Absolute Zero

“N”

“What am I supposed to do? This isn’t exactly an ideal situation.”

“G”

“E”

“T”

. .

“T”

“O”

. .

“F”

“I”

“G”

“H”

“T”

. .

“U”

. .

“W”

“I”

“N”

Oh, shit. Hank felt the control slipping away as a flutter of color blotted his concentration. Coming to smother him. He blinked wildly.

“What?” Jolene yelled. The paper was starting to come apart, damp from her sweaty hands.

“S”

“A”

“V”

“E”

. .

“T”

“H”

“E”

“M”

“Easy for you to say,” Jolene said, and then she saw his eyes revert to their loopy aimlessness. She shook his shoulder. “C’mon, Hank, don’t go away now. Christ!”

She got up and hugged herself in front of the fire. Looked past the kitchen, at the hall to the bedroom where she’d paused Amy’s slow-motion Fentanyl toboggan.

Save them. How? Allen had the plan. Earl had the gun.

But Hank was right, it wouldn’t be that hard to get them going at each other.

But Allen was the only one who could fix Hank’s eyes and keep all the secrets safe.

But what if Allen didn’t disable Hank’s eyes. What would Hank say then? See, that was the rough part-she didn’t know.

Staring at the flames, she imagined the opposite of fire. And that’s what was going on out there in the dark. Broker’s body was slowly filling up with ice-cold. The diving-seal syndrome. His fingers and toes would go first, freeze white and hard as piano keys as the blood drained from his extremities and pooled around his heart and lungs. It would abandon his brain and would make a last-ditch stand in the engine room.

Gee, all the neat stuff I’ve learned.

He lied to me.

The bottle of scotch they’d used to marinate Broker shimmered in the firelight, on the desk next to the fireplace. With his fingerprints on it.

She stared at the rubber gloves on her hands. They made her feel removed from life. A ghost. Not really here.

Johnny Walker Red Label.

Festive.

She’d never liked scotch. She’d liked invisible alcohol that didn’t overpower your breath. She’d been a vodka drinker. Sneaky. Vodka Seven. Gimlets. Fruity tastes.

Story of your life with Earl. Sneaky.

The whole idea with Hank was to get away from that.

Look at it, two-thirds full. A color somewhere between piss and raw gold.

How long is it now, Jolene? Fourteen months?

I came to believe that a higher power could restore me to sanity.

A sane, safe little sheep, following Allen and Earl to the chunk of change at the end of the rainbow. She’d get her wish, she’d be a rich wire mother.

Jolene shuddered.

The warm part of her, the cloth mother trapped in the bottle, called out to her. She peeled off the rubber gloves and reached out her hand.

Chapter Forty-eight

Jesus, what a night for cold-blooded murder.

Allen and Earl stood talking about how they were going to do it. Their freezing breath mingling with car exhaust in the crossed high beams of the Cherokee and the Saab. Broker was slumped in the passenger side of the Jeep, his cheek flattened against the windshield.

The Fentanyl for Amy was clean, almost like extreme medicine; but this was killing a man.

And Allen, who had Hank’s cryptic message streaming with a coldness all its own inside his mind, was very aware that once the killing started there were no rules governing Earl and Jolene, beyond sheer self-interest and the reach of their arms and what they held in their hands.

And Earl had the gun.

Such was the flavor of Allen’s thinking as he discussed how Broker would die.

“So, how exactly are we going to do this?” Earl standing there, no hat, with his blond hair frizzed out wild; he looked like a lame Nazi rock star in the outlandish, one-armed black leather trench coat.

Allen kept staring at Earl’s sternum, bare; the young, healthy skin fogged with red chilblain under the clumsy coat. Back in the lodge, in his medical bag, Allen had a scalpel. Easy in under the sternum and up, prick the heart. He’d bleed out internally. Less mess.

Which left the problem of disposal. Allen shook his head; he was becoming disoriented by the cold. One thing at a time.

“We have to make it look like he lost control and went off the road.”

“The road we came in on?” Earl asked.

“I think a secondary road in the woods would be better. We don’t want him found right away. Something less traveled. With a sharp turn.”

“Okay. What we can do is put him behind the wheel, wedge his foot on the gas, and hold down the clutch and put the Jeep in gear. Then we get back out of the way, use something-a stick-to pop the clutch, and off he goes into a tree.”

“We just have to make sure it hits hard enough to shatter the windshield,” Allen said.

“What if he wakes up?”

“With everything he’s got on board? Plus, hypothermia tends to put you to sleep.” Allen shook his head.

Earl grinned. “For a long fucking time.”

“Let’s get going,” Allen said. Lights, he thought.