Jose started to say something, but he didn’t. The look in Cole’s eyes stopped him. He wasn’t afraid of Cole, but he was wary of him. And there was a look in Cole’s eyes like he’d never seen before.

“Wait, I’ll help you,” Jose said and he rushed back into the kitchen for another pair of dishwashing gloves.

Cole opened the front door, about to walk out onto the porch. But he froze, he stood very still as he stared at the front porch.

Jose rushed up behind Cole and saw what Cole was looking at. Jose just stared. “What the hell?” he whispered.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Trevor’s head and the pieces of his body were gone.

Cole stepped out onto the front porch, but only one step. He could hear Jose right behind him. “What the hell is this, Cole?”

Cole stared down at the floorboards of the porch. There were still puddles of blood all over the porch, some of the blood had turned a pinkish color as it mixed with the snow scattered across the floorboards. There were still splatters of blood on the front door and the front wall of the cabin where the pieces of Trevor’s body had pelted the wood from whoever had thrown them.

But those pieces were gone now. The pieces had been here, Cole thought to himself. They hadn’t been a figment of his imagination. Everyone else had seen them, too.

Jose rushed out through the doorway beside Cole. He took two more steps out onto the porch and looked around. “What the fuck?” he said. “What the fuck?!” he said a little louder. “How the hell …”

Cole looked around at the porch, then out at the snowy field and the trees in the distance. There was no one in the snowy field or the trees.

Jose looked around, his gun gripped in his hand that was sheathed in the rubber of dishwashing gloves. “Cole, somebody was out here just a few minutes ago picking up all of these pieces.”

Cole didn’t respond to Jose.

“How the hell didn’t we hear them?”

Cole still didn’t respond.

“How the fuck did they get up on this porch and take all of those … those pieces without us hearing them? Without us knowing.”

Cole hurried over to the edge of the porch and looked over the railing. He stripped off the yellow dishwashing gloves and stuffed them into the pockets of his jacket. He dropped the box of garbage bags on the floorboards; it landed with a dull thud. He pulled his gun out of the waistband of his pants and studied the snow below the porch.

“Who the fuck are these people?” Cole heard Jose ask.

Cole walked along the edge of the porch, keeping close to the railing, his gun ready in his hand. He searched the snow with his eyes all the way around the porch. When he got to the other side, he looked back at Jose. “There aren’t any tracks in the snow,” he said.

“That can’t be,” Jose said in a low voice. “How the hell can they be doing this?”

Cole walked back to the porch steps that led down into the snow.

“Cole,” Jose said. “What are you doing?”

Cole didn’t answer.

“Hey, man. Why don’t we just take the cases of money and walk out of here? We’ll leave that girl and her kid here in the cabin, and we’ll just walk on out of here. We don’t have to hurt them; we’ll tie them up and just leave them here.”

“They’ll die in there if we do that,” Cole finally answered Jose as he stood at the edge of the steps.

“So,” Jose spat out. “It’s her friends out here doing this anyway. I’m sure they’ll go inside the cabin and rescue her.”

Cole descended the steps quickly down into the snow. He walked a few steps out into the snow which came up to mid-calf on him. He wore calf-high boots underneath his pants legs, but he could still feel the cold on his legs, creeping through the cloth, creeping into his flesh, into his bones. It was so cold out here that he could feel his lungs ache as he took breaths.

Jose followed Cole down into the snow. “Just the two of us,” Jose said. “We don’t even need Needles to leave with us. It’s Needles’ fault we’re here in the first place.”

Cole still didn’t answer. He kept walking towards the corner of the cabin, away from the garage and Tom Gordon’s ruined pickup truck parked in front of the garage doors which were still partway open. The garage made Cole think of the snowmobile he’d seen in there. It stayed in the back of his mind. He didn’t want to tell Jose about it just yet.

You don’t trust Jose enough to tell him about the snowmobile, Cole’s mind whispered to him.

As if to prove Cole’s point, Jose continued following Cole through the snow, trying to convince him to leave. “Come on, man. Just you and me. We could split the money fifty-fifty.”

Cole stopped at the corner of the cabin and looked around at the fields of snow, at the line of trees that surrounded the fields. He didn’t see any movement, he didn’t hear anything. His eyes settled on the parting in the trees where the driveway began, the driveway that led back out to the county road.

God, it seemed like such a long time ago since they had come down that driveway in Stella’s truck.

Cole took a step and then he took another step towards the driveway.

Frank’s voice echoed in his mind. “He won’t let you leave.”

But Cole was going to walk to the driveway in the woods – at least that far. He had his gun ready. He was ready for these people to reveal themselves. He was ready to shoot them. He was ready to kill them. For Trevor.

Jose fell in beside Cole, matching Cole step for step through the snow as they trudged towards the driveway in the trees. Jose had given up trying to convince Cole to leave with him.

Maybe I should just leave by myself, Jose thought.

Inside the cabin, Stella and David sat on the couch. David was drawing again. Always drawing. She thought about the drawings she’d seen in his notebook. She had to talk to him about it, but she needed to wait for the right time. What he was drawing could be the answer to what was out there in the woods. But she didn’t dare give herself too much hope.

She looked over at the recliner, at Needles. He had been hunched forward, his cross dangling down from his neck on the thin gold necklace as he stared down at the large Native American rug on the cabin floor. Something about the patterns and colors seemed to amaze Needles. He would spend hours staring at the patterns on the rug and rubbing the small cross on his necklace over and over again.

But now Needles looked at Stella and David.

And Stella realized that they were alone in the cabin with this lunatic. How long were Cole and Jose going to stay out there? She had seen that Trevor’s body parts were gone, she had suspected that. And now Cole and Jose might be out there searching the woods for Trevor’s killer.

They could be out there for a while, Stella thought. Maybe for hours.

Needles stood up quickly. He was a lanky man, but he was tall and all muscle, he had a wiry strength to him. But his eyes were the scariest part of him. They were lost, completely gone now. He had been going more and more crazy, and now he was all the way gone. Stella could see that; she had seen that same look in a man’s eyes before – she’d seen it in New Mexico.

Needles smiled at them. “I believe you,” he whispered to Stella. “They might not believe you,” Needles gestured towards the front door, “but I know that there’s something supernatural out there.”

Stella didn’t answer. She just watched Needles. She was ready to grab David and run from the couch to the front door if she needed to. The door was still ajar, letting the cold air into the cozy warmth of the cabin.

“It’s okay, Stella,” he said in a low voice, as a strange smile played at the corner of his lips. “I already know who’s out there. It’s the devil, isn’t it? The old man in the bank told me.”

Stella tensed and David stopped drawing as Needles took another step towards them with that insane smile still on his face.