The three of them looked at each other, or at least two of them did, and the third one turned his milky eyes toward the other two as if he were looking.
"Tiernan thinks the building's empty," said Arvo. "Tiernan thinks the fire is two shovels a day. If Tiernan knew, he would have to put us out. He would have no choice. There's the insurance. There's the city. If one of us dies in here, in a condemned building, with that boiler, Tiernan goes to jail, maybe. Or loses everything. Johanna knows this. She was going to tell him. After Christmas. When the cold was over. She was going to go to him herself."
"They're draining it Thursday," Lauren said.
"We know," said Mossy. "Corky told her. Thursday at eight."
"My husband's on the crew," Lauren said.
There was a silence. On the radio the obituaries had ended, and the man was reading the temperature again. Thirty-three below at the airport. Expected to drop to thirty-eight or forty below tonight, with a high tomorrow of twenty-two below. A record, the man said, maybe. Folks should check on their elderly neighbors.
"Well," said Mossy Mahaffey, after a while. "Isn't that a small town for you."
Tomo Bilich had been watching her the whole time, from the armchair, with the black coat around his shoulders. He pulled a breath now, and held it, and let it whistle out, and lifted one hand off the quilt, a hand that was nothing but knuckles, and pointed at her.
"You," he said. "Valve. Arvo shows you. Now." Pull. Whistle. "Before dark."