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“Shit.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m not a mechanic.” I pulled out my phone, hoping maybe I’d get lucky with a signal. The screen showed exactly what I expected. No service. “Phone’s useless out here.”

Lucy checked hers. Same result. “How far is it back to the lodge?”

I thought about the ride out. The winding trail through the forest. The distance we’d covered. “Miles. Too far to walk, especially with how cold it’s getting.”

She looked at me, and I could see the fear creeping into her eyes. This was her nightmare. Stranded in the frozen wilderness. Everything she’d been afraid of since we’d arrived.

“Hey.” I moved closer, putting my hands on her shoulders. “It’s going to be okay. Bernadette will send someone if we’re not back soon. She’s probably already noticed we’re late.”

“What if she thinks we’re just taking our time?”

“Bernadette? The woman who gave us a thirty-minute lecture on hypothermia symptoms? She’s not going to assume anything. She’s going to assume the worst and send help.”

Lucy took a deep breath. I watched her force the panic down, that practical side of her brain taking over. “Okay. So what do we do until then?”

I looked toward the cabin. It wasn’t much, but it was shelter. Walls to block the wind. A roof to keep out the snow. And if I remembered correctly, there’d been a woodstove inside.

“We wait in the cabin,” I said. “Stay warm. Someone will come for us.”

The cabin was even colder inside than I remembered. The temperature had dropped significantly in the time we’d been exploring. Our breath fogged the air in thick clouds. Lucy hugged herself, already shivering. I didn’t think it was the cold but the fear and the realization we couldn’t hop on the snowmobile and get back to her toasty cabin.

But there was the woodstove, sitting in the corner like a promise. Old and rusted, but intact. I opened the small door and used my phone flashlight to shine inside. No animals, which I hoped meant the chimney worked. There was ash, which suggested it had worked at some point. And beside it, a small pile of kindling and some matches in a tin box on the shelf.

“Okay,” I said, making myself sound calm. “I’m going to get a fire going. But we’re going to need more wood than this.”

Lucy nodded, her teeth chattering slightly. “What can I do?”

“Stay here.”

“Be careful.”

“Always.”

Outside, the cold hit me like a wall. The sun was getting lower. I estimated we had maybe an hour or two of decent light left. After that, things would get significantly more challenging. And colder.

I found fallen branches scattered around the clearing, some of them dry enough to burn. I gathered as many as I could carry, making trip after trip back to the cabin. The work kept me warm, at least. My muscles burned with the effort, but I didn’t mind. Every armload of wood was another hour we could stay warm.

By the time I’d built up a respectable pile inside the cabin, my feet were feeling the cold. But we had enough to last us through the night if we needed to. I hoped we wouldn’t need to. Surely, Bernadette would realize we hadn’t made it back.

Lucy watched me carry the wood to the fireplace.

“Have you ever started a fire?” she asked.

I thought about it. “You’re going to laugh, but yes.”

“Why would I laugh?”

“Because I learned how to start a fire while doing a shoot for some outdoor stuff. It was one of my first modeling jobs.”

She stared at me. “You’re serious?”

I nodded. “It was all about this camping gear. I had to build a little fire teepee. All of it. I think I was on that shoot for a week. They even had a guy train me how to do it so it looked legit.”

She sighed and shook her head. “Okay.”