The name of a town would be nice.

Two years. Two years of following a missing man with nothing to show for it but rumors and a growing hole in his pocket.

He was driving along highway 301 when he spotted the broken-down Lexus. Five minutes later he spotted the boy trudging through the snow determinedly.

Is he insane? Matt wondered as he slowed the car to get a better look. The kid didn't even have a thick coat. Just some gloves and a scarf and what looked like a muffler under the high collar of a jacket.

And the nearest town was quite a way away in the other direction.

Because the figure looked like just a kid, and Matt had usually been able to handle himself, he pulled over and waited for the figure to catch up. To his surprise, the figure took one look through the window and kept going.

Well, if he doesn't want any help--Matt thought before something poked his heart and he changed his mind.

He turned the car off and got out, gasping a little as the actual temperature combined with wind-chill stole what felt like all of his body heat. Hurrying to catch up with the boy who was threatening to vanish into the flurries, he nearly slipped. He muttered something about ingrateful pedestrians and kept struggling through the snow. He'd just gotten used to maneuvering over the slick patches and had caught up with the kid when he found himself looking down the barrel of a handgun.

That startled him enough that he lost his balance enough to fall on his ass. The handgun fired right over his head, but the roar of the wind muffled it enough so that the ringing in his ears was only moderate. The thought that guns were a lot louder than they seemed in the movies was the only thing that crossed his mind before he instinctively kicked out and knocked his attacker to the ground.

The kid fell with a faint shriek and lost his grip on the gun which went skidding across the road. Matt landed on the boy, pinning him to the ground with his body weight and holding his wrists in one hand. The kid went limp, but Matt had just relaxed when he started writhing and screaming enough to alarm him. Pretty high scream for a boy, he thought before the kid kicked him in the 'nads and he fell off more from surprise than anything else; the kick hadn't had much power in it but it was enough to wind him and bring the taste of bile into his mouth. The snow stole the rest of the warmth from his body and it was hard to roll over onto his stomach, but he did it.

The boy scrambled away and into the road, clearly going for the gun.

Matt stood up shakily and started going back towards his car in a shaky run; that kick brought back memories of being the victim of a particularly sadistic girl in high school who thought that kicking him where it hurt was amusing.

What the hell have I gotten myself into? He thought. A rock whizzed past his ear and he hit the snow. He continued to crawl back toward his car and when he'd reached it, scrambled back in as fast as his half-frozen body would allow. He started the car and turned the heat onto high. Then he floored it, making the wheels spin on the ice.

He stopped and proceeded off the shoulder at a more stately pace of thirty an hour, only to hit a patch of ice on the damn road and skid to the other side of the road and hit what felt like a tree.

When he opened his eyes--when had he closed them?--someone was screaming and what felt like the muzzle of a gun was pressed into his shoulder. It also felt like something was restricting his movements.

"You are so damn lucky that I don't have a cell phone," a woman yelled.

Uh, what? He thought. His head really hurt and one of his eyes wouldn't open. "Wha?" he said. His tongue didn't seem to want to work, either.

"Fucking rapist," the woman's voice said. "Damn glad I didn't get in your car."

Speaking of cars, the steering wheel he was currently pressed up against didn't look like his. He turned his head and was confronted by the sight of the same gun from before. "Shi'," he said. His tongue felt swollen, and his jaw hurt.

"Damn right." A woman with blonde hair sitting in the passenger seat was the one holding the gun and glaring at him. It wasn't from the sheer kindness radiating off of his new carmate, either.

It felt like his mouth was working again, he asked, "What the hell's the gun for?"

She rolled her eyes. "Don't give me that. What are you, a fucking serial killer who grabs women off the side of a road?"

"Wha?" He was beginning to realize that this was the kid who'd taken a shot at him.

The gun pressed more firmly into his side. He tentatively raised his eyes to his reflection in the window and found a knot the size of his apartment growing on his forehead right over his eye, accompanied by a headache and a split lip.

"Why'd you shoot at me?"

"Why'd you try to rape me?" she countered.

Mouth hanging open, he spluttered, "I did no such thing."

"Then why the hell were you on top of me?"

"You tried to shoot me," he snapped, wondering if she was daft. "Most people would take an exception to that."

"What the hell were you coming up behind me like that for? I was fine on my own," she said, but there was a shade of doubt in her voice.

"I was trying to see if you needed help," he said with a hint of anger in his voice. "If that's your car back there and you're walking through at most 20 degrees, and the nearest town is twenty miles in the opposite direction you were walking, I think you needed help."

"I'm beginning to wish I'd left you in your broken car," she said, but the gun wavered a little. Then it firmed. "How do I know you're not a rapist? You had a lot of shit in the back of your car like someone running from the cops."

"Lady, I'm just looking for someone. And as for me being a rapist, do I have knives or rope anywhere in my car? Besides, what rapist goes out in freezing weather?"

