In the warm clothes, with the helmet covering his face, the storm didn’t seem so bad. It was disorienting, as Mauro had said; fresh snow already covered the ground in an unbroken blanket, and it swirled down in front of the machine so he could only see about fifteen feet ahead. But that was enough to drivein. After studying the map briefly, he put it away to keep it from getting wet. He was pretty sure he knew which way to go.
Fifteen minutes later, he was not at all sure which way to go.
He had found the first trail without difficulty. The storm was less severe under the trees, the trail still visible even where it had drifted over by the straight, open pathway that it created through the forest.
But turnoffs were hard to see, as were the smaller ski trails that crisscrossed the woods. He thought he might already have missed the turn he’d meant to take. He squinted at the map, sheltering it with his hand. It wasn’t dark yet, but it would be soon.
After contemplating the map and what he saw in front of him, he decided to go forward to the next place he could turn around. That was easier said than done. He came to a fork that didn’t seem to be on the map. Maybe the other branch was a ski trail, or he wasn’t where he thought he was. He turned the way that seemed to lead him deeper into the branching ski trails.
But now he was going uphill, the trees were sparser, and the trail was getting more deeply drifted. The machine began to have trouble getting through the drifts. Going slow enough to keep himself oriented, he was also in danger of getting stuck. And finally, after nearly bogging down several times, it happened. The machine sank into a drift he couldn’t get out of. Forward and backward were equally impossible. Looking behind him, Sam saw with a sinking heart that the situation behind him was just as bad. Even if he could get unstuck, he wasn’t sure if he could make his way back or even find his way back across the heavily drifted trail in this higher, more open country.
The rational, sensible thing would be to stay with the machine and wait out the storm until someone found him. Sam had spent his life doing rational, sensible things. Goingonward into the storm would be reckless, senseless, foolish—the opposite of everything he had tried to achieve in his life.
But going out here in the first place was reckless, too.
He gathered from the machine what emergency gear he could easily carry, tucked the bag with Maggie’s clothes under his coat, and set out.
The walking was terrible, and he quickly realized that with the snowdrifts, it was going to be just as difficult to find the trail on foot as on the snowmobile. He had left the helmet with the machine, reasoning that he wouldn’t need it, but now he regretted it deeply as wind screamed in his face and snow blew down his collar. When he stopped to consult the map, his efforts only impressed on him how little he could see and how lost he was.
Sam put away the map again and stood still.Think it through,he told himself. Aside from staying with the machine, which would have been the most sensible choice—well, next to staying in the lodge in the first place—what else could he do? He knew that going uphill would take him higher into the mountains. Charlie probably hadn’t done that. She, too, would be trying to stay on trails she knew.
But how could he possibly find her?
Sam closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure why he did what he did next. It was pure instinct, like a voice from the irrational side of himself that he listened to rarely. But right now, he was willing to try anything that might work.
Maggie, Charlie, are you out there?
It wasn’t like they could hear him. He had never heard of shifter telepaths. And yet, the more he concentrated, the more it seemed to him that one direction did feel better, more hopeful, than the others.
So he went that way.
He stumbled onward through the storm. He soon lost track of where he was, even to the extent he had already known. There was nothing rational, sensible, logical about what he was doing. But he increasingly felt as if he was following a thread of something that was very real. Hope, faith, instinct, maybe Maggie or Charlie contacting him in some way—whatever he was doing, it seemed to be working, because out of nowhere, a large structure loomed up in front of him.
He thought at first it was the lodge. But it was completely dark. Either the power had gone out, or he was somewhere else entirely. He thought probably the latter.
Stumbling, tired and half frozen, he felt his way around the structure. Was that a door? He reached for it.
But it opened under his hands.
He staggered inside.
“Sam?” said a stunned voice.
Maggie’s voice.
It was nearly dark, but he realized there was more than one pair of hands on him. Maggie and Charlie. Somehow, against all odds, he’d found them, and they had all found this place—wherever it was.
Sam half-fell against them, and then they were holding him, holding each other. He was safe in the arms of his daughter—and his mate.
MAGGIE
After they hadall clung to each other for a minute, Maggie hurried to close the door. She was wearing Charlie’s coat and nothing else, and her bare legs and feet were freezing. Even with the door closed, it wasn’t that much warmer inside.
“Why don’t you have a coat on, sweetheart?” Sam was asking Charlie.
“I gave it to Maggie, Dad. She doesn’t have anything else.”
Sam unslung the bag from his shoulder. “I can help with that.”
