Thank you for reading! Be well!
Ava seemed to feel better with half a cup of good hot coffee in her. Boyd sympathized with her grief and with her shock. Helen Givens had been well-liked and well-respected, a genuinely good woman. And she had been generally considered a good, steadying influence on Arlo. Not to mention that it was an unspoken rule that you didn't wage war on women unless they deserved it. In the middle of the night, strange people in her house, Boyd imagined Helen would have been carrying a shotgun—but at that point, you fled or you disarmed her. You didn't shoot her.
No, it was clear this had been a cowardly and vicious attack. Boyd suspected Dickie Bennett, as Mags wouldn't have dirtied her hands that way and Doyle would never have shot a woman.
Sitting down across from Ava, he reached for her hands. "You feeling better?"
She nodded. "I think so. It's just such a— I can't believe she's gone."
"Nor can I." He thought of his old friend Raylan. Helen had been more than a mother to him when his own mother had died. Raylan would be in pain today, and lashing out … at the person he held responsible. "We should go over there."
"Is that our place?" Ava asked.
"Raylan will be there, and you know what it's like when he and Arlo get together. They should have a buffer." Unspoken was the thought prominent in Boyd's mind, that if he hadn't brought Arlo into the heist of the Bennetts' product, Helen would still be alive. It had been Arlo's choice to come along, and Arlo's carelessness that had allowed him to be identified. Still … Boyd hadn't made any pretense about who he had been, and this could just as easily have been Ava. She was in no condition for him to talk to her about safety right now, but he would need to do so, and soon.
If only he could have kept from coming back here. If they weren't together, she would be in no danger. Except that he could no sooner have kept from her side than he could have sprouted wings and flown. She was part of him now, flowing through him in his very blood.
Boyd tightened his grip on her hands. "You ready?"
Ava nodded. "You're right. We should be there."
Johnny and Devil would hold down the fort at Ava's—and reap the benefits of his perfectly crisped bacon, Boyd thought with some regret. He led Ava out to his truck, stopping just before he opened her door to take her in his arms and kiss her, a gentle kiss that he hoped told her how important she was to him. Ava clung to him, kissing him back with what felt like equal emotion. His hand lingered on hers as he helped her into the truck.
Arlo and Raylan were at each other's throats, as anticipated, when Boyd and Ava walked up onto the porch of the Givens house. Boyd knocked firmly on the screen door. "I hope we're not interrupting," he said into the sudden quiet.
"The hell you doin' here?" Raylan demanded.
Boyd was not surprised to find his reception less than warm. Emotion always made Raylan a mite prickly, as did Boyd's presence. The two together were a volatile combination—but slightly less volatile than the combination of emotion and Arlo's presence, and Boyd felt he was likely to be in a better frame of mind to take Raylan's hostility this morning.
"You can come on in," Arlo told them.
Letting Ava precede him—as her presence was likely to be the least volatile of all—Boyd let the screen door shut behind him.
"We heard what happened," Ava said. "We want to offer our condolences."
Raylan stared at both of them as though the concept of neighbors coming by in a time of need was completely foreign to him. As long as he had been away from home, it probably was, Boyd conceded. "Okay, well, now you've done it. You can be on your way."
Arlo, in the midst of loading a shotgun just as Boyd had feared he would be, glared up at his son. "What kind of way is that to act?"
Boyd could see the pain in his old friend, hard as Raylan tried to hide it. "I know you're hurtin', Raylan."
"Don't preach to me."
"Believe it or not, we come with pure intent."
There was silence as Raylan's upbringing and his training and his inclinations and his anger all fought with one another. His face, usually so carefully bland, showed them all, at least in Boyd's eyes. At last he gave up the battle and walked away, brushing past Ava as he did so.
"Raylan," she began, but he didn't miss a step.
"Don't."
The screen door shut behind him, and Boyd looked at Arlo, taking a seat on the table in front of the older man. "I'm awful sorry, Arlo. You okay?"
Arlo looked him in the eye. There was no emotion there but anger. "I told you Dickie made me."
"Raylan have any idea?"
"No. And he ain't gonna. When Raylan finds Dickie, that dogleg son-of-a-bitch gonna be dead."
Behind him, Boyd heard Ava shift positions. He understood her distress—Raylan had killed men before, yes, but this would be different. This would be a man with whom he had a long history, whose brother's death he had already been responsible for, and it would be a deliberate manhunt, not a justified killing in self-defense. Mags Bennett would never rest until she got even for the loss of a second son … and Mags generally got what she wanted.
Looking at the shotgun, he asked Arlo, "What do you intend to do?"
"Make sure my son doesn't chicken out."
"Are you sure—"
The old man looked up at Boyd, and the words froze on his lips. This was a man who had been part of the underground scene in these mountains for longer than Boyd had been alive. If he wanted to take revenge on someone for the loss of his wife, who was Boyd to get in the way? And, for that matter, if the situations were reversed, and it were Ava lying in a funeral home, would Boyd have let anyone stop him from taking his revenge? He would not have. He shut his mouth.
Arlo got to his feet. Ava put herself in front of him. "Mr. Givens, I am so sorry."
For a moment, Boyd saw the old man's face twitch, as though grief was attempting to get through the anger. "I know you are."
But he pushed past her just as his son had done a few minutes before, letting the screen door slam shut behind him just as Raylan had, leaving Boyd and Ava alone in the room.
