He found birchbark tinder in a box, along with broken pieces of kindling, and built a log cabin fire, two bigger pieces of firewood at the bottom, a smaller one crossing it, kindling in the middle.
A box of long matches sat on the mantel, and he lit the birchbark. It caught, crackled, and for a moment, the sound of the snow and wind seemed to surrender to it.
“I will get you home,Keely. I promise.”
Dawson suddenly never wanted to break his word more in his life.
“Daws. I found it.”
He stood up, turning.
And a rock went through him at the sight of the handheld radio transceiver in one hand, an antenna in the other, the antenna bent, the transceiver in loose pieces.
“That’s the ham.”
“What’s left of it.”
He closed his eyes, listened to his heartbeat. Blew out a breath. Then looked at her again. “Okay. I know there’s another radio at the cache cabin, a couple miles up the river. I can get there—”
“We can get there.”
He swallowed, then walked over to her. Put his hands on her shoulders. “Your cop dad taught you how to shoot a Glock. Can you handle a rifle?”
“What?”
“There’s only one set of skis in the shed, and the snow is way too deep to walk.”
She blinked at him. “What ... Daws—”
“We gotta get help.” He looked away. Shoot. Maybe he shouldn’t leave her. Because his gut started screaming all sorts of dangers.
Starting with Thornwood and ending in—well, all the things that could happen out there in Alaska, from grizzly to house fires, and now he needed to sit down, the coil in his chest so tight it cut off his breathing.
And all he could think was ... Caspian. Usually, right about now, the dog would edge up to him, and he could feel the dog’s fur in his hand.
It always felt like his dog was ... well, comforting him.
“Dawson?”
“I’m fine.” And when he met her gaze again, something had shifted inside her expression.
“I’ll be fine. Yes, I can handle a rifle. Wren is running out of time. Go. I’ll get the rifle and lock the door, and I might even try and figure out how to fix this radio.”
Of course she would.
He stared at her, then bent down and pressed his forehead to hers. “Don’t ever let anyone—especially you—accuse you of being a coward.”
She smiled, then lifted her head and kissed him.
Sweetly, perfectly, the kind of kiss that he might hang on to, and it was all he could do not to grab her jacket and deepen the kiss, to stir up the hope of yesterday.
And maybe it was too late for that anyway, because as he let her go and met her eyes, she wore exactly that in her hazel-blue eyes.
Hope.
“Come back to me,” she said.
“Stay put. I’ll be back.” Then he grabbed his hat and mittens and face mask, went to the gun safe, pulled out a rifle, and headed back out into the blizzard.
