26

FISHER DOESN’T NOTICE the needle for gas has tipped over to empty until he’s already close to town. Empty. Like his soul, like his heart, like his life. He came so close to finding Bree. Hell, maybe she’d only just left. And now she’s either on the road south, or driving around town in Brian’s brown Highlander. He needs to spot her before the cops do. Or the militia. He tells himself it wasn’t them who hauled Grisby away. Christ, couldn’t it have been the guy Grisby was hiding from and a buddy? Trouble is, Fisher can’t make himself believe it. Who goes to that much trouble? And if it was the militia who took him—well, Grisby doesn’t have it in him to resist a little pressure. By now he could have told them everything. Brian dead in Bree’s bathroom, Bree’s frantic messages. Fuck it, if they weren’t looking for her already, they will be now.

He needs to do something, some damn thing, anything for crap’s sake. Except he doesn’t know what.

As soon as he gets back to town he pulls in for gas at a supermarket. The sun’s as high as it’s going to get, a thumb’s width above the horizon, and it’s turned the world gold and pink and lavender, like this is a gentle place when the time-and-temp display at the bank across the road says fifty-two below.

He zips his parka up above his mouth and undoes his seatbelt. It’s no easy matter to pump gas in this kind of cold. The buttons on the payment pad are so small he ends up taking off his glove and stabbing at the frozen plastic through all its YES and NO questions, can hardly slide his card through the reader, his hand’s so numb. Who the hell comes up with these machines? Some fucker in California? Not some guy who’s ever had to stand outside in this kind of balls-numbing cold, that’s for sure.

It doesn’t help that the nozzle won’t stay on and he can’t retreat inside his car. No, on this morning, this cursed morning, he has to stand holding the fucking nozzle at the fucking gas tank while the cold of the metal seeps through his glove and into his hand, chilling his blood and that chill swimming up his arm and flooding his body so that soon he’s shivering so hard it’s almost more than he can bear to stand here. Of course, it doesn’t help that he’s lost his hat, because a hood’s just not the same. Air leaks in around your neck, it touches your ears, it slips over your scalp. And it doesn’t help either that his belly’s squirming and hollow. All he’s had this morning is a coffee and a bite of bearclaw. As for last night’s dinner, he threw that up in Bree’s bathroom. No wonder he feels emptied out.

The nozzle clicks off. He has to wrestle it back into its holder because the hose has gone stiff from the cold, and it takes three tries to screw the gas cap back on. He revs the engine a few times and watches the needle creep up to full. He checks his phone. No messages. And damn it, he needs to charge it. It sits on his palm like an egg about to hatch. He wills it to ring, and for Bree to be on the other end saying, Dad? Come get me, I’m over at Walmart or Dad? Can you pick me up? I need to crash at your place. Instead it just sits there, the screen gleaming in the delicate light of this sub-arctic morning. Who can tell him where Bree is now? Jan, maybe. A big maybe. He calls her number, listens to it go to voicemail, says, “Hey Jan, call me if you hear from Bree. I’m worried sick here,” and hangs up quickly. He’s relieved, he realizes. He didn’t have to talk to her. Didn’t have to make out like he didn’t know her husband’s dead, shot by their daughter, and that their daughter broke into one of the properties they’re trying to sell because she’s shit-scared—

He stops. Something about that’s not right. He pictures himself at that last house, climbing out of his car and walking round to the back through the snow. Just like he did with the other places. Except the back window was already smashed and left open. Why the hell was it smashed when Bree could have just let herself in?

He tells himself maybe she didn’t take the realtor key after all. So she smashed the window instead. Only, he doesn’t believe it.

Was it someone else? Some other kid who needed a place to stay? For Chrissake, it wouldn’t have been hard to work out that the place was empty. But his mind won’t settle on that thought. Those footprints leading around the house. More than one set. Maybe one person going back and forth, or maybe more than one person poking around. Looking for someone. Breaking a window because whoever was inside was too scared to answer the door.

How hard would it have been for someone else to work out where Bree was hiding? A realtors’ kid: for sure she’d hole up in an empty property. Any dumbass could work that out.

An SUV edges in close behind him to use the pump, but Fisher doesn’t move. He feels the earth’s gravity dragging at him so hard his head’s an unbearable weight and his hands want to slump into his lap. Fuck, he thinks, have the militia got Bree?

A blare of horn behind him but he doesn’t move. He needs to think but he can’t. He can’t hold his thoughts together.

He tells himself, I’ll call the cops. But what would he say? That his daughter killed her militia-gonzo step-dad, and he dumped the guy’s body in the river to hide it, but could they please go rescue her from a bunch of second amendment nut-jobs?

He thinks, I’ll buy me a gun and go after them. Oh yeah, that’s what someone in a movie would do. But he’s just a sad-ass, overweight, useless-fuck of a cabbie. He doesn’t even know who these guys are, or where they are.

Then it comes to him. He’s got it the wrong way around. If the militia nuts’ve got Grisby and Bree, they’ll be looking for him too. And if he’s not home, how would someone find him? By calling his cell and asking for a ride. Or by calling Bear Cabs and asking for a non-smoking cab. Just like Grisby does. And it wouldn’t take much to get Grisby to talk. He’s a candy-ass, and besides, loyalty isn’t his thing.

It’s been months since Fisher’s gun was stolen and he hasn’t bought another. But there’s the supermarket entrance, just a few dozen yards away, and while he’s in there, he can pick up some ibuprofen too.