“Yeah,” she teased. “Rest.”
“I don’t want anything more than to hold you, Lynn.”
His arms encircled her and she felt the calm that always came with him welling up from a place she’d thought only Mother could touch. She turned her face into his chest so that he couldn’t see her tears as she cried quietly, knowing that Mother would have never risked her own skin for the sake of others. In a few hours, Lynn would climb a tree miles from her own pond to fire bullets she couldn’t spare so that Eli, Lucy, and countless strangers downstream could have a drop to drink. She inhaled Eli’s smell, buried her face deeper into his chest, holding on to him until the world would make her let go.
Twenty-one
It was bitterly cold when they emerged in the dead of night to meet Stebbs. They huddled together for warmth, not even bothering to tease the older man when he came from the direction of the stream, rather than his own house. When he handed a backpack to Eli, the fumes of gasoline rolled off him in waves.
“Careful with that, that’s the last of the gasoline I had stored up in my basement,” Stebbs warned as Eli shouldered it. “Here’s a lighter. Didn’t want to take the chance of a breeze with matches.”
“How long’ve you had a lighter?” Lynn asked.
He shrugged. “Since forever.”
“Asshole.”
They headed south and walked in silence, except for the clinking of the bottles in Eli’s backpack. When they reached the ridge, Stebbs gave her a foot up into her tree and Lynn settled onto a thick bough. They moved off toward the east, where Stebbs had found a suitable place to take his own shots, nearer town. Eli would wait with him. Eli’s good-bye was quick and silent, the flash of a white hand through the darkness as he waved. Lynn unstrapped her rifle and tucked her handgun into the back of her waistband. A light snow began to fall as she waited for the sun to rise.
When it did, it came fast, the gray predawn haze burning off quickly as the sun peeked over the horizon. Lynn could see men moving inside the houses, their dark forms anonymous behind the curtains. The sentry had not come out yet. She shifted position and dried her palms on her jeans. The hall guard emerged, pissed in his yard, and made his way to his post. Roger led the cow out to pasture. Her father appeared on his porch, coffee in hand. Her gaze skittered off him, nervously.
They had agreed that though he was the leader, it was important to take the sentry and hall guard out first. Her father had won third place in that lottery. Lynn’s first shot was for the sentry, Stebbs’ the hall guard. After that they would fire at will, each picking their own target. Lynn had not argued, though she hoped it would be her bullet that downed her father.
She watched him through her scope, wondering what Mother would feel to know that the smoke from the south was caused by a fire from her past. Father was a conversation that never happened, a ghost that had never lived. Lynn had always believed he was dead, and perhaps Mother had as well. But he was alive and had never come for them. He’d abandoned them, and the only thing she’d ever give him would be delivered through the talents Mother had wanted her to master. There was comfort for her in the idea that the shot she’d fired too late for the coyote might be redeemed yet. His face in the crosshairs made her finger curl around the trigger, anxious for the only comfort Mother could offer from the grave.
Father spat out his first mouthful of coffee and crossed the road to where the hall guard sat, rifle across his knees. They exchanged words. Her father shook his head and walked over to the yellow house where the women were kept and pounded on the door until Blue Coat answered. He went inside, and the tower sentry emerged moments later, shrugging his coat over his shoulders.
Lynn tracked him to the tower, waiting for him to settle onto his perch before clicking the safety off her gun. She could only assume that Stebbs was watching as well, that Eli was prepared for her shot. She flattened her torso and inhaled, holding the breath.
She fired. From that distance the features of the sentry’s face were unclear, but the bullet’s exit was easy to see. A spray of blood rained down from the tower, followed quickly by his rifle, then his corpse. They reacted to the shot before his body hit the ground. Men erupted from the houses like bees from a disturbed hive; pale faces pressed against the windows in the upper floor of the yellow house.