“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.
He ventured farther down the aisle through the stacks of junk. He saw boxes and crates stacked on top of each other. A large shelf had been built above the boxes, bags of rock salt stacked on top of the shelf. He saw a red plastic container of gasoline. He walked over to the gas container, lifted it up, about half full. A little farther down a tarp covered something large.
That might be what he was looking for.
Cole pulled the tarp away which was nearly frozen solid, but it broke free, crinkling loudly in the silence. And under the tarp was what he suspected the keys went to. A snowmobile. An older one, but it looked like it might still run.
“Cole!”
Cole turned to the doorway of the garage, towards the sound of Jose’s panicked voice. “Cole, get out here right now!”
He threw the tarp back over the snowmobile, covering it completely, then at the last second he pushed some of the boxes down on top of it – he didn’t want Jose or Needles discovering it. Then he broke into a run towards the garage doorway and pulled his gun out of his coat pocket.
“So, you’re an archeologist, huh?” Trevor asked as he stood in front of the coffee maker. He added more sugar and cream to his coffee.
“Yep,” Stella answered. She was already getting very tired of whatever game Trevor was trying to play here. She glanced at Needles who was still curled up in the recliner, rubbing his crucifix; he stared down at the large area rug, seemingly transfixed by the colorful patterns. Stella looked back at Trevor. She decided to flip the questions around. “What about you?” she asked. “You look more like a grad student than a bank robber.”
Trevor smiled. “Things aren’t always what they appear to be.”
“Believe me, I know.”
“What does a grad student look like?” Trevor asked, and then he sipped his coffee. “You some kind of expert?”
“I’ve been to college before. Archeology, remember? You need to go to college for that.” She wasn’t going to let him weasel his way out of an explanation. If anything, it would keep him from asking her more questions. “What made you decide to rob banks?”
“Long story,” he told her.
Stella looked around. “Looks like we’ve got nothing but time right now.”
Cole ran out of the garage, his gun in his hand. He stopped and looked around for Jose. But Jose wasn’t around anywhere. Cole looked at the pickup truck – Jose wasn’t there.
A movement in the snow beyond the front of the truck caught Cole’s eye – it was Jose, he was running for the woods, almost to the woods now.
“Jose!” Cole yelled.
But Jose didn’t stop; he kept on running through the snow, his boots kicking up snow behind him.
Cole ran after Jose. “Jose, wait!” But Jose wasn’t stopping. Cole could see that Jose had his gun out, chasing something. Cole ran across the field towards the trees, his leg muscles began to burn from the slight incline of the field. He caught up to Jose twenty feet inside the woods, the trees already closer together here just this far into woods. Jose stood by a tree, his shoulder against it like he was using it as a shield, his gun was out and pointed at the ground, his eyes wild, darting around like he was trying to look everywhere at once. Mucus ran out of Jose’s nose down into his mustache – Cole was pretty sure Jose didn’t realize this.
Cole took a second to catch his breath. His chest heaved from his sprint across the field, his breath clouded up in front of his face. He looked around at the trees all around them, his pistol ready, his finger on the trigger. Some of the tree trunks were powdered with snow from drifts of snow piled up on them. The trees seemed to go on forever, blending together into a gray darkness deeper into the woods.
“What is it?” Cole breathed out.
Jose didn’t answer. He just looked around with his wild-man eyes. His gun hand trembled as he aimed his weapon into the trees.
“Jose?”
Jose finally looked at Cole.
“What is it?” Cole asked. “What did you see?”
“I saw Frank.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Trevor set his coffee cup down on the counter and looked at the cabin door. He looked back at Stella and David who stared at the cabin door. Even Needles tore his attention away from whatever daydream his damaged mind was stumbling around inside of and looked at the door.