He poured a cup of coffee, sat at the table, and opened his laptop. He may not have noticed the
disclaimer about snow and travel in Melody, Montana, but hehadverified the most important thing: Internet access.He opened the Wi-Fi options and found that the only one available was calledCoolAir. He clicked it and the password was already there, disguised in asterisks. He pressed enter, and soon his browser opened to all of the familiar settings.
"Thank God."
He opened Skype, found his last call with Demarco, and double-clicked on it. The familiar
tones rang.
Demarco picked up on the third ring: "Girl… I thought you were dead."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence."
"You don't mess with the Wendigo."
"He wasn't a monster, just a cowboy… on a horse."
"Hot."
"It's also two hours earlier here. I just got up."
"Yeah. You're not looking very fresh."
"Thanks."
"So, tell me about this cowboy."
"He's nice enough."
"Oh. How vague of you. Did he tow your car?"
"No, he's doing that today. He just brought me up to the cabin."
Demarco eyed Alec suspiciously. "Really?" he said, drawing the word out long as if there were an extra syllable.
"Yeah… on his horse."
Demarco's chin dropped, his eyebrows lifting with accentuated incredulity. "That's all?"
"Yep. That's it."
"Just like going to Starbucks."
"It wasn't that big a deal, D."
"Stranded… in the middle of the night… and you get picked up via horseback by a cowboy.
Happens all the time."
"How are things there?"
"I can see you don't want to talk about this right now, and I'm gonna let you off the hook. But we will be revisiting this subject. Soon."
"I was checking in to let you know that I made it here OK."
"Good to hear. Nothing to report on this end. Mac hasn't called."
"Oh," said Alec.
