The gun changed Gordon before it changed anything else.
His folder slipped beneath his arm. He reached to catch it, saw what Walt held and stopped with his hand halfway down. The papers fell. Wind moved the first page beneath the pickup.
“Take your hands off my trailer,” Walt said.
Gordon backed away from the connection. The marina woman stood beside the office, one hand in her pocket. She had put her mug down somewhere and forgotten it.
“It's not yours,” Gordon said.
Walt came toward him with the bag in his left hand and the gun in his right. Gordon stepped in front of him. A ridiculous thing to do, a man insisting on the simple meaning of a purchase before fear had finished rearranging him. Walt drove his forearm into Gordon's chest. He went backward, catching his heel and stumbling toward the worktable.
Kit caught his arm. Not enough to stop the fall, enough to turn him away from the sharp corner. He hit a chair instead and stayed on his feet, gasping.
“Go there,” she said, pointing toward the office. “Behind her.”
He went. The marina woman took his elbow. She had her phone out now. Walt saw it and turned the gun toward them.
Kit looked at Leah.
Kit nodded.
Leah moved toward the truck. She had waited at the front while Gordon argued over his own boat. Now she crossed the few yards to the flatbed and pulled herself into the cab with her left hand. The right sent pain through her wrist when she tried to use it for balance. She set it on the wheel anyway.
Through the windshield she saw Walt watching her. Kit had got between him and the route to the pickup's driver's door, not blocking him, making him notice another person in the space he wanted to claim.
“Move away,” he told her.
She did not.
Leah started the flatbed. Its engine filled the apron. Gordon and the marina woman moved nearer the office wall. The woman was talking into her phone, looking at the gun, her voice high and fast.
Leah brought the truck forward from the shed side. The movement put its broad rear between Walt and the two people at the office. He had to turn to keep them in sight. He turned toward her instead.
“Stop it.”
She stopped short of him, at an angle that closed most of the drive out. The gate lay behind her. Beside the ramp, the water-side strip remained open, too narrow for what Walt had coupled to his pickup.
She knew he could see that strip. She had left him no generous way through.
Kit reached for the bag.
Walt saw her hand before it touched the handle. He jerked it back. She caught the other handle and went with it, stumbled, recovered. Her own thirty thousand stayed against her chest, the strap tight across her shoulder. The larger bag pulled both of them toward the pickup.
“Let go,” he said.
“No.”
He pushed her with his elbow. She struck the side of the truck hard enough for Leah to hear it. She didn't release the handle. Her face had gone blank with effort.
Leah's right hand slipped on the wheel. She caught it with the left, kept the flatbed still. Moving now would put Kit where she couldn't see her. She watched her daughter struggle and did nothing for a whole terrible second.
Walt hauled the bag up toward his hip. Kit lost her footing, one knee striking the concrete. He had the weight for an instant. He could have let her keep the handle and dragged the whole thing into the pickup. He wanted her to let go instead. Wanted her hand to open because he had said so.
He turned the gun toward her.
Leah sounded the horn.
Walt's head snapped up. Kit pushed herself to her feet. He tried to step backward at the same time, toward the driver's step, and his bad leg did not give him the turn he expected. His shoulder hit the door frame. The bag dragged across his thigh. Kit came forward with it, not away, using the movement she'd already been pulled into.
For a second the two of them were pressed against the pickup. Walt brought his gun arm up to keep it from being trapped between their bodies. Kit had both handles now. His left hand still gripped the fabric beside the zipper.
Leah saw his knuckles whiten. Saw Kit's mouth open with the effort. Her daughter wasn't outsmarting him. She was trying to take a heavy thing from a frightened man who believed it was the last thing he owned.
The marina woman shouted something from behind the flatbed. Walt looked toward the sound. He shifted to see past Kit, his foot slipping against the step. His left hand opened long enough to catch the door frame.
The bag came away.
Kit fell backward under its weight, hit the ground on one hip, and dragged it with her. Walt reached, caught only the air where the handle had been, and stepped after her.
Leah moved the flatbed a few feet, slowly, its rear cutting between him and the path Kit needed. Kit got to her feet behind it. She was out of Leah's sight, and every instinct Leah had screamed at her to get down, run, look, make sure.
She stayed at the wheel.
“Kit,” she called through the window.
No answer.
Walt came toward the truck's front, gun lowered beside his leg. His face was flushed, his mouth open. The pickup door hung behind him. He had left it to follow the bag.
Then Leah heard the passenger handle.
Kit was there. She had pulled the bag onto the step but couldn't get its weight above the sill. The strap of her own bag had twisted beneath her arm, trapping the movement of one shoulder.
Leah reached across with her left hand. Kit shook her head so hard her hair hit her face.
“Keep looking at him.”
Leah turned back. Walt had reached the front of the flatbed. She could see him through the windshield, close enough to see the damp edge of his shirt. The gun rose.
Behind her Kit made a sound of pure effort. The bag hit the cab floor. She got one foot inside, then the other, and lifted the bad door as she pulled it shut.
The latch caught.
Walt stood in front of them, gun pointing at the cab. Leah kept her hurt hand on the lower wheel, her good one where it could turn. She could move, but not through him.
“Open it,” he said.
Kit was bent over the bag, breathing hard. She lifted her head.
“No.”
He stepped toward her side. Leah moved a fraction, enough to make him step clear of the front wheel. The gun stayed on them. He didn't fire. Nobody in the cab spoke while he decided what his hand could do.
Gordon shouted from the office. Not words Leah could follow. His voice broke on the first sound. Walt turned toward it, furious with another person wanting something from him.
Leah eased the flatbed toward the entrance.
A car stopped on the public road to let her out. Beyond it, the delivery van remained in the loading bay, its driver still on the walk with his phone. The car's driver lifted a hand, offering an ordinary courtesy, unaware of what it would permit.
Leah could turn. Go past him. Find another road before the next person understood the name on her door.
Kit pressed both palms against the big bag at her feet. Her smaller one was still across her body. She had lost no money from either. There was dust on her jeans and a red scrape at one elbow where she had hit the ground.
“We have it,” she said.
Leah nodded. Her mouth was too dry to answer.
Behind them Walt's pickup engine roared.