the desk, slapped down her paper and pencil, and set the phone to the side. Robert had been drinking. She could smell the fumes from across the room. “Shut the door, Robert. You’re lettin’ out my cool air. What are you doin’ here, anyway. It ain’t Thanksgiving.”
The door banged shut, and Robert was inside with her. “We need to talk.”
“If it’s about money, my answer’s still the same. Anything Joe left to his kids is JJ’s. Period. I haven’t touched a dime of the trust money and you know it. Louis Berhkolter sends youns reports every year. I know ’cause I pay him outta my own pocket.”
Robert visibly recoiled at the word youns, but recovered quickly. “Mother and I are willing to accept that Joe is dead, have him declared deceased and have his estate probated. In return for half.”
Even though she had long ago accepted it as truth, Nell’s chest tightened and twisted at the cruelty of hearing that Joe was dead. Fury at the simple declaration whipped through her. She picked up the guest book on the counter. Slammed it down. A vicious sound, sharp and cracking. Robert’s head jerked with the racket. “Well, that’s mighty good ’a youns. Seein’s how the seven years’ll be up in October anyway. Louis Berhkolter and I won’t be needin’ you to agree to anything, to have my husband declared legally dead. And JJ can have his own money within a year after that.”
Then his words sank in. “Half? Are you two outta your minds? That’s my boy’s birthright. His legacy from his daddy.” Nell bent slightly and gripped the baseball bat. Robert couldn’t see it, but it felt good in her hand. Security in an old-fashioned Louisville slugger.
“We can make this hard on you,” he said. He wiped his mouth as he spoke the threat. His hand shook. There was something in Robert’s eyes Nell had never seen before. Something far worse than the pest he had been in the past. Now there was desperation, fear. And fear could turn a spineless coward into a true menace. “Don’t make us take steps to handle this.”
The threat in the words and that amorphous something in his eyes triggered a cold chill through Nell. Behind the counter, she pressed the silent alarm button with her knee. Up the hill, under the interstate, the alarm was ringing at PawPaw’s, bright lights flashing, the siren going off. The alarm could be heard inside, and up in the hills behind PawPaw’s house. It was her ace in the hole at the shop. Backup. Nobody messed with PawPaw or what he claimed as his. While Nell hated to bring the old man’s wrath down on Robert, no one threatened her boy. Not even his own family.
Her grip tightened on the bat as she scanned Robert’s face. It was thinner than last fall. His eyes were bloodshot, his nose more pinched than she remembered. His hair slid forward, his six-hundred-dollar haircut giving him an expensive, coddled look.
But the new expression had carved lines into his perfect skin, his nostrils were inflamed, his skin was flushed and his fingers quivered. Desperate. That was it; that was what she saw in his face. Maybe more than desperate. Maybe hooked on something besides booze. Louis Berhkolter said the Stevens money was running out. Profligate living, he called it. High-fashion hell-raising, Claire called it. Nell was beginning to see that it might be trouble, no matter what it was called.
When she didn’t reply, Robert shifted his shoulders back and added, “We’ll sue to get Joseph Junior.”
Nell laughed, a dangerous lilt in the sound. She lifted the bat across her body, to pat it in her other palm. Robert’s eyes widened. Fear-sweat circled damply through his expensive shirt. “You idiot,” she said. “You really think you can walk in here and threaten me? Threaten my son?”
Robert’s head came up and he squared his shoulders. “Mother and I are not threatening Joseph Junior. We’re offering him a life of opportunity and affluence and the breeding a Stevens deserves. New York, in place of this backcountry, hillbilly hole in the ground.”
Steam started boiling in the back of Nell’s brain. The AC compressor and fan went off with a wheeze, leaving the shop silent. Nell stepped around from behind the counter, her flip-flops snapping. She was so mad her skin flushed hot and her vision shrunk into tight focus with red sparks across it.
Robert maneuvered back, bumping the glass door. “You can intimidate all you want, Nell,” he said. “We have money to hire the best lawyers. We can take Joseph Junior and gain control of his portion of the estate. And we will. But it would be easier on you to simply give us custody.”
“Take JJ?” Her voice dropped an octave and her speech slowed. “Take my son?” Nell walked toward him, lightly slapping the bat in her hand. The delicate pat, pat, pat of the bat against her flesh, and the sharper smack of her flip-flops seemed to fill the small room like the sound of a beating. Robert’s eyes followed the bat’s motion. “Nobody threatens my family,” Nell said, hearing the growl in her voice. “Nobody.”