"A desperate rapist. And you could use drugs," she told him, and there was a haunted quality to her voice now.

He tried to shrug in defeat, but then remembered that his arms were tied. A glance let him discover that it was duct tape. He almost laughed but stopped just in time; he didn't think she'd like him laughing at two loops of duct tape. He lost the urge to laugh when he looked at his hands; they were duct taped to the wheel and didn't look like they were coming off anytime soon.

"Who are you looking for, anyway?" the woman said, laying the gun against her knee with a look of relief after she'd watched him try to break the bindings on his hands.

"My father," he said.

"What's your father doing out here?"

"I don't know, I just heard he was out here. Look, can you please untie my hands? I swear I'll be good." He tried not to whine, he really did.

"Quit your whining," was all she said.

He stayed silent for almost three minutes before asking her, "What are we waiting for?"

"A passing motorist."

"For?"

"So they can fix my car."

"I could do that," he said, hoping she would listen and let him go.

"You can?"

"Duh, I'm a guy."

"That doesn't mean anything," she snapped.

"Could you fix your car?"

"… No," she said.

"What's wrong with it?"

She looked like she was struggling with it.

"Did the engine stop?" he prompted her.

"No."

"Is there something wrong with the steering?"

"No."

He paused, studied the suspicious way that the car tilted towards the woods on her side and watched a flush come over her face. "Do you have a flat tire?"

She mumbled something.

"Excuse me?" he said.

"Yes," she snapped. "Yes, I have a flat tire. No, I cannot fix it. There, happy? I admitted it."

"That's it?" he asked in amusement. "That's your problem?" He laughed. "I can fix that in five minutes, no sweat." Wind buffeted the car, and the trees around them creaked and groaned and swayed menacingly in the wind. "Although I don't think sweat is going to be a problem."

"Can you really fix my tire?"

"Sure. You'd have to untie me first, but I can do it."

Without a word, she produced a pocket knife and partly cut the duct tape fastening his hands to the wheel and trained the gun on him again.

He ripped his hands free and got out of the car slowly. The first thing he did once he'd gotten around the front of the car was to eat a handful of snow to get the taste of vomit out of his mouth. Then he grabbed another handful and pressed it to the lump on his forehead.

"Get moving," the woman snapped as she followed the gun out of her door.

"Will you relax?" he shouted over the howl of the wind. "I've got a headache the size of Detroit here and you're not helping!"

She actually looked sheepish. "Sorry to hear that."

Bull shit, he thought before kneeling to look at the tire. The donut was right next to it, leaning against the car. It was covered in snow and the metal stung his fingers slightly when he touched it. This is gonna be a bitch to do, he thought as he looked around for the tool kit. A suspicious looking lump of snow produced a wrench and a manual. The jack was already under the car.

It took him an hour to do what should have been a five minute job. It wouldn't have taken so long normally, except he'd had to keep getting back in the car to warm up and keep his hands from getting frostbite; you couldn't change a tire using gloves, let alone his mittens.

When he'd finally stowed the blown tire in the back seat and put the kit on top, she looked at him hopefully. "It's done?"

"It's done," he confirmed. "Can I please go now?"

"If you want to," she said doubtfully. "I don't think you'll get anywhere in that car, though."

He looked over the top of her car at the pile of snow and metal that had been his car. "It doesn't look too bad," he said, trying to be optimistic.

"Try to start it," she suggested. "If you want, I can take you to the next town and not call the cops on you, but you're on your own from there. And I'll be duct taping your hands to the wheel again. You'll be driving, anyway."

"I think I'll take my chances with my car, thanks." He stalked away over the icy road towards the scene of the battle between his car and a tree. The keys were still in the ignition although the inside of the car was cold as Niflheim--not that he minded. It seemed to be moderately warmer than the air outside. The car did start, much to his surprise, although the crunching noises that the front made as he slowly backed away from the tree gave him pause.

A sudden blast of cold air from the vents he'd left on reminded him that he'd have to wait for the engine to warm up again before he could use the heater without making the inside of the car receive windchill.

He immediately dialed the vents to off and hoped like hell that the engine was going to warm up soon. It was a miracle in it's own that the engine hadn't frozen.

Another crunch from the front of the car as he hit a root made him wince and wonder if he needed a new car.

To his dismay, the feeling that he'd dubbed 'Bane of My Career' started coming back in force as if it were sensing the end of his journey to find his father; there was no way his dwindling finances could support the purchase of a new car. Specifically, that feeling was the one that possessed him every time he tried to head for home and stopped him from going anywhere south of I-80. He suppressed them for the time being and slowly backed out onto the road. The woman's car was long gone, and only a faint red glow in the distance on the road toward Val-Des-Bois told him where she'd gone.

Notre-Dame-De-La-Salette being the nearest town, he turned the car in that direction and hoped that the Canadian mechanics there wouldn't screw him over.