Chill Factor

“Let me see your boots.”

“My—”

“Boots,” he repeated impatiently. She pulled up her pants leg and extended her leg far enough for him to see her foot. He frowned. Taking several pairs of socks from the suitcase, he tossed them over the seat at her. “Put those in your pocket. Take this, too. You can put it on once we get to the cabin.” He passed her a thin silk turtleneck that she’d originally bought to wear under ski clothes.

Then, startling her, he reached over the seat and took a strand of her hair. “Wet.” He dropped the strand quickly, but Lilly was glad he was thinking about her damp hair and not the fistful of panties he was holding in his other hand. “Have you got a cap? A hat of any kind?”

“I didn’t plan on being outdoors much during this trip.”

“You’ve got to have something on your head.”

He tossed the undies back into the suitcase and pulled the stadium blanket from his shoulders. “Lean toward me.”

She came up on her knees and faced the backseat. He fashioned a hood for her out of the blanket, placing it over her head and folding it across her chest. He buttoned her coat up over it, then patted it into place. “There. Before you get out of the car, pull this loose fabric up over your nose and mouth. Is there anything in the trunk except a spare tire?”

The familiar way in which he’d touched her left her surprised and slow to process thought. Her mind raced to catch up with what he’d asked her. “Uh, a . . . I think there’s a first-aid kit that came with the car.”

“Good.”

“And some food I was taking from the cabin.”

“Even better.” He gave the car’s interior a cursory glance. “Flashlight, anything in the glove box?”

“Only the instruction manual for the car.”

“Just as well. I doubt we could have gotten anything out of it, bashed in as it is.” He made a swipe at the fresh blood trickling down his cheek, then pulled on his gloves. “Let’s go.”

“Wait. My handbag. I’ll need it.”

She looked around for her purse and discovered that it had been slung down to the passenger-side floorboard when the car crashed into the tree. It was difficult, but she managed to reach between the dash and the seat and wrest her bag from beneath the wreckage.

“Loop the shoulder strap around your neck to keep your arms free. Better balance.”

She did as he suggested, then reached for the door latch. There, she paused and looked at him apprehensively. “Maybe we should just stay put until we can call for help.”

“We could, but nobody’s coming up this road tonight, and I doubt we’d survive till morning.”

“Then I guess we don’t have a choice, do we?”

“Not really, no.”

Again she reached for the door latch, but this time it was he who stopped her by laying a hand on her shoulder. “I didn’t mean to sound so curt.”

“I understand the need for haste.”

“We’ve got to get to shelter before it gets worse out here.”

She bobbed her head in agreement. Their gazes held for a second or two, then he removed his hand from her shoulder, opened the back door, and got out. Lilly joined him at the rear of the car, where he was surveying the contents of the open trunk. He found the first-aid kit and told her to put it in her pocket. “Some of those canned goods, too. And the crackers.”

He was likewise filling the many pockets of his coat with cans, which must have weighed him down, especially after he retrieved his backpack from where they’d left it lying in the road.

“Ready?” he asked, squinting at her through the blowing frozen precipitation.

“As much as I’ll ever be.”

Using his chin, he motioned for her to precede him. They’d trudged only a few yards when they determined that trying to walk uphill on the road’s icy surface would be futile. For every step forward they took, they slipped back three. Tierney nudged her toward the road’s shoulder. It was narrow, often forcing them to walk single file, hugging the embankment and dodging outcropping boulders. However, the uneven ground actually worked to their advantage. They found purchase on rocks and vegetation beneath the ice and sleet.

The grade was steep. On a fair day with ideal weather conditions, the uphill hike would have been a strenuous workout for even the most physically fit. Most of the time, they were walking directly into the wind, which forced them to keep their heads bent against it, sometimes walking blind through a maelstrom of ice pellets that felt like shards of glass when they struck the exposed skin of their faces.