Robert slid a hand behind his back and opened the door, stumbling down into the covered shed at the front of the shop. “Really, Nell. This violent approach will only convince a judge that we are best suited to raise Joseph Junior.”
Nell followed him out the door, spotting the sharpened hoe they kept on a nail for poisonous snakes, but it was too far away for her to use as a weapon. “What judge? One from this backcountry you’re so ready to insult? This hillbilly hole in the ground? Here’s where any trial will be held. Here. With a backcountry, hillbilly judge. Not in New York.” Through the equipment shed, Nell saw PawPaw’s old truck accelerating down the road, but she was so angry she might not be able to wait on backup. She grinned, showing teeth.
Robert took another step back, stumbling across the gravel of the equipment shed. “No Tennessee judge’ll be taking a kid away from his good, Christian, churchgoing, upstanding mama. He’ll take one look at you and that dried-up old crone you call a mother and toss you both back on a plane north.”
“Old crone?” he said, horrified. “You like Mother.”
“I put up with her. Jist like I put up with you,” Nell said, anger rising, making her speak too plainly. “Not because I like or respect you. Because even if youns are a couple of limp-wrist weaklings, youns family.” Her head came up at the word. “Same reason I let JJ go visit youns once a year. Family. So’s you and Yvette can show him another life, the life he can have someday if he wants it. But not…not…because I like you or your mother or your city and not because I intend to let him live there before he’s grown. Not gonna happen.”
The truck slewed to a stop in the gravel. PawPaw stepped down from the cab, wearing hogwashers and work boots, no shirt, his shotgun cradled across his skinny forearms.
Orson heard the irregular roar of a misfiring engine and looked out the RV window. A battered blue truck skidded to a halt and a grizzled old man stepped out, carrying a shotgun over his arm, the action open. A lightning adrenaline surge brought him to his feet. He wasn’t carrying his weapon. It was in his personal vehicle and the truck was between him and it. Son of a bitch.
The man strode toward the equipment shed at the front of the shop. JJ craned over the bench seat and looked out the window. Orson grabbed his head and shoved him to the floor.
“Ow!” JJ howled.
“Stay down,” Orson said.
“Why? It’s just PawPaw. Mama musta pulled the alarm.”
He didn’t know what was happening inside, but if Nell had pulled an alarm and a mountain man had come on the run, armed and looking determined, there was trouble inside, or was about to be.
Emmett jumped to the window. “There’s gonna be a fight!”
Orson shoved him down too and glanced from the scene outside to the boys JJ sitting on the floor rubbing his head, Emmett looking mutinous. On the other side of the RV he spotted a rental car, a Lexus. Someone had gotten past him and into the shop while he watched Arnold Schwarzenegger twirl a sword. He muttered a curse and looked hard at the boys. “Stay here.”
JJ’s eyes narrowed and he crossed his arms over his chest. “You said a word Mama don’t like us to hear.”
Images of how he could make the kids do what he wanted flashed through his mind, but there wasn’t time to tie them up. “Please, stay here,” Orson said instead. Marginally more agreeable, JJ plopped back onto the bench seat of the dinette and turned so he could watch out the window. Emmett took the other seat, but was eyeing the door.
The old man disappeared into the shed. PawPaw. That would be Nell’s grandfather, Orson remembered from his father’s notes, Waylon Gruber. Former moonshiner. Multiple arrest records from the fifties. Nothing violent. So far.
Orson stepped down from the RV into the sunlight, closing the door behind him. Squinting against the brightness, trying to preserve some of his dark vision, he sprinted to his small SUV and dived inside, unlocking the glove compartment, leaving the keys dangling in the glove-box lock. Close by, he heard the familiar metallic snapping of a shotgun action closing.
He sucked in a breath. Fear and training warred within him for an instant, fighting with a cold sweat and images of the night he killed a kid and held a dying cop in his arms.
For a moment he was frozen in the past, in the cold dark, snow on the ground, ice slick with his friend’s blood. Overlying images flashed through him.
Kneeling on the asphalt, firing position. Tightening his finger on the trigger.
The image of the kid, his own gun extended.
The sound of gunfire deafening as the kid fired at him. And he took the kid down. Multiple shots. Pain.
