I step out of the truck. My boots hit the slushy gravel. The cold is immediate and all-consuming.
"If you change your mind," I say, gripping the door, "you know where to find me."
Afon just reaches over, pulls the door shut, and drives away. I stand there for a while and watch the Bronco disappear down the road toward the mountain, Wolf's dark head visible in the truck bed until it rounds the bend and is gone.
Then I'm left all alone in front of the Pike Hollow Bait Shop / Post Office / Bus Depot in my dirty Patagonia jacket with a wad of smoke-scented cash in my pocket and absolutely no idea what to do with the ragged, gaping hole in the center of my chest.
The bus comes at noon. It's 9:47.
I plop down and wait.
By 10:30, I've concluded that Pike Hollow is the saddest place I've ever been, and I once spent an entire Thanksgiving in the Newark airport Chili's.
The bait shop is closed. The post office is also closed, though a handwritten note taped to the window saysBARB IS AT THE DENTIST, BACK WHENEVER,which at least suggests the existence of operating hours at some point or another.
Across the road, there's a shuttered bar called The Rusty Trout, a single-pump Sunoco, and a church with a sign that readsGOD IS WATCHING. PLEASE PICK UP AFTER YOUR DOG.
I've drawn faces in the slush on the sidewalk. I've picked the lint off my leggings. I've imagined, in vivid detail, what I'm going to do to Guns McTaggart when I get back to the city: take those stupid crayons he used to draw that stupid map and shove them so far up his stupid ass that he's gonna taste Mango Tango.
The wind picks up, and I pull my jacket tighter. Noon feels very far away.
That's when the van pulls up.
It's a white panel van. Unmarked, windowless in the back, but generally innocuous and hardly worth noticing. I wouldn't have paid it any mind at all if it hadn't slowed passed the bus bench, then come to a stop about thirty feet away, engine humming.
My internal alarm goes off like a fire station klaxon.
I stand up. My ankle protests but I ignore it. There's nowhere to go. The bait shop is locked. The bar is shuttered. The church is across the road and up a hill. And even if I could reach any of those places, there's no guarantee that any living soul is inside a single one of them.
I'm alone.
The van's passenger door opens.
A man steps out. He's stocky and dark-eyed, wearing a hunting jacket and work boots. He has a buzzcut and a neck like a fire hydrant. The smile on his face looks painted on.
"Morning, ma'am," he calls over. "You waiting on the bus?"
"Yep," I reply, keeping my voice sunny and casual, the voice I use with sketchy men at bars and sketchy men on the subway and, apparently, sketchy men in the Catskills. "Should be here soon."
"Noon bus, right?" He shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels. "That one's been canceled. Snow on the pass."
My stomach drops. "How do you know that?"
"Buddy of mine drives it." He takes a step closer. "We can give you a ride into Kingston, if you want. No trouble."
"That's really kind, but I'm fine. I'll wait."
"Could be a long wait." Another step. He's close enough now that I can see the veins in his temples, the dirt under his fingernails, the flat blankness behind his eyes. "Cold out here for a lady on her own."
The driver's side door opens. A second man gets out. Taller, thinner, with a scraggly beard and a beanie pulled low. Unlike his buddy, he doesn't smile at all.
"We're just being neighborly," Buzzcut says. "Hop in. We'll have you in Kingston before lunch."
I take a step back and feel the bench press against the backs of my knees, caging me in. "I said I'm fine."
At that, the mask comes off. His smile vanishes like smoke. "You came down off that mountain this morning," he says. "With the Russian."
My blood turns to ice. "I don't know what you're talking about."
