“Let’s do it, then,” he said. “I don’t want to be moving while it’s snowing.”
Diane nodded, wrote a few things on her clipboard, and said, “Well, we better get going, so we don’t get stuck up here.”
Adam startled and blinked. “Is that a possibility?”
“This is Wyoming,” Diane said with a smile. “The weather is unpredictable, and anything is possible.”
She led the way out of the house, and Adam followed her, his footsteps as crisp as hers as they exited to big, fluffy snowflakes falling straight down. For once, there was no wind, and Adam had no idea what to make of it.
“I’ll be in touch,” Diane called through the storm, and then she got behind the wheel of her pickup truck and practically screeched away from the curb. Adam lifted his hand in goodbye just as a gust of wind kicked up and blasted snow in his face. He muttered an obscenity under his breath and yanked open the car door.
It did not open.
Adam always locked his car from years of living with celebrities in cities, and he cursed himself again as he fished in his jacket pocket for the keys. He had not lived through a Wyoming winter yet, and thus he didn’t own anything more than the lightweight jacket he currently wore—and which did not produce his keys.
“Come on,” he muttered, looking up. The snow had started falling at some point while they were in the house,and already his whole car was covered, and now he could not find his keys.
He checked all of his pockets once and then twice, panic building within him. Could he get back in the house? Had he dropped them somewhere? And if so, how had he not noticed?
He moved to the front of the car and looked back down the sidewalk, a prayer in the front of his mind.Help me find those keys.
The thought ran on a loop as he moved back down the sidewalk. The snow had already covered his and Diane’s prints, and Adam’s thoughts blitzed from one thing to another as he searched.
Are there hotels in Dog Valley?If so, perhaps he could get a room.
You have no idea how to drive in the snow. He’d lived in Tennessee his whole life.
But how hard can it be?People here did it all the time.
The wind assaulted his face, and he shielded his eyes with his hand as he scanned left and right, his prayer for a miracle still going strong. He went back up the steps and onto the porch, which did offer a little bit of protection, but he had not found the keys, and this house had a lockbox on it. Only Diane had the code.
Then frustration, annoyance, and irritation mixed together inside of him in a deadly Molotov cocktail. He looked up and ran his hands through his hair, dislodging plenty of snow and slicking his hair back.
Then he exhaled and looked down, where the faintestglimmer of silver rested in the dark bark of the flower bed lining the porch. Adrenaline drove through him, and Adam rushed back out into the snowstorm to see if that odd-shaped lump nearly buried in snow was his keys.
It was, and Adam grabbed them, along with a couple pieces of bark that he flung away. He hurried back to his car, clicking it open as he went, and starting it from several paces away so that it would start to warm up.
Safely inside, he opened his glove box and pulled out some fast-food napkins that he used to wipe his face and dry his hair the best he could. His seat heater had already started working, but he shivered nonetheless as he buckled his seatbelt. Nerves ran through him that he would have to make this unfamiliar drive in the dark…and the snow.
Before he could put the car in drive, his phone made a horrible screeching sound—an all-access alert. Adam snatched it up, because the sooner he looked at it, the sooner the sound would stop.
“Weather Advisory,” he read out loud. Yeah, no kidding.
Ten inches of heavy, dense, wet snow expected in the next ten hours, the advisory read.Shelter in place. Do not attempt to go outside or travel. Coral Canyon police are working in conjunction with Dog Valley Police, and all roads will be closed after six p.m.
Adam’s eyes darted up to the top of his screen, where he found the time to be 5:43. There was no way he would make it back to Coral Canyon in fifteen minutes. He wasn’t even sure he could drive to the end of this block in fifteen minutes.
Ashelter-in-place mandate would be great if he was home with a working furnace or a fireplace, but he didn’t think the police department meant stay in your car without food, water, or heat.
He glanced to his gas gauge, and his tank was half-full. He quickly tapped on his browser button to find out if there was a hotel where he could go. Every passing moment brought more desperation to the back of his throat, so much so that his lungs felt like someone had filled them with cement by the time he looked up five minutes later and said, “There are no hotels in Dog Valley.”
But you know people who live here, his mind whispered, and Adam launched back into his phone. He did know people who lived here—Luke, Morris, Gabe, for three. And Bryce’s ranch sat on the cusp of Coral Canyon and Dog Valley.
But he didn’t text any of them.
It was Halloween, and that meantJoeywould be at her mother’s right here in Dog Valley, and if they just closed all the roads, she’d have to stay overnight too.
Adam suspected she’d be upset by that, and as he tapped to call her, he hoped he could find shelter at her mother’s place…and offer her comfort at the same time.
