The slithery hissing of dry snow meeting snow. Everything else was an immense silence. He didn’t realize he had been holding his breath until it rushed out of his chest. He opened the glove compartment and removed his flashlight, long and heavy, a weapon in itself. Reaching into the backseat, he retrieved the box of shells and the rifle. He poured a good handful of shells into his coat pocket before tugging on his hat and gloves and stepping out of the cab.
He hesitated at the edge of the trees. He didn’t dare go more than a dozen yards from the road in the dark with no compass. He tugged his knit hat lower on his forehead. The thought of walking toward an unknown shooter shining a light and calling out made his nuts want to crawl back up inside his body. But if Clare had been—if she couldn’t see him, he could search for a week without stumbling over her. He cradled the rifle and thumbed his flashlight on. What the hell. Either the shooter wasn’t interested, or he was going to get drilled. Either way, he wasn’t walking out of here without doing everything he could to bring Clare with him.
He waded into the forest, sweeping his light around in 180 degree arcs, listening for anything that might indicate the presence of another human being. The cold pinched at his face. He thought of Clare, underdressed for the weather as usual, slogging deeper and deeper into the woods, slowly freezing to death. A hundred paces into the trees, he angled back toward the road, traveling downhill. If someone had been shooting, she must be around here. Noise traveled far in the mountains, but that shot had been close. Too damn close. He held up his arm to fend off lashing branches of bittersweet, trying not to picture her lying in a crumpled heap, her blood staining the snow red.
He angled again, away from the road, pushing through pines and hemlock. It was important to be methodical, not to give into the urge to run around yelling. A long zigzag pattern, working his way downhill because that’s the direction most lost folks take, his light shining like a beacon.
He heard nothing except his own breathing and the sweep and stretch of snow over the mountain. His throat closed over the fear rising in his gorge. Not the fear that he might get drilled by whoever else was out here with a gun. Fear that Clare was gone for good.
The flashlight beam hit him straight in the eyes, blinding him. He yelped involuntarily, so startled his mind went blank. His body knew how to think for him, though, dropping into the snow and sighting the rifle toward the other light.
“Russ?” Her voice was weak and cracking from the cold.
“Clare?” He scrambled back to his feet, swinging his flashlight in her direction. “Oh, my God. Clare.” She staggered toward him. He crossed the distance first, catching her in his arms, the rifle and flashlight clunking together as he picked her up off the ground. “Clare. Jesus, are you all right? Were you hit?”
“My feet . . . I can’t feel my feet anymore.”
He released her to shine the light over her again. Her face was raw, chapped and scratched. Thank God she had been wearing a departmental parka. It looked as if it were holding up, but her pants were wet up to her thighs and chunks of ice and caked snow were frozen to her flimsy boots. He flashed the light up again.
“What the hell are you doing with hunting boots hung over your shoulder?” She opened her mouth. “No, don’t tell me now. My truck’s about seventy yards away. I can carry you, but I think we’ll be faster and steadier if you can walk.”
She nodded. “I can walk,” she said.
He looked around them. “The shooter—is he close? Did you get a look at him?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t see his face. He’s—” She rubbed her eyes with a snow-clotted glove and blinked hard. “I don’t know if he’s close by. He’s unarmed, though. He lost his gun when I took him out.”
He hung the rifle strap on his shoulder and took her arm, shining his flashlight toward the way out of the woods. “You took him out? What do you mean?”
She clutched at his arm, but otherwise walked steadily. “I knocked him down with a sapling tree and bashed him with a rock. I couldn’t find his gun, but I took his flashlight and his boots.”
He helped her over a fallen log. “You took his flashlight and his boots.”
“I wanted to find his car keys but he wasn’t carrying them. I was . . .” She gulped air. “I was working my way back to the road. To find his car or whatever. Snowmobile.” He tightened his grip on her arm. She gulped again. “But I was going the other way when I saw your light, Russ. I was going the wrong way.” Her voice cracked. “I thought I was headed for the road, but I must have gotten turned around. I would have . . . I would have just kept on walking . . .”
Up ahead, he saw a flash where the light caught metal. “Almost there.” He couldn’t see her face. Only the fur encircling the hood. He forced himself to speak confidently. “You wouldn’t have kept on walking, darlin’. You’re too smart. You would have dug in, covered yourself up. Probably figured out some way to build a fire. With pine needles and a gum wrapper.”
She made a dry sound, halfway between a laugh and a sob. He could see his truck clearly now. “C’mon, let me take you up.” He picked her off the ground and settled her against his shoulder, grunting with the effort. “Good God, woman, what are you wearing, lead-lined pants?” She made the sound again, this time more a laugh.
