He raised an eyebrow, but she cut her light away from him.
“Should be just past this ridge.” Except, it seemed they’d walked a lot farther than a hundred yards...
Orlando had forged ahead, breaking trail, his bell tinkling in the darkness. The drifts turned to waves, the wind driving snow into swells that rose past their knees. Her feet turned to ice, her entire body a fist, frozen.
Okay, maybe she shouldn’t have fought quite so hard to come on this rescue—“Wait.” A darker shadow against the white. “There’s the cabin.”
Except she’d lost the sound of Orlando’s bell. “Orlando!” The storm grabbed her voice, swallowed it.
The cabin slowly took shape as they approached—massive logs stacked and chinked with mud and moss against the brutal winters, a steep metal roof already buried in white. Two windows glowed faintly with reflected snow, dark eyes watching their approach.
The ring of the bear bell rose, and she glanced in the direction of the woodshed.
There the dog was, snow covered, his entire body wagging, as if he might be proud of himself.
“Key’s in the woodshed,” she said, but wind grabbed her voice, tossed it. She raised it, fighting. “Behind the—”
“Got it.” Winter had already surged forward, returning with the key on a leather cord. “Found it on the old moose horn.”
Harley didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Because suddenly she was remembering other nights here. Other storms. Weekends at the getaway, Gabe’s laugh as they’d run in from the cold.
Wow, she’d thought she’d buried those memories so deep they could never haunt her.
The key worked easily, and Winter pushed the door open.
The place seemed frozen in time. The old sofa still covered with her mother’s orange crocheted afghan, the picture of thecabin from the air hanging over the stone fireplace. The scent of woodsmoke and cedar emanated from the room, smelling much more recent than it should since tourist season ended months ago.
“Generator’s in the back,” she told Topher, who turned on his phone light and headed through the house to the utility room. Jericho set Sunni on the sofa while Harley found the oil lamp on the table.
Her hands shook—probably from the cold, but the familiar ritual of lighting it steadied her. They were safe. Just fine, see?
The lights flickered on, humming to life. Topher came out of the utility room. “Full tank. We’ve got power for a while at least.”
She stood at the table, surveying the room.
The guide service kept it almost unchanged from the years her family used it. The main room held a log-built sofa, homemade cushions, and a matching chair, worn but solid. A potbelly stove squatted in one corner, and the small kitchen’s open shelving still held stores—coffee, cans of food, a few packaged dehydrated meals.
A narrow hallway led to two bedrooms, and a ladder climbed to the loft where she used to lie awake listening to the sounds of the forest or the laughter of her parents as they played Dutch Blitz.
She shouldn’t be here.
“I’ll get the fire started,” Topher said. “ And I can bring in wood before it’s completely buried.”
Jericho’s voice emerged from the small bathroom. “Harley, did your mom keep medical supplies—never mind.” He came out of the bathroom holding a first aid kit.
Something felt wrong. Off.
Maybe it was the way the wind screamed down the chimney and stirred ash—fresh ash, it seemed—from the hearth. Why wasn’t the flue closed? Or was it that the smell of coffee seemed more fragrant than it should? Or maybe...
“Harley.” Jericho’s voice was low, close to her ear, and she jumped.
“Stop!”
“Sorry.” He stepped away from her. “When was the last time anyone was up here?”
There he went, reading her mind. “You feel it too?” She turned to look at him, saw her own unease reflected in his eyes.
“The cabin isn’t musty,” he said quietly. “It’s not cold like it should be after months of disuse.”
