David knew it, too.

They braced themselves as Frank answered Cole.

“He wants you to kill the boy.”

They were all silent, not sure how to react. Cole and Jose both looked behind them at Stella and David. It was just a brief glance from both of them, but Frank’s voice turned them back around.

“Kill the boy and leave his body on the front porch. Then all of this will be over.”

Cole shook his head no. This was too much. He had helped carve out his friend’s eyeballs earlier today, and this was going way too far now. How much more could he do? Where was the line? He couldn’t kill a little kid.

“No,” Cole said loudly as his breath plumed up in front of his mouth from the cold.

No reaction yet from Jose, Stella, or David.

No reaction from Frank.

“We can’t do that!” Cole yelled out to Frank.

Frank still didn’t answer. He began to glide back towards the trees, his legs didn’t move, it was like some invisible string was pulling him back to the dark mass of trees, or like he was on some kind of conveyer belt hidden underneath the snow. But he wasn’t answering Cole. He wasn’t arguing with Cole. He wasn’t threatening Cole. He didn’t need to. It didn’t need to. They all knew what it could do.

“We can’t do that!!” Cole yelled louder, and he stepped to the edge of the porch.

Jose stepped away from Cole and turned around and looked at Stella and David, keeping an eye on them as they stood near the front door. He spoke to Cole, but he kept his eyes on Stella and David, making sure that they weren’t going to dart back inside and try to lock them out here. “Cole, listen to me for a second.”

Cole turned and looked at Jose. “Jose, no …”

“Just think about it for a second,” Jose continued in a very calm tone, his voice soft and reasonable. “It’s asking for one life to spare the rest of us. One life for three, and then we can leave.”

“You think that thing’s going to let us leave?” Cole asked Jose.

“It doesn’t matter!” Jose snapped. His reasonable voice was suddenly gone now. “We have to do what it wants! I’m not going to end up like Frank. Or Trevor!”

Hearing his brother’s name stung Cole for a moment, he looked away, his defenses down and Jose pulled out his pistol from his coat pocket and aimed it at Cole, but his eyes kept darting back to Stella and David.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Cole asked Jose.

“Stay right there,” Jose warned. He looked at Stella and David. “You two don’t move.”

“Let’s think about this, Jose,” Cole begged.

“Put your hands up,” Jose told Cole.

“Jose, we can’t do this.”

“We’ll just put a bullet in that kid’s head,” Jose said. “That’s all. He’ll never feel a thing. He’ll never see it coming.”

“We can’t do that.”

Jose held his gun steady on Cole even though he’d drank a lot of whiskey earlier. His eyes kept darting back to Stella and David. But then he looked at Cole when he said his next words.

“You might as well tell Stella the truth,” Jose told Cole.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

“Tell her the truth!” Jose repeated to Cole.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Stella watched Cole and Jose. She was ready to bolt inside with David, but she couldn’t take a chance on Jose shooting at them; they’d never make it inside – she had to wait for the right time.

“Jose, why don’t you put the gun down?” Cole said. “We can discuss this.”

“There’s nothing to discuss!” Jose spat out. He looked at Stella and David. “We were going to kill you two anyway,” Jose said. “That’s the truth. We couldn’t leave two witnesses alive.”

“That’s a lie!” Cole said. “We never discussed anything like that.”

“Nobody discussed anything with you, Cole. You weren’t part of the team anymore. You just did this job to help your brother, to get him out of debt with Frank. Nobody trusted you anymore. Me and Frank didn’t trust either one of you anymore.”

“That’s a fucking lie!” Cole said, but there wasn’t as much force in his words now. He was beginning to see what may have really been going on. Frank and Jose were discussing things behind their backs. Were they going to kill him and Trevor after they killed Stella and David? Split the money up between the three of them? Or maybe they were going to kill Needles, too. There was a lot of money at stake this time, and perhaps they had been ready to kill for it.

Jose looked at Stella again, and he gave her his best smile, what he thought was his most reassuring smile in the near darkness. “But listen, Stella,” he said. He was calling her by her name now. “We don’t have to kill you now. We just have to kill David.”

“We’re not killing that kid,” Cole said. “We have to think of another way.” Cole’s mind was spinning as he realized that Frank and Jose had been planning on killing everyone involved.

“There is no other way!” Jose snapped.

Cole noticed Jose’s body swaying just a bit, just a little unsteady on his feet. His hand holding the gun was beginning to tremble. This is my only chance, Cole thought. Jose isn’t going to wait much longer out here in the cold before he shoots David. Or all three of us.

“Just listen to me for a second, Jose,” Cole said, trying to stall for time, trying to wait for exactly the right time to charge.

Jose was about to explode with rage again – he was only a few seconds away from shooting, Cole was sure of that. But then Jose’s attention was distracted for a second by David opening the front door of the cabin.

Jose turned his gun on David.

Stella stepped in front of David, ready to take a bullet for him.

But Jose didn’t care – he’d shoot through Stella to get to that kid if he had to.

Stella squeezed her eyes shut.

This was Cole’s only chance. He rushed at Jose and tackled him just as Jose’s finger pulled the trigger. The gun fired, but Cole had knocked Jose’s arm away just enough and the bullet whizzed past Stella and struck the cabin wall.

Cole slammed Jose into the side of the cabin, and he heard a grunt as the breath left Jose’s lungs for a moment.

“Get inside!” Cole yelled at Stella and David.

Stella grabbed David and pushed at him to get inside, but David was already a step ahead of her. They hurried inside and slammed the door shut. Stella looked down at the door handle. She looked at the lock on the door handle. At the deadbolt. She couldn’t take a chance. She locked the door.

Outside on the porch, Cole and Jose wrestled. Cole had a grip on Jose’s wrist, keeping the gun pointed down at the floorboards of the front porch. They wrestled on their feet for a moment, but with one violent twist of his body, Cole swung Jose over him in a Judo flip and they both landed on the floorboards of the front porch with Cole on top of Jose.

The gun went off.

The shot was loud in the eerie silence of the dark night all around the cabin. It echoed across the snowy fields.

Inside the cabin, Stella and David watched the door. They had heard the gunshot. Who was shot? Was it Cole? Jose? Both of them?

Cole got up off of Jose and his hands went to his own abdomen, afraid he’d been shot and didn’t feel it yet. But his bare hands came away dry. No blood on him. He looked down at Jose who wasn’t moving. Even in the darkness, Cole could see the darker stain spreading across Jose’s shirt underneath his open coat. Cole didn’t even remember shooting; he wasn’t even sure how it had happened.

It had happened so fast.

Cole picked up Jose’s gun from the porch and he aimed it down at Jose.

Jose stared up at Cole with wide eyes, he was afraid, he knew what had happened. He opened his mouth to speak and he coughed up a chunk of pulpy blood and then gasped for air.

Cole backed away from Jose, he moved closer to the front door of the cabin.

Jose’s body trembled as he sat up and scooted across the floorboards to the log wall of the cabin. He pushed himself up into a sitting position with his back against the cabin wall. He gritted his teeth and moaned in pain; his hands shot to his abdomen, holding on to it, trying in vain to stop the flow of blood.