The cold hand gripped in his as Jamie Rozenfeldt died. The sound of sirens.
Daylight crashed in, shattering the nighttime vision. The cold, clear, ingrained reactions of training and experience took over. He retrieved his service weapon, wrapped his hand around the weapon butt and removed it from the lockbox. Disengaged the safeties. Checked the magazine and the action. Injected a round into the chamber. Rolled from the truck cab. Ignoring pain from his wound.
Leaving the vehicle door open, Orson slid along its side and sprinted to the side entrance of the shadowed shed, perpendicular to the shop door, at right angles to the door PawPaw had used. He whipped inside and placed his back to the wood framing, a huge stack of rafts to his right offering partial concealment but no protection against bullets. His body in deep shadow, his position as secure as he could make it, he shifted forward and took in the tableau in a heartbeat.
In the doorway of the shop, up two short steps, stood Nell, a baseball bat held across her middle. Hostile. Her face enraged. Her small body vibrating with fury. Facing her, the old man held the shotgun tight against his shoulder. Positioned for firing. Aimed at a pale figure cowering only feet away. Situated between them.
His back was to the old man and the shotgun. Black suit, mussed hair. Caucasian. Slender frame. Apparently unarmed.
If the old man fired and missed, he’d hit Nell. Orson had to defuse the situation, fast. But before he could speak, the pale figure facing Nell looked behind him. Saw the shotgun and the grizzled old man. He jerked down to the ground. Moving as if he’d been hit. Cowering. Orson got a flash of his face. A man. Early thirties. Familiar.
“I said, are you armed?” the old man said, warning in his voice.
“No. No!”
“PawPaw, it’s okay,” Nell said, her voice strained, her mouth turned down in a complex mix of emotions.
“Who is he and what’s he done?” the old man demanded, settling the aim of the shotgun firmly on the man quivering on the ground, arms up over his head.
“It’s Robert Stevens,” Nell said, all but spitting. “Drunk and acting the fool. I’m sorry I had to call you. But JJ’s uncle is just leaving.”
“Him,” PawPaw snorted and narrowed his aim fractionally, directing the business end of the shotgun on the younger man’s backside, which took Nell out of the spread pattern.
Orson took one step closer. He really didn’t want to shoot Nell’s grandfather. But if the old man pulled the trigger…His focus tightened on the old man, midline, torso. He opened his mouth to identify himself as a police officer. But he was on leave. Not exactly an officer on duty. The thought made him hesitate.
PawPaw spat to the side. “Is he armed?”
“I don’t think so. But then, I didn’t actually get close enough to touch him,” Nell said.
“What’s he doin’ here?”
“Threatening to take JJ,” Nell said.
“She’s lying,” Robert said. “I just offered to help her get Joseph’s estate settled.”
“Nell don’t lie,” the old man said, his scratchy voice dropping lower. Orson caught a whiff of alcohol the stench of unwashed male, cologne, and something that smelled like wet dog. He didn’t know which man stank. Maybe both. “And nobody takes what’s mine.”
“She misunderstood. I’m sorry,” Robert said. “I didn’t…I didn’t mean anything by it. Please.”
“We take care ’a our own up here, boy. And nobody takes JJ away from his mother.”
Nell blew out a breath, and with it her anger. She lowered the bat and propped it against the wall. The tension in the shed decreased dramatically. “I don’t guess we oughta shoot him just cause he’s a drunk fool. What with him being unarmed and all. PawPaw, put down the gun. Robert, you get on outta here. I guess maybe I overreacted. A tiny bit.”
The old man huffed a breath and a curse and moved his aim from Robert to the side. Slowly, his fingers fluid despite his age, he opened the shotgun’s breach and rested it across his arm. He lifted his chin in stubborn resignation and a half challenge. Orson lowered his own weapon. Remembered to take a breath. Groaning, the old man sat down, his knees cracking like rifle shot. Robert flinched.
“Orson, you can come out now,” Nell said. “And put that gun away ’fore somebody gets shot.”
PawPaw whipped his head into the shadows, finding Orson. For a moment, violence again trembled through the equipment shed. Then it passed, like the aftermath of a lightning strike. “Who’s he?” PawPaw asked.
“My new kayak instructor,” Nell said, as if it were commonplace for a kayak instructor to be standing in the shadows holding a handgun. Hell. Maybe it was.
“Nice gun,” PawPaw said conversationally.
Orson, feeling like he had just entered a twilight zone of slightly twisted reality, ejected the round in the chamber and set the safeties. He was drenched in sweat. A faint tremble sizzled through him. Holding the handgun low and to his side, he stepped into the light. “Did he hurt you?”
“No,” Nell and Robert said together. Robert flicked his eyes at her, then at the old man, at the bat leaning against the wall, and at Orson. Carefully, Orson eased his weapon into his waistband at his spine.
Seeing the gun put away, Robert’s arms fell slowly to the gravel and he pushed himself upright, standing in a crouch, like a kicked dog. Orson wasn’t sure, but it was possible he’d pissed his pants. The cop crossed his arms and leaned against the raft at his shoulder. He was beginning to enjoy this. He’d have stories to tell when he got back to the department. It was like being back in the Hatfields and the McCoys, stuff his dad saw on a regular basis in the small towns where he worked, but that Orson had seldom connected with.
Nell wrapped her arms around her middle and glared at her brother-in-law. “He didn’t hurt me. But when I told him I wasn’t interested in pushing up the date to declare Joe legally dead, and when I told him I wasn’t giving him and Yvette half of Joe’s estate, he told me that him and her were prepared to take me to court and get custody. They’ve pushed before, but this was an out-and-out threat.”
“Not a threat,” Robert said, standing straighter, visibly struggling to shift the veneer of sophistication back in place. “An opportunity for the boy to live as a Stevens should, not in this—”
“—backcountry, hillbilly hellhole,” Nell finished sourly.
“Not precisely what I said, but close enough.” Robert brushed off his clothes, pulling the tattered remains of his dignity around him.
Two shadows darkened the opening to the shed. Orson started, pivoting around, one hand on his gun butt.
“I told you there was trouble,” JJ said. His hand was held firmly by a bearded, shirtless, tattooed man, river sandals strapped on his feet and baggy water pants resting low on his hips. JJ tugged his hand free and raced to his mother, wrapping her in his arms, burying his head in her middle.
“I’m okay, JJ darlin’.” She rocked him slowly, her hand stroking his hair. She raised her eyes to the newcomer. “It’s okay, Tom. It was just JJ’s uncle getting ready to try and get custody.”
“Over our dead bodies,” Tom said, rounding on the hapless Robert. “Nell and JJ got friends. You try to take him away and you’ll be so full of buckshot you’ll rattle when you walk.”
Orson grinned at the image, a bitter taste in his mouth and an ache in his stomach as adrenaline broke down. He recognized Turtle Tom from old file photos and from the SAR for Joseph Stevens. The river guide had gained full sleeves of tattoos on each arm, a few across his chest, back and neck, and put on pounds of pure muscle in the intervening years. He was still pretty, however, his face slender, brown eyes wide and usually somnolent, now flashing with defensive energy.
The sound of sandals and running shoes slapping pavement at a dead run filled the air. Someone shouted, “Who’s hurting Nell?”
“Who’s car’s zat?”
“I don’t recognize that SUV.”
“Watch out for the old man. He carries a gun.”
“Nell? Where are you?”
Within seconds, the cramped space between rafts and the equipment-shed wall was full of river guides, the reek of reefer and beer, the stench of males in need of baths, and a lot of protective testosterone. Orson was shoved into the rafts. An elbow hit him in the stomach, driving the air from his lungs. His wound sent shafts of pain through him. He grabbed his middle and scuffed his feet, trying to find his balance. Emmett squirmed past him, breathing hard. Orson ground his teeth against crying out.
“We’re okay,” Nell shouted over the voices, pulling JJ back to her. “We’re fine. Youns be quiet.” When the shouting increased in volume and more river guides crowded in, she shouted louder. “Be quiet! Hey!” She lifted her head and raised her voice, “Shut up!” The words reverberated under the tin roof.
The guides quieted, craning to find her in the shadows. Most of them were carrying a weapon, one man with a butter knife, a teen with a hoe, a woman hefted a hockey stick. One guy was holding a can opener and an empty beer bottle. When he caught his breath, Orson stifled chuckles.
