Shotgun now in hand, Kells led them down through the rest of the trees, hunched low, continuing along the shoulder of the road until the station garage blocked their view of the pump island and the twirling light. They crossed the road there, some feeling returning to Rebecca’s legs as they reached the neighboring house. A shingle under the mailbox told her it was the home of the town taxidermist. From there they turned and doubled back through trees to the rear of the gas station.
They stopped at the tree edge. Fifteen or so feet of open space separated them from the building. Kells pointed out dim tracks in the snow along the rear wall, leading to a barely visible back door. They were boot prints and they were recent.
“Wait here,” Kells said, and started along the tree line, moving the long way around the station, treading lightly on the snow, disappearing around the right side of the station.
Rebecca looked at Tom Duggan. He wore his flannel hunting cap with the ear flaps down. He was scanning the trees behind them, nervous.
“What do you think?” she asked.
Smoke blew out of his mouth. “I think there’s someone here.”
Kells returned, moving tree to tree.
“Four of them inside,” he whispered.
Rebecca stared. She wanted so much more information, and none at all.
“They’re huddled around a space heater,” continued Kells. “Too cold to wait outside.”
“Wait for what?” she said.
“This trap.”
She was actually relieved. She looked back through the trees to the taxidermist’s house. Now they would retreat.
Kells pulled off his ski mask, eyeing the rear of the station. His head turned as though he were listening to something. He was not leaving.
“Listen,” he said.
There were too many thoughts going through her head to focus on any one thing. Her own breath came like a roar in the windless night.
She heard a click, crisp in the cold air. A door somewhere. Maybe low voices. Now the soft crunching of footsteps over hardened snow, advancing.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
Kells’s eyes worked quickly over the station as he handed her his shotgun. Rebecca took it and backed behind a wide tree trunk across from him. Tom Duggan also hid.
Kells stood still. She watched his eyes track the source of the footsteps as it rounded the corner of the garage. His eyes narrowed and brightened.
She heard a key being inserted, a knob being turned. A soft bumping noise and a door opening and closing.
Kells stepped from the side of the tree trunk. Steam came thickly out of his nose.
“Now do we go?” she said, panicked.
He held up his palm to silence her, then emerged from the tree cover to stand in full view of the closed door.
Rebecca hugged the long gun to her chest. “Don’t,” she said.
But he was already crossing the snow boundary to the light-rimmed bathroom door. The crunching of his boots was soft and quick, then silence ruled again. Rebecca could barely see him in the shadows against the station wall.
A soft flushing noise.
Rebecca could not take her eyes off Kells’s form. She could see him breathing deeply in some strange, meditative way.
The knob clicked. The door opened and the figure of a man emerged from the dark room. Rebecca saw him only briefly. There was something round and flat in his hands, keys hanging from it. A weapon was slung over his shoulder.
The man noticed the extra footprints, stark and violent over the crust of snow. He followed them back with his eyes to where Rebecca stood, reaching for his weapon as an arm appeared behind him.
Kells’s right hand cuffed the man’s throat. He pulled him down backward without a cry.
Rebecca turned quickly to the taxidermist’s house. She listened to the thumping struggle of one desperate man trying to overpower another. She wanted to run and keep running.
Tom Duggan watched the gas station with narrowed eyes, as though staring into a raging wind. Rebecca heard the snow being thrashed. She could not run and she could not stand still.
She looked back. She had to.
Kells’s knee was on the man’s chest. He had the strap of the man’s weapon wound around his neck, strangling him. The man’s legs were kicking slowly in the overturned snow.
It would not end. She turned and watched Tom Duggan instead, and eventually his expression relaxed. Then Kells rejoined them, carrying the man’s weapon.
“Now can we go?” she said. It was what she had been saying over and over in her mind.
Kells’s eyes were shining and there was sweat on his neck. “They’re going to come looking for him,” he said. “We’ll finish this here.”
He was pulling off his gloves. He unzipped Rebecca’s coat and she let him. She was wearing Polk’s old gun belt, notched tight, the excess strap tucked into her waistband. Kells pulled the Beretta out of her holster and stuffed it into the back of his pants. Then he took the shotgun from her. He emptied the rounds, dropping them into his pocket.
“Pull off your gloves,” he said.
“Why?”
“Pull off your gloves.”
She stepped back, one pace closer to the taxidermist’s house. “What are you doing?”
“I can’t take all three by myself. Not without firing.”
“Without... firing?”
“We’re too close to the center of town. The noise would carry. We’d be overrun in minutes.”
“But you said, ‘take all three’?”
“You’re coming with me to the garage. I can’t do this alone.”
“Why take a gun?”
“You can hold it on them. They won’t know you can’t shoot. Now pull off your gloves.”
“I’ll go,” offered Tom Duggan.
“No,” said Kells. “You wait here. Neither one of us will make it back without you.”
She was sick but the symptoms would not manifest themselves. “Don’t make me do this,” she said.
He was holding the shotgun out to her. He had that purposeful look in his face again, the killer standing in front of her.
“Think about Fern,” he said. “Remember what they did to her.”
Rebecca stopped protesting and Kells pulled off her gloves. He put the shotgun into her cold hands.
Kells started across to the corner of the back wall. With a glance back at Tom Duggan, Rebecca followed.
She was on the threshold of nausea, tipsy with violence and fear. The oppressive cold settled in her head, making her mind heavy. Something washed through Rebecca, a chill separate from the outside air, a bracing mania she had never before known. Her grip tightened on the slide handle of the unloaded weapon.
Attached to the corner of the wall was a small box bearing the old Ma Bell symbol. Kells opened it and plucked out the wires.
They carefully retraced the dead man’s footprints to the front. Kells peered around the corner, then started ahead. For a brief moment the IRVING light bathed them from above, and a shiver like a silent scream ripped through her body.
The bay door was slanted, half raised, as though jammed. They ducked inside and moved low, aware of a closed office door to their left. There was an old Volkswagen Rabbit, its dark green hood open, a greasy rag hanging off the engine. They squatted behind the driver’s door and peered through the car’s windows to the office.
Rebecca saw vague shadows moving against the glass. They were heads lit mildly by an orange glow.
Kells dropped back down, eyeing their surroundings. He was breathing deeply again, trancelike. A knife was in his right hand.
She was numb from the cold and could barely move. She felt dazed.
A noise from the office and Kells looked through the car windows again, then ducked back quick.
The door opened. Two pairs of boots hit the oil-stained floor and the door clicked shut and the boots sounded like they were coming right toward them. Rebecca gripped the shotgun to keep it from rattling in her hands and giving them away.