“He’s just nervous and trying not to show it,” Cole answered. “The more nervous he gets, the more sarcastic he gets.”

“He better stop fucking with me,” Jose said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

Cole opened the driver’s door and looked at Jose. “You two are going to cool it right now; we have enough to worry about without you two at each other’s throats.”

Jose looked away and exhaled a long breath that plumed up in front of his face in the freezing air. “Whatever,” he mumbled.

Cole still stared at Jose. “Maybe Trevor’s right. Something’s not right here in this cabin and Needles is halfway to La La land right now and pretty much useless. So the rest of us need to keep our cool and work together.”

Jose shrugged his shoulders and kept looking around.

“Jose, I’m serious. I need your help. And Trevor’s.”

Jose looked back at Cole. “Just get that fucking truck fixed so we can get the fuck out of here.”

Cole pulled the latch to pop the hood. He marched through the snow to the front of the truck. He lifted up the hood and stared down at the mess that used to be engine.

Jose saw the look on Cole’s face. He hurried over to the front of the truck and stared down at the destroyed engine. He didn’t know near as much about engines as Cole did, but he knew enough to know that this engine was ruined. Inoperable.

Cole stuck his hand down in the motor and picked up some loose parts, then he tossed them back down onto the engine, the clanking sound was loud out here in the silence. Cole picked up the cables that used to go to the battery. “Battery’s gone,” Cole mumbled.

“Holy shit, Cole,” Jose yelled right beside him as he stared in shock down at the engine. “Holy fuck, man. What the fuck?”

Cole studied the frayed end of the battery cable. It looked ripped, torn apart, like someone had torn the battery out of the truck with tremendous force, snapping the battery cables.

“What the fuck?” Jose said again as he backed away from the truck, pacing around in the snow in a small circle, still cussing. “What the fuck happened?”

“It looks like someone destroyed the engine with an ax,” Cole said, his voice even and controlled, like a scientist analyzing a piece of data. “See those chop marks there. Hell of a swing.”

Jose swung his fists at the air. “Fuck!” he screamed out into the freezing air. “FUCK!!” His voice echoed across the snowy field.

Cole lowered the hood of Stella’s truck, but he didn’t close it all the way. He turned to Jose. “Let’s go check the other truck.”

Inside the cabin, Stella stood at the sink and washed the leftover oatmeal out of the bowls.

Trevor watched her. He still sat at the dining room table, his coffee cup in front of him. He toyed with the cup, spinning it around slowly on the table as he glanced at David who sat on the couch. Needles was curled up in the recliner, comforting himself by rubbing his cross around his neck, his eyes half-closed, his lips moving in silent prayers. Trevor looked back at Stella, watching her rinse the dishes. “What’s wrong with your kid?” he asked. “Is he autistic?”

“No,” Stella answered, not bothering to look at him.

“Retarded?”

Stella gave Trevor a hard look with her blue eyes. “No,” she said.

“Seems like something’s wrong with him.”

“He just doesn’t talk much,” Stella said as she turned her attention back to the dishes, setting them in the strainer a little too hard.

Trevor smiled as he kept playing with his coffee cup. “Stella, could I get another cup of coffee? It was really good.”

“Get it yourself,” she told him without looking at him.

David got up from the couch and walked across the area rug in the middle of the living room; he gave Needles a wide berth as he hurried over to Stella.

Stella turned and smiled at David. “What is it, honey?”

He tugged on her sleeve. She bent down and he cupped a hand beside his mouth and whispered into her ear.

She nodded. “Sure,” she said. She went right to one of the drawers in the cabinets and rummaged through them.

Trevor watched the two of them with that same smirk on his face. “What’s the kid want?” he asked.

Stella found a spiral-bound book of notebook paper. She handed the notebook to David. His face lit up as he took it. She continued looking through the drawers for something else.

“Is he writing a book?” Trevor asked.

“He wants something to draw on,” Stella said over her shoulder as she continued looking through the drawer.

“Really?” Trevor’s face lit up. He looked at David. “Are you a good artist?”

David stared at Trevor for a moment, and then he looked at Stella with hope in his eyes.

Stella turned to David with a ballpoint pen in her hand. “Sorry, honey. This is all I could find.”

David took the pen with a big smile and he hurried back to the couch, his long hair flying out behind him as he ran. He plopped down on the couch and opened the notebook.

Trevor got up and grabbed his coffee cup from the table. He walked to the coffee pot and poured another cup of coffee. He watched Stella as she went back to the couch and sat down beside David.

Stella looked at Trevor. “You don’t seem particularly worried about what’s going on here.”

Trevor sipped his coffee as he mulled over an answer. “I’m not afraid of anything,” he finally said.

You will be, Stella thought.

“Pop the hood,” Cole told Jose.

Jose lifted the handle on the driver’s door of Tom Gordon’s truck, and then wrenched the door open as snow fell in heaps from the top of the door and the roof. He reached inside the murky truck – all of the windows covered with snow made the interior dark. He groped around until he found a lever; he pulled until he heard the clunking sound that released the hood.

Cole lifted up the hood. He was pretty sure what to expect, but he still hoped anyway. He prayed that he was wrong.

But he wasn’t.

Jose rushed around to the front of the truck, slipping in the snow a little. But then he stopped in his tracks when he saw the expression on Cole’s face. “Fuck,” Jose breathed out.

Cole slammed the hood of the truck shut. “Somebody doesn’t want us to leave,” he said.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“There’s no way you can fix the truck?” Jose asked Cole.

“I don’t think so,” Cole said as he looked at the large, free-standing garage behind Tom Gordon’s pickup truck. “I’m going to check in there. You stay out here by the truck and watch for anything.”

Jose nodded, his gun in his gloved hand already. He looked at the woods as Cole stomped through the snow drifts to the double doors of the garage.

Cole pushed on one of the wooden doors. At first it didn’t budge, and he thought he was going to have to call Jose to help him, but then it broke free. He slid it open far enough so that he could slip inside. He stood there for a moment in the doorway, breathing hard from pushing the door open, his breath clouding up in front of his face.

Cole entered the garage which was longer than it was wide. On both sides of the garage boxes, crates, and bags were stacked up. There were stacks of lumber and wood siding, cinder blocks, and an old water heater. Cole walked down a pathway through the stacks of junk. He paused and looked at a long workbench stacked with automotive parts. Tools hung from a pegboard above the bench. Boxes were crammed underneath the bench, some of the boxes split open from the weather. Cole wondered if there might be some spare parts to the trucks among the parts on the counter, but it didn’t matter – he knew both engines were too far gone to repair in a day or two.

Besides, he was looking for something else in here. His hand went to his pocket, his gloved fingers reached into his pocket and pulled out the set of keys he’d found in the kitchen drawer.