by Lili Valente
“No time for doubt, Addie,” I mutter, flicking on the flashlight. “Keep moving, one foot in front of the other.” I’m starting up the hill when something in my peripheral vision catches my eye. I turn to see a flash of light through the trees near the bottom of the incline. I can make out a narrow valley and a frozen river winding through thick pines.
I shift to the right and it comes again, a strong pulse of orange before the wind sends branches bobbing up and down, making the light flicker. It looks like a porch light or an outside light, which means that someone lives down there. Someone with a phone who will be able to call for help for Hank, which I will be able to reach a heck of a lot faster than I’ll be able to get up to the road, along the highway, and down the drive to the lodge.
Chest hitching with relief, I start down the hill, grateful for the aid of gravity as I gain momentum through the snow. My head doesn’t hurt as badly as it did when I woke up, but my thoughts are still sluggish and tangled. Chances are good that I’m in the early stages of hypothermia. If I don’t get my body temperature headed back in the right direction soon, I’m going to be in trouble. I have to get to that house and get inside. And if no one’s home, then I’ll have to break a window and climb in. I don’t have much time left, and neither does Hank.
I stumble faster, reaching out to brace myself on tree trunks as I move into the woods, my gaze fixed on the light. I’m getting closer. Almost there, almost there, and it’s all going to be okay. I’m going to fix this. I’m going to get Hank help and get back to Nate and tell him about the dream I had and ask him if being dyslexic really makes it harder for him to proofread his books.
“Should hire someone to help,” I mumble to the snow-muffled forest. “Or the publisher should. What kind of publisher doesn’t have a proofreader on staff?”
I’m growing increasingly outraged by the thought of proofreaders being left out of the publishing process, and also increasingly irritated with my feet, which are not moving nearly as fast as I would like for them to, when something vibrates next to my hip.
My arms fly out to my sides as the buzzing comes again. Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, likes someone’s in the middle of a texting frenzy.
A texting frenzy!
“Oh my God! Phone!” I shout aloud, fumbling for the zipper on the pocket of my coat. My phone is in my pocket! “Oh thank God. Thank God!”
I can call for help! Hank and I are going to be okay!
I tug my cell out as I continue to move toward the light, some rational part of me insisting that I still need to get inside that house or I might freeze to death. I swipe right and punch in my code, ignoring the texts continuing to pop up from a number I don’t recognize. I don’t have time to text, and thanks to the extreme crappiness of my ancient phone, it looks like my battery is about to die.
I dial 911 and hit send, waiting until the voice on the end of the line asks, “What’s your emergency,” to shout, “My cab driver and I went off the road not far from Tomahawk Mountain House. We were headed into New Paltz and got knocked off the highway. He’s passed out behind the wheel and could be dying. You need to send help right away.”
“Can you give me your name, ma’am?”
“Did you hear me?” I ask, voice rising. “There’s a man named Hank passed out behind the wheel. I put a blanket on him before I got out of the truck, but—”
“I heard you, ma’am, and help is on the way,” the woman patiently cuts in. “Can you tell me where you are now? And give me your name so I can relay that to the officers?”
“Oh, I’m, um…” My brain prickles as it tries to think, making me start shivering all over again. This isn’t good. This isn’t good at all. “I’m Addie. Addie Klein,” I say, my breath coming faster as I realize how close I was to forgetting my own name. I hurry forward, knowing I need to get where I’m going ASAP. “I think I may have a head injury. Or hypothermia. I’m having trouble thinking straight.”
“Can you get back inside the truck and warm up, ma’am? Is it safe?”
“Um, I think so…” My words trail off as I spin to look back up the mountain, but I can’t see the truck anymore. “I don’t know where the truck is. I know it’s uphill, but I’m not sure where. I was going to a house to call for help when I realized my phone was in my pocket.” I turn back, searching the near darkness under the trees, heart thudding desperately as I realize what else I can’t see. “Now I can’t see the light, either. I can’t see the light from the house!”
“Stay on…line…searching…” The kind voice cuts in and out, increasing the panic building in my chest. “Where….this…okay?”
“I can’t hear you,” I sob, the tears rising in my eyes going cold almost immediately. “I can’t hear you, and I don’t know if I can find the truck.”
“Location…” The voice turns to static. I thrust the phone overhead, hoping it will strengthen the signal. But when I bring it back to my ear, there’s nothing but silence.
“Shit.” I glance down at the screen. Call dropped.
I swallow hard, glancing uphill and then downhill, not knowing what to do next. Do I go back up the hill and try to get a signal? Find the truck? Follow the sounds of sirens and hope someone sees my flashlight and comes to get me?
Or do I go downhill and hope I—
Suddenly the orange light flickers on again, maybe fifty feet from where I’m standing. I hurry toward it, determined to reach the house before it goes out again. I lunge forward, stumbling on stiff legs, pulse fast and fluttery. My heart is working hard, but there’s only so much one heart can do.
Maybe if you’d had more hearts, you would have been okay.
Or maybe if Eloise had been kinder, or if you’d met Shane sooner, or if Nate had come back into your life before it was too late. But there’s only so much one heart can do on its own. It’s all right, Adeline. You’re tried. The inner voice soothes me as we reach the clearing around the building and realize our mistake. It’s okay to rest. It’s okay to sit down and close your eyes for a little while.
“No,” I sob.
What I thought was a house looks like an old trapper’s cabin that hasn’t been inhabited in decades, and judging by the gaps in the walls, it probably isn’t the coziest place to seek refuge. But it doesn’t matter. It has to be at least a little warmer in there, and that’s what I need. To get warm.
Get inside, get warm, and try to call for help again.
It’s not much of a plan, but it’s all my cold-and-injury-fogged brain can manage at the moment.
I slog my way up the snow-covered steps, which thankfully seem sturdier than they look, to the primitive wooden door. I wrap my gloved hand around the handle and pull, expecting to encounter resistance, but the door opens easily, dumping snow onto my arm as it swings on its hinges.
I glance up as I brush off the flakes. The light I’ve been following must have been from the antique lantern hanging on a hook near the door, but it’s out now. Something seems strange about that—about this cabin, too, but I can’t focus for long on anything except get inside, warm up, call again, inside, warm up, call again.
Dismissing the lantern as a thing I don’t have the brainpower for at the moment, I shine my flashlight into the cabin. But as I step inside, the beam stutters, fading to a thin yellow.
I’m jiggling it up and down, trying to get the juice flowing again, when the door slams shut behind me, plunging me into darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Nate
Fate hasn’t given up on Addie and me after all.
If Eduardo hadn’t wanted to change our Valentine’s Day reservations, or if I’d let him call the concierge instead of coming down in person, then I would have no idea that Adeline was missing.
But I’m not really surprised that I’m in the right place at the right time.
The only thing I feel when the clearly distraught woman behind the concierge desk says—“Tell Hank I’m fine to drive, and I’ll meet him at the hospital. And what about Ad
eline, the woman he was driving to town? Is she okay?”—is a cold rush of dread and the absolute certainty that Adeline is not okay.
It’s the same thing I’ve been feeling for the past hour—this nagging, creeping certainty that Addie is in trouble and that I have to get to her as soon as humanly possible. I move around the two people in line in front of me and lean over the desk, ignoring a dirty look from a man in a snowflake sweater as I slip between him and the concierge.
The petite woman with the white hair glances up at me, pain clear in her eyes as she says into the phone, “Oh no. Please let me know as soon as she’s found.” She turns her back to me, but I can still hear her. “I should never have let her go out in this storm. If she’s hurt, I’ll never forgive myself.” She pauses, nodding as she listens. “Yes, of course. I’ll talk to my manager. I’m sure we can spare people to come help. I’ll call you right back, Steven.”
She ends the call and turns back to the line at her desk, clearly intending to tell us all that there’s been an emergency and we need to take our concerns about dinner and entertainment elsewhere, but I cut her off before she can speak. “Adeline is my friend. What’s happened? Where is she?”
“Oh, no. I’m so sorry. There’s been an accident,” the woman says, pressing her cell phone to her chest with a trembling hand. “My husband was giving her a ride to town when his truck was hit by a drunk driver. It went off the road around the corner from the lodge. Hank’s on the way to the hospital, but Adeline wasn’t in the truck when the paramedics arrived.”
“Where was she?” I ask, my heart clawing its way into my throat.
“No one knows. Apparently she made the call for help,” the woman continues, her eyes shining, “but she didn’t know where she was at the time. My friend Steven said she sounded confused and might be suffering from hypothermia. The police are searching the woods now, but they asked me to send some of our staff if we can spare them. Obviously, with the temperature dropping, we have to find her as soon as possible.”
“I’m coming with the search party,” I say, already backing away from the desk. “I’ll be back in five minutes. I’ve just got to grab my coat.”
The woman nods, and I turn and run, sprinting across the lobby. I take the stairs to the sixth floor two at a time. Back in the room, as I change into my ski clothes and snow boots, I fill a sleepy Eduardo in on what’s happened. In just a few minutes, I’m outfitted for extreme weather and running back out the door with Eduardo hot on my heels.
“I’m coming, too!” He hurries after me, breath coming faster as he struggles into his coat on the way down the stairs. “The more boots on the ground, the sooner we’ll find her.”
“You don’t have to come, Ed,” I say, pushing through the door on the ground floor and jogging toward the lobby. “Really. I don’t expect you to put yourself at risk.”
“Hush,” he says, catching up with me near the registration desk. “Like I’m going to stay here while that sweet thing is wandering around lost in the woods. I’m coming, and we will find her, Nathaniel. Don’t doubt it. She can’t have gotten far in this storm.”
Eduardo scores a free seat on a UTV, while I crowd into the back of a pickup truck with three other men outfitted for blizzard conditions. On the way up the hill, I thank them profusely for helping look for Addie, and they each assure me that we’re going to find her, that she’s going to be fine, and that everything will be all right. But I can’t find any comfort in their words. I won’t believe things will be all right until I know that Adeline is safe and whole and wrapped up in a blanket somewhere warm.
This is my fault. If I hadn’t pushed so hard, she wouldn’t have felt like her only choice was to put her safety at risk to get away from me.
I have to find her and tell her that I’ll back off, that I won’t push, that I’ll do whatever she wants me to do as long as she promises to keep herself safe. I don’t want to imagine a world without Addie in it. I need her to be alive and happy, even if she decides what will make her happiest is being far away from me.
The thought of never seeing her again hurts like hell, but I’ll live through it. I can get through anything as long as I know that Addie’s still in the world.
The pickup truck pulls to the side of the road behind a row of police cars and a small ambulance with its lights spinning and engine running. It’s prepped and ready to give Adeline medical attention ASAP.
Now all we have to do is find her.
I’m given a flashlight, a walkie-talkie, a portion of the hillside to search, and strict instructions to check in on schedule. Just a few minutes after hopping from the truck bed, I’m heading down the hill in the darkness, snow stinging into my eyes.
The sun is gone, the clouds are too thick for moonlight to shine through, and by the time I’m fifty feet from the road, the mountain ahead of me is pitch black. The fiercely swirling snow ensures that I can’t see more than five feet in front of me, and the wind snatches Addie’s name from my lips as soon as I shout it.
By the time I call for my first checkin, my voice is hoarse.
One by one, the other volunteers check in, too, but none of them have found any sign of Adeline or any trail she might have left behind. I try not to let the news gut me—with the snow coming down as hard as it is, any prints she left would have been covered in minutes—but by the time I reach the line where the trees begin to grow closer together, my stomach is in knots and the dread that’s been building in my chest has ballooned to fill my entire body.
I feel like I’m trapped in a car spinning on the ice, fully aware that something terrible is about to happen, but powerless to do anything about it. Addie might already be suffering from extreme hypothermia. If she isn’t found soon, it’s going to be too late. Another ten, twenty minutes, and I might be finding her body, not the living, breathing woman I love.
And I do love her. I never stopped loving her, and I never will.
“Please, Einstein,” I beg as I move deeper into the trees, swallowing hard. “Please be okay. Please hear me and help me find you.”
I call her name again and again, hope stretching thinner with every step. Time is ticking by so fast. I’m almost due for my second checkin, which means Adeline’s been out here almost an hour and a half.
It’s too long. It’s too damned long, and my chest feels like someone beat the shit out of me, because I know it. I know it’s time to stop hoping for the best and start begging for a miracle.
“Adeline!” I cry out, my voice breaking, her name as close to a prayer as anything else I’ve got. I wasn’t raised with religion, and I’ve never seen any reason to find some. But as I weave through the trees, I promise the universe I’ll find something to believe in, to say thanks to, if it will just take me to Addie before it’s too late.
I’m pulling my walkie-talkie out for checkin number two when I see a light flickering through the trees. I hold my breath. After a moment, the light comes again, an orange glow in the dark. I shove the radio back in my pocket and break into a run.
The EMT who briefed us before we headed into the woods said that Adeline had mentioned heading toward a light during her call. He said there wasn’t a record of anyone living on this particular hillside, but to keep an eye out just in case.
When the small cabin comes into view I almost choke on my relief. Addie’s inside, I know it. I know it the way I know the sky is blue and the sea is wet and that no other woman will ever own my heart the way she does.
I take the steps to the front door two at a time and reach for the handle.
I rip open the door and hurry inside, only to stop dead, blinking hard as I take in the interior of the seemingly abandoned shack. Instead of the crumbling wreck that I’d expected, the inside of the cabin is cozy and warm, furnished with a thick carpet, a bed in one corner, a long table covered with a checkered tablecloth, and two heavy chairs drawn close to a fireplace where flames crackle in the hearth.
And in one of those chairs sits Adeline, wrapped in
a thick quilt, fast asleep.
Definitely asleep, nothing more serious. Her bare shoulder, which peeks out of the quilt on one side, is gently rising and falling, and her damp clothes are spread out in front of the fire to dry. She must have realized that she had to get out of them in order to get her body temperature to rise faster.
Thank God. She’s okay, and I can have her back to the ambulance as soon as someone brings dry clothes for her to change into.
Breath rushing out with relief, I pull my radio from my coat. But before I can call to report Addie found, a rumbling fills the air and the boards beneath my feet begin to shake. I glance back at the door just as a large board nailed into the wall slams down, falling into brackets on either side of the frame. A moment later, a loud sa-lumph sounds from outside and the entire cabin jerks as snow shoots in beneath the door and, more disturbingly, from the slim space at the top of it.
Heart racing, I hurry to a shuttered window, pulling the wood panels open to reveal cracked glass and…white. Solid white, like the cabin is sitting inside the belly of a giant snowman. I curse as I bring my hands down hard on the wall on either side of the damaged glass. There must have been an avalanche, and a pretty serious one judging by how hard the cabin jerked when the snow hit. There’s snow up to the top of the door, at the very least. It could be even higher, and God only knows how far out it goes. Even if it’s only a few feet, the chances of me being able to dig us out with my bare hands are slim to none.
I pull the radio out to call for help, but when I press the transmit button, there’s no static, no green light. The damned thing is dead. I reach for my phone, only to find the No Service alert in the upper left hand side of the screen, and I curse again.
“Is it you? Are you really here?” a soft voice asks.
I spin to see Addie standing behind me, her bare feet peeking out of the blue quilt wrapped around her. “I’m here,” I hurry across the room to pull her into my arms, hugging her tight. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”
