Chapter 13: The Handoff

Ray did not open the door.

He drew the pistol from the holster at his back and pushed Nico behind him by the chain.

"Ray," Vera said again, patient as a nurse. "I can hear you thinking. Please don't."

"Go back to your car."

"There are two men on the porch with me, and two more at the tree line."

"They have rifles, dear, and no wish to use them on you."

The window beside the door went dark as someone stepped in front of it.

Ray did the arithmetic the way he had been trained to.

A cabin with one front door and a back door that opened onto a shed.

Two wrists locked together, and one of them belonged to a man who could not run in snow.

"Nico," he said quietly. "Whatever happens, you stay on my left."

"Okay."

"Don't say anything to her."

"Okay."

Ray opened the door.

Vera Cushing stood on the porch in her camel coat, with her reading glasses on their beaded cord and snow melting on her silver hair.

She looked tired, and she looked kind.

Two men stood behind her, one tall and one heavy, both in dark parkas, both holding their hands where he could see them.

That was the first thing that frightened him.

They were so sure of him that they showed him their hands.

"May I come in?" Vera asked.

"No."

"It's eleven degrees."

"Then say it from there."

She smiled and stepped inside anyway, and the tall man followed her.

Ray let the pistol hang at his side, because the heavy man had a rifle aimed at Nico's chest through the open door.

"Put it on the table," Vera said gently. "Please."

He put it on the table.

The tall man picked it up and unloaded it and dropped the magazine into his pocket.

Vera looked around the room.

She looked at the blankets by the stove, and the can of peaches, and the two cuffed wrists.

"Oh," she said softly. "I see."

Neither of them answered.

"I wondered why you stopped calling," Vera said. "I thought, he's hurt. Or he's found out. I didn't think it would be this."

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