The cold hit hard when we stepped outside. The snow was falling faster now, thick flakes that swirled in the wind and cut visibility to maybe a hundred yards. The mountains had disappeared entirely, swallowed by white.
“I’ll follow you,” Coop called, heading for his truck. “Don’t lose me in this mess.”
“Keep up, old man,” Beckett shot back.
“I’m two years younger than you!”
“Guess those years hit harder for some people.”
Their joking faded as we climbed into Beckett’s truck, Jet scrambling into the back seat with his tail wagging. He knew. Dogs always knew when there was a mission.
“You okay?” Beckett asked as the engine rumbled to life.
“Yeah.” I nodded, watching the Resting Warrior lodge disappear into the snow behind us in the mirror. “Except for the fact that someone left a dog out in this weather to die. On Christmas Eve.”
“People are capable of terrible things.” His jaw tightened. “But they’re also capable of driving into a blizzard to help a stranger’s dog. Focus on that.”
We drove in tense silence, the windshield wipers fighting a losing battle against the snow. Coop’s headlights were a blur in the rearview mirror, but he stayed close. The road grew narrower, less maintained, drifts starting to form along the shoulders.
Beckett’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. The truck shuddered as a gust of wind slammed into us from the side, and for one heart-stopping second, the back end fishtailed before he corrected.
“Shit, this is getting bad,” he muttered.
Bad was an understatement. The world had shrunk to a tunnel of white, the headlights illuminating nothing but swirling snow. I couldn’t see the road anymore—couldn’t tell where pavement ended and ditch began. Beckett was navigating by some sort of mixture of memory and instinct and superpowers, his jaw tight with concentration.
“Should be coming up on the Miller property,” I said, squinting through the windshield. “Lark said a mile past it.”
“If we can even see it.”
We almost didn’t. The barn materialized out of the white like a ghost, there and gone in seconds. Beckett started counting under his breath.
The mile felt like ten.
“There.” I pointed at a fence post barely visible through the snow. “That has to be it.”
Beckett slowed, pulling as far off the road as he dared. We both stared into the headlight beams, searching.
Nothing. Just snow and fence posts and endless white.
“I don’t see anything,” Beckett said.
My heart sank. “It has to be here. Ray told Lark?—”
“Ray was driving earlier in better conditions. He might have misjudged the distance. Or maybe the dog left.”
I was already unbuckling my seatbelt, reaching for the door handle. “I’ll look on foot.”
“Audra—”
“We can’t just leave. If there’s a dog out here, hurt?—”
“I know.” He cut the engine but left the headlights on. “We look together with Coop. Five minutes. If we don’t find anything, we have to go. This storm isn’t waiting for us.”
Five minutes. That was nothing. That was everything.
We climbed out into the wind. It hit like a physical force, stealing my breath, driving ice crystals into my face. Coop’s truck pulled up behind us, his headlights adding to the glow.
“Anything?” he shouted over the howl.