“Thank youns for coming, but we’re fine. So, get on outta here,” Nell said, stepping up on the stairs to raise her above the guides. “I’m fine, JJ’s fine. PawPaw showed up in plenty ’a time.” Stress made her Appalachian dialect and accent sharper but her presence stronger. She was…He sought for a word. Commanding. Yeah. That was Nell Stevens. All five feet two and a hundred twelve pounds of her.
Orson watched her from the shadows. His first impression had been right. She had grown up since he’d first seen her nearly seven years ago. She wasn’t the grieving little wife now, and having a child and running a business had brought her into her own. Or the image of six years ago had been an act to cover up a murder. Now, Nell Stevens was tough as shoe leather. And pretty. Orson cursed under his breath. He had no time for a woman in his life, especially one who might have killed her first husband. No, not first. Her husband, one and only. And he was here to try to prove it, he reminded himself. She had kept on speaking while he woolgathered, and Orson, his priorities back in order, struggled to catch up.
“It was sweet of youns for showing up to help, but I’m fine. JJ’s fine. We’re all fine. But if youns see this here fella show up without an invite—” she pointed to Robert “—you can deck him for me. He threatened to sue for custody of JJ.” A silence had taken over as she spoke, chill and absolute. Every head turned to Robert. The sense of threat went up a notch, heating the shed.
“Mama. What’s custody?” JJ asked into the hush.
“It’s where you get to come live with Grandmother Stevens and me in New York,” Robert said.
“Live? Forever?” JJ squeaked.
“Yes,” Robert said, a hint of smugness in his tone.
“No way,” JJ said. “No freaking way. I’m not going, Mama, and you can’t make me.”
“Ow,” Robert said, and bent over fast. Orson was pretty sure JJ had kicked him, and by the strangled sounds Robert was making, it hadn’t been his shin that took the hit. Bodies shifted as something short and solid shoved through them. Orson reached for JJ as the boy headed for freedom. PawPaw caught him first, one bony shoulder in one knobby fist. In a panic, JJ struggled against the iron grip.
“Ain’t no city boy takin’ what’s ours,” PawPaw said, his voice like rocks tumbling from a hillside. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, son.” The old man swung him up in his arms and carted JJ out of sight. The sound of sobs filtered back into the shed and all the guides turned back to Robert who was once again trying to stand upright.
Emmett nudged Orson’s thigh. “He can’t do that, can he? Steal JJ?”
Orson shook his head. “I don’t think so.” Especially not with a cop as witness to…well, to whatever had happened here.
“I think you better get your scrawny butt back to New York City,” a voice said.
“If you show up here again you might not make it back out.”
“Stop that,” Nell said smartly. “I may not like him, and JJ may not like him, but he’s family. Him and his mama’ll be here at Thanksgiving just like normal, if they still want to come. But I think the days of JJ visitin’ youns in New York just came to an end,” she said to Robert. “You can tell that to your mama when you see her next. Let him through, boys. My drunker-than-a-skunk brother-in-law is going home.”
“This is not over,” Robert said, regaining his breath and voice, though it was a bit higher pitched than moments before. “I intend to bring up charges against you for threatening me with that bat. And for JJ kicking me. I have witnesses.” He looked around the group.
“Yeah, yeah. Like we’re gonna say we saw him kick you,” a guide said, grabbing Robert by the back of his collar.
“What bat?” another said.
“I don’t see no bat.”
“Alls I see is a city fella trying to cause trouble.” Robert wobbled, possibly as a result of the man shaking him. Orson couldn’t say for certain. He had a feeling he should have left sooner, but his position at the back of the crowd meant that he hadn’t seen anything with absolute certainty. Only by guesswork and inference could he say that Robert had been manhandled. Not adequate for court, he decided.
“That’s enough,” Nell said. “Let him go. And Robert? Next time you show up, you better be sober. I ain’t letting JJ around you with you drinking.”
Robert stumbled past Orson into the sunshine. Orson was pretty sure he didn’t see him get shoved. Was pretty sure he was looking the other way when the man fell. And he was certain he couldn’t say which man shoved him if he did get shoved. But they all got a good look at the state of Robert’s backside and the wet pants covering his crotch. The crowd laughed and someone made a ribald remark.
Robert flushed, but had at least some sense in his head. After scanning the crowd with angry, desperate eyes, he pushed to his feet and pulled keys from his pocket, beeping his car open. He climbed into the leather interior without dusting himself off or putting anything on the seat to absorb the aromatic moisture. It was a rental, after all.