“I was afraid plenty of times,” he said. “Anyone who says they aren’t is lying. But I never let myself feel hopeless. I had too many other people depending on me for that.”
She pressed her lips tightly together, then nodded. “Right. Jackson is depending on us. Denny and Mike and all the people who care about Jackson, too. And Hunter and Shelby are depending on us.”
She gripped the straps of her pack and looked around them. The snow had let up a little, but was still falling steadily, the blanket of white obscuring most features of the landscape. “Can you even tell which way we’re headed?” she asked.
“If we keep heading downhill, we’ll reach the bottom of the ridge,” he said.
“Then what?” she asked.
“Then we’ll decide what to do next.”
She said nothing, but set off again. He hurried to catch up with her. “I don’t think anyone is following us,” she said.
“It doesn’t sound like it, no.”
Scott’s back hurt, they were almost out of food, and it was only going to get colder as the day wore on. “We’ll have tohead back toward the ski resort,” he said. “The kidnappers are probably counting on us coming back to Pandora, since it’s closer. But if we can reach SkyCrest, we should be safe.”
“We don’t have to go all the way to SkyCrest,” she said. “We only have to get to the avalanche site at Axis Ridge. My car is parked near there.”
“And Brian’s truck is beside your car.” At her puzzled look, he added, “I borrowed it from him.”
“How long is that going to take?” she asked.
He tried to calculate. They had been out here almost two days already, but part of that time they were unsure of their destination. The terrain and the weather had been against them. He still had his compass, and they would be traveling over territory they had covered before. They would have to stop when darkness set in, but they could set out again at first light tomorrow. “We should be able to make it tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll push on in as straight a line as possible.”
Lily stared at him. He couldn’t read her expression, between the goggles shielding her eyes and the fleece gaiter pulled up to her nose. But her shoulders slumped with fatigue, and she was surely as cold as he was. “The sooner we reach the resort, the sooner we can get other people out here looking for Jackson and the dogs,” he said.
She nodded. “Right.”
They reached the bottom of the ridge—and the almost impenetrable walls of trees. He had hoped to find the path through the woods they had followed before, but fresh snow had obscured their tracks, leaving them to fight their way through the heavy growth, sinking in snow to their knees at times, and tripping over hidden logs and boulders. When she had fallen for the sixth time in an hour, Lily pushed to her feet once more with a curse.
“We need to stop and build a fire,” Scott said.
“I thought you said we need to keep going.”
“We can’t keep going like this. We’re both clumsier than usual because we’re so cold. We’re getting hypothermic. We need to stop, have a hot drink and try to plot a course out of here.”
He expected her to argue, but instead, she merely sat down on a snow-covered log and slumped forward, elbows on knees.
He cleared snow from a hollow in front of the log on which she sat, piling more snow in a wall to shield the blaze from the wind. Then he dug beneath a tangle of fallen logs and pulled out drier kindling. “What do you have in your pack to start a fire?” he asked when he had the beginnings of a campfire laid.
She removed the pack and opened it, then pulled out a plastic bag containing a lighter, waterproof matches and an old prescription bottle. He popped the cap on the bottle and found it filled with cotton balls coated in petroleum jelly. “After you told me what you used as a fire starter, I decided that was a good idea,” she said.
He nodded and shoved a couple of the cotton balls in among the kindling and flicked the lighter.
Five minutes later, he was feeding slightly larger pieces of wood into the bright flames. Lily still hadn’t moved. “It’s going to be okay,” he said gently.
“Jackson is nine!” The fierceness of her words had him sitting back on his heels. “He’s just a kid. He’s cold and hungry and afraid.” Her voice choked. “His mom died. His dad works all the time. I was one person who always tried to be there for him and now even I’ve let him down.”
She began to sob. Scott moved onto the log beside her and pulled her close. “You didn’t let anyone down,” he said. “You couldn’t have done anything about whoever was shooting at us. Jackson did the right thing, running away from the shooter. It’s no one’s fault we got separated in the snowstorm.”
She sniffed. “I’m worried about Shelby and Hunter, too. They’re cold and hungry. What if they freeze to death?”
“They’re both healthy, thick-coated dogs. They won’t freeze to death.” At least he hoped not. “Our job now is to keep from freezing to death ourselves and get to help.”
She said nothing, so after a moment he pulled his arm from around her. “What have you got to eat in your pack?” he asked.
She took out several packets of electrolyte drink powder, the instant coffee, some jerky, plastic pouches of peanut butter, some tea bags and a single metal mug. He considered the array, selected the peanut butter and the electrolyte packets, and the mug. “I’ll melt some snow,” he said, and stood.