At the truck, he opened the passenger’s door first and helped her in. Climbing into the driver’s side, he almost laid the rifle in the backseat again, then thought better and slid it bore-down next to the door, within a moment’s reach. He fired up the engine and turned on the dome light before rummaging in the back for his two spare blankets. “Okay, darlin’, let’s get your wet things off.”
She nodded jerkily. She pulled off her sodden gloves and dropped them on the floor, but she couldn’t manage the snap and zipper at her neck. “My fingers,” she said.
He nodded. “We need to take a look at your feet first anyway.” He lifted her stiff, ice-encrusted boots into his lap. “What the hell did you do to get these so wet?” The laces were unmanagable. He flipped open the glove compartment and removed his knife.
“I . . . ran through a stream. Only fast way to . . . get to the spot I picked to . . . ambush him.” She shivered violently as he sliced her laces away and gently wiggled each boot off. “I’m so cold . . .”
He adjusted the vents to blow on her. The hot air was already blasting at top speed. He carefully peeled away her socks, sucking in his breath at the sight of the blotchy white patches mottling blueish skin. Jesus. How had she hiked through the woods like this? Under his hands the flesh felt like heavy clay that had been stored in a refrigerator. “Oh, darlin’,” he said.
“Is it bad?” He looked at her. “Tell me the truth, Russ.”
“It doesn’t look like frostbite, but we’re going to have to soak your feet in cool water and bring ’em up to temperature slowly. Here, let’s get those pants off you.” He tried to be gentle, but he had to tug and wrestle the stiff, wet khaki off her, each jerk and twist causing her to gasp. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Clare.”
She shook her head. “No, it’s good. It’s burning. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Means the blood is coming back.” The skin on her legs was alarmingly cold and pale, but there were no signs of frostbite there, either. He cocooned her feet and legs in one of the blankets. “It’s gonna hurt like a bitch when you get circulation going. Like when your leg falls asleep, but lots worse.” He kept her legs resting on his thighs while he went to work on the parka, unbuttoning and unzipping. Underneath, her woolly turtleneck was dry. He wrapped the second blanket around her, chafed her hands between his own. “How do they feel?”
“Cold. Like the rest of me.”
“Can you feel this?” He ran his fingertips lightly down her fingers and across her palm.
She looked at him. Her eyes were huge and dark. Her fingers flexed over his. “Yes,” she whispered. The hot air roared past him, stirring staticky cobwebs of her hair. He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. She raised her free hand as if she would touch his cheek, then let it fall. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. She blinked against the watery light in her eyes. “I was such a jerk last night. I’m sorry, you were right, you were right about everything.”
He dropped his gaze to her hand, picked up the other one and began rubbing them vigorously. “Maybe. But I shouldn’t have been such a hard ass about it.” He smiled at her. “And I wasn’t right about everything. Ballistics came back negative on their gun. We’re still waiting to hear about the hair and fiber samples from their cars.” He looked at her extraordinary face, laced by angry scratches and chafed raw by the snow and cold. He squeezed her hands hard. “I was right about one thing, though. This isn’t any business of yours. Jesus, Clare, you could have died out there!”
She smiled waveringly. “Not me. I’m too smart.”
He released her hands, swinging her feet to the floor. He reached around her and buckled her in. “Let’s get you someplace warm, smart girl.”
The truck strained and groaned before lurching from the ditch and turning slowly back down the road. “What about the man who attacked me?” Clare asked.
Russ kept his attention on the road. “What about him?”
“Aren’t you going to try to find him? Or at least find his vehicle?”
He spared her a glance. “Do you have any idea where he is? Or where his truck or snowmobile is?”
“No.”
“And he doesn’t have any boots on?”
“No.”
“You said you couldn’t see his face?”
“No! He had one of those face masks on, and I tried to get it off, but the damn thing was stuck!” She snorted. “Then he started to wake up and I thought I’d be better served getting the heck out of there.”
“Good girl. And the answer is no, I’m not going after him. I could turn out the National Guard and we’d still never find him in this weather. My first priority is to get you thawed out. We can be at the Glens Falls Hospital in half an hour if the county’s gotten the plows out.”
“No. No hospital. I don’t like hospitals.”
“You go to hospitals all the time, for Chrissake!”
“Not for myself!” She had an edge of hysteria to her voice. He shut up. “Just take me home, Russ,” she said. “Please.”
“Okay, darlin’. Home it is.” He downshifted in preparation for churning the truck out of the snow and leaf-filled gully. And then I’m going to get someone to take a look at you if I have to knock you down and sit on you to do it.