Then Needles froze in mid-step when they heard the gunshots from outside.

Cole and Jose had only made it five more steps away from the cabin when the gunshots started. They ducked down, frozen for a moment as bullets whizzed past them and struck the logs of the cabin.

“Fuck!” Jose yelled.

They turned and ran as fast as they could through the snow as more shots were fired. Cole couldn’t tell where the shots were coming from, somewhere from the woods, but he couldn’t be sure exactly from where.

They made it to the steps of the porch and Cole turned and fired at the trees with his pistol, trying to provide some cover for them as they climbed the slippery steps up onto the porch that was still smeared with his brother’s blood.

Needles was at the door as they made it up the steps. Needles fired his gun out at the woods, providing more cover.

“You see ‘em?!” Jose shouted at Needles.

“No!” Needles yelled. He moved back into the cabin to allow Cole and Jose to duck inside as bullets pelted the thick logs of the cabin wall.

Cole closed the door and locked the locks, then he backed away from the door, his gun still in his hand. Jose hurried over to the window on the other side of the door that looked out onto the porch.

“You see anything?” Cole asked Jose.

Jose shook his head no. “Nothing.”

“What kind of gun was it?” Needles asked, but they all were pretty sure they knew, it was a sound they’d heard plenty of times before. “I think it was a .45,” Cole said, and then he uttered all of their thoughts. “It sounded like Frank’s gun.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Three o’clock in the morning. The half-full moon managed to shine some moonlight down onto the fields of snow and endless woods on the earth below, but clouds rolled through the night sky causing night shadows to glide across the trees, across the fields of snow, across the cabin.

Cole had downed at least ten cups of coffee. He’d made the coffee strong. He’d added a lot of sugar. He wanted to make sure that he was going to stay awake tonight.

Jose had opened the bottle of whiskey earlier in the night. He’d only sipped at it, catching a little bit of a buzz, not enough to make him drunk, but enough to give him some courage. And it was making him drowsy – Cole could see that. He could see that it was going to be up to him again to stay awake and on guard through the night.

David was the first one to fall asleep. He slept on top of his notebook, like his body was guarding it. Stella tried to pull it out from under his body, but every time she tried to move the notebook, David’s eyes would pop open and he would stare at her with his large dark eyes.

“I’m just trying to make you more comfortable,” she whispered to him.

But David held onto his notebook of drawings and slept on top of it.

Of course Stella could rip the notebook out of the little boy’s hands if she wanted to, but she wasn’t going to do that. She would talk to him about the things he’d drawn when it was the right time. In the meantime, her mind began to wander as she thought of different possibilities of what David’s drawings could mean. Her archeologist’s mind offered up different explanations, different scenarios, analyzing and studying.

Stella curled up next to David and eventually she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

Needles fell asleep next, curled up in an uncomfortable position on the recliner that he sat in all the time. Cole told him earlier that he might wake him up in the morning to stand guard. But he wasn’t sure if he was going to do that or not. He couldn’t trust Needles anymore. And he wasn’t sure if he could trust Jose either. He’d never been close to these guys; they were all criminals and their trust of each other only went so far. But Cole had trusted Trevor. And now the only person he really trusted was gone, the only one who would’ve had his back. His heart ached when he thought of Trevor. And a rage burned inside of him when he thought of Trevor’s body (pieces) out there in the woods somewhere. His remains desecrated, scattered among the snow in the woods.

Cole made himself think of something else.

Jose sat next to Cole for a while at the dining room table, a small glass of whiskey in front of him. No drinking – that had always been one of Frank’s rules when they were on a job together. After the job was done and they were about to go their separate ways, it was fine, but not while they were working. But Cole didn’t say anything to Jose about it. They were way past working right now, and if a few sips of whiskey calmed Jose down, then Cole was thankful for that.

“What’s our plan?” Jose asked in a low voice. The fire in him earlier was gone now. After they were shot at, Jose’s idea of just walking out of here didn’t seem so feasible.

“I don’t know yet,” Cole said and his thoughts turned once again to the snowmobile he’d seen tucked away under the blue tarp inside the free-standing garage. He could even feel the keys to the snowmobile in his pants pocket. There had to be some way he could get to it, see if it would start. There had to be some way to escape on it. But not right now. Not in the middle of the night.

“I’ll tell you something,” Jose said as he took another small sip of whiskey from his glass.

Cole didn’t respond.

“If I see Frank again,” Jose continued, “I’m going to get some answers out of him. I promise you that.”

Cole didn’t say anything.

Jose fell asleep a few hours later, stretching out on his blankets. He told Cole that he was just resting for a few minutes, but Cole heard him breathing heavily a few moments later, and then snoring lightly.

Cole sat at the dining room table and sipped his coffee. The only light on was over the stove, and the rest of the cabin was hidden in murky darkness. He glanced at the clock on the wall in the kitchen – three o’clock in the morning. He’d wait until dawn before he woke Jose up to take the next watch.

Needles woke up on the floor beside the recliner. It was late at night, he knew that, but he didn’t know exactly what time it was. He sat up and suddenly he felt vulnerable on the floor. He didn’t remember getting out of the chair and stretching out on the wood floor, but at some point in the night he must have.

Needles realized that something had woken him up, some kind of noise.

He looked back at the others. Everyone else was asleep. Even Cole and Jose were stretched out on their blankets on the floor, both of them breathing heavily. He was pretty sure that one of them was supposed to be standing guard through the night. But maybe they had given up on that, maybe they had realized what he had, that there was nothing they could do to fight back.

What kind of noise had it been that had woken him up? He tried to remember.

A thumping noise.

His eyes darted to the kitchen and Needles held his breath as he stared at the freezer against the far wall. The noise had come from the freezer, he was sure of it now. A thumping noise.

Thump.

The freezer lid popped up for a second, then it thumped back down, like someone inside was trying to push it open.

Like Tom Gordon was trying to get out.

Needles was frozen with fear. His throat had gone instantly dry, and all of his muscles seemed like they had turned to wet spaghetti. His lips trembled. He wanted to scream out to the others, he wanted to wake them up, but the only sound that would come out of his throat was a breathless wheeze.

It was silent in the cabin for a few moments and just when Needles began to think that maybe he’d been half asleep and still dreaming, the freezer lid flew open and smashed against the log wall of the cabin. The freezer was wide open.

Needles heard Tom Gordon before he actually saw him. He could hear the crackling sound of ice breaking, like the sound of ice cube trays being twisted to break the ice cubes free. Then Tom Gordon sat up in the freezer, he sat straight up like a vampire rising up out of his coffin.