AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Quinn opened the door, and stepped into a swirl of white wind that all but lifted her from her feet. While she had cleaned Elizabeth's cabin, the storm had hit with a ferocity she had not seen in years. She put her head down against the driving wind, her feet seeking the path she had made, grateful that she had shoveled so narrow a trail, because only by following the path she had made was she able to find the car, so dense was the snowfall.
How could I have been so oblivious, she chastised herself. How could I have been so foolish to allow myself to lose track of time like that?
She climbed into the cab and huddled against the seat, trying to decide what to do. Perhaps if she waited a few minutes, the storm would subside as quickly as it had struck. For a long fifteen minutes, Quinn sat staring out through the windshield, but the storm only seemed to intensify. Some heat would be welcome right about now, she thought, as she turned the engine on and shivered heartily as the frigid air filled the cab. Knowing it would be some minutes before the vehicle wanned up, she decided to call home and let her family know where she was. Cold fingers punched the number on the cellular phone that she had dug out of her bag.
"Trevor? Hi," she said, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.
"Quinn? Where are you? You sound so far away."
"I'm sitting outside of Elizabeth's cabin. The storm came up so quickly. I never even heard the wind pick up."
"Really? There's a storm up there? Hasn't hit the valley yet," he told her. "Are you all right?"
"Right now, I am. I thought I'd give it a few minutes to see if things settled down before I headed for home. Is it snowing there at all?"
"Not a flake. I guess it'll move down the mountain soon. Which means I should probably leave now if I'm going to make it to the airport to pick up Sunny and Lilly and whoever else is flying in today." He paused thoughtfully. "'You're sure you're okay, Quinn?"
"Well"—she hesitated—"
the snowfall is pretty dense right about now."
"On a scale from one to ten…" Trevor asked, his standard barometer.
"Thirteen," she replied grimly.
"That bad, eh? Maybe Sky should take the truck and come up for you…"
"No. No sense in both of us being stuck up here. Look, tell Mom and Dad I'll keep in touch. I do have some gas left, so I can keep the heater running, and I have some hot coffee, so I can stay warm."
For a while, anyway. She bit her lip. What to do when the gas tank is empty and the coffee is gone?
"Well, then, as soon as the snow lets up even a bit, head back on down slowly. Just keep the pines on either side of you and try to make it down to the hanging rock. If you can get that far, you can probably make it to the old McKenzie cabin. Val