Sky
tell her we love her when you see her
Addie
And remind her to charge her phone. You know she always forgets.
Me
Will do. Love you both. Keep me posted on the flight situation.
The rational part of my brain offered explanations. Maybe she’d driven to a different town. Maybe she’d decided to abandon the holiday plans and catch the first flight back to Texas.
Maybe she was holed up at a coffee shop somewhere, reading one of those romance novels she thought I didn’t know about, oblivious to the approaching blizzard.
But the irrational part—the part that had lived through finding our thirteen-year-old son—that part was starting to scream.
Something was wrong.
I could feel it in my bones, the same way I had that early morning I’d woken up in a sheer panic for no reason I could explain. Just a feeling that I needed to check on Levi. And I’d been right then, even if it had been too late to change anything.
I wouldn’t be too late again.
The engine roared to life, and I pulled out of the parking lot fasterthan was safe, tires spinning on ice before finding grip. If she wasn’t in town, and she wasn’t at the cabin, then she was somewhere between the two.
Somewhere on winding mountain roads that were getting worse by the minute.
I just had to find her before the storm did.
5
teddy
The mountain roaddisappeared completely about halfway up. Not gradually, the way fog rolled in, but all at once. Like the world had been swallowed up by a wall of white.
One minute, I could see twenty feet ahead of me. The next, I might as well have been driving through dense fog. I leaned forward, gripping the wheel hard enough to make my knuckles ache, trying to spot the reflective markers that lined the road’s edge.
If they were still there. If I was still on the road.
The wipers shrieked against the windshield, fighting a losing battle against the ice that formed faster than they could clear it. Every few minutes, I had to slow to a crawl, riding the rumble strip when I could find it, using the vibration to ensure I wasn’t drifting into oncoming traffic. Not that anyone else would be stupid enough to be out in this.
Anyone except Kelsey, with her Texas understanding of winter and her stubborn refusal to back down from anything.
The defroster was cranked all the way up, blasting heat that made the cab feel like a sauna while doing fuck-all to keep the windshieldclear. I could see maybe three feet ahead. Maybe. The rest was just white on white on white, hypnotic and disorienting.
The radio crackled with weather updates, each worse than the last. “I-70 closed at Vail Pass… multiple accidents reported. Stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary...”
Easy for them to say. They weren’t looking for someone. They hadn’t driven away from an argument that might have been the last conversation they’d ever have.
My phone rang through the Bluetooth—Addie. I hit ignore. Whatever she needed could wait until I wasn’t playing chicken with the side of a mountain.
A shape loomed out of the white. Guardrail. I jerked the wheel left, felt the back end slide, corrected into it like I’d learned to do in my first Colorado winter. The Bronco steadied, but my heart was hammering hard enough to hurt.
This was insane. I needed to pull over and wait for a break in the storm. But there was nowhere to stop safely, and the thought of Kelsey out here, maybe hurt, maybe trapped in her car…
The windshield was icing over again. I couldn’t see shit.
I eased onto what I hoped was the shoulder, threw the Bronco in park, and grabbed the scraper from behind my seat. The second I opened the door, the storm tried to rip it off its hinges. Wind-driven snow hit my face like buckshot, stealing my breath and making my eyes water.
