The barn blocks a direct view of the truck from most of the treeline, but you still work fast as you drag the frozen tarp into position. A few minutes of work arranges it so you can peer out, but anyone seeing in will see only a pathetic heap of lumpy frozen trash (you, perfectly hidden). Fat, leaden raindrops start to fall as you crawl inside the antique truck.
Not snow, but rain; freezing, hammering rain, deafening against the truck's metal roof. The lack of wind is a modest blessing, as the precipitation doesn't blow into your nest, but the air hovers right at freezing.
So you wait. For a half hour. An hour. The cold sinks into your bones and your teeth chatter. You keep trying to scan the treeline, but you have to rock back and forth to stay warm. After a half hour, you can't feel your feet, and after an hour you can't feel your face. Freezing water drips from the tarp down onto your hoodie, and you curl up as tightly as you can while trying to stay on guard.
There: something at the treeline. But then it's gone, except for a vague sense of being watched. After another hour, even that fades. And then the rain finally starts to let up.
Nothing is coming. Or it already came and went, and you missed it. And it's getting late. You stumble out of the truck, legs numb, hands shaking, and stamp your feet to warm up. One final search of the grounds turns up nothing except a few divots that might be footprints. You can't seem to follow them anywhere. When you head back toward the barn, a tall, dark figure is visible through the mist, staring right at you.
Young but with the prematurely lined face of someone who spends a lot of time outdoors, he has a short beard and hard dark eyes. He's too young to be one of the men in the "P. Town" photograph. You can tell from the way he carries himself that he wears a sidearm under his Carhartt coat.
"My name is Hobland Nash," he says. "And I know what you are."
"Then you know I don't have a lot of patience."
"I'm the guy who hasn't had lunch yet. Got five bucks?"
I'm here for a reason. "Did you know J.L. Heaney?"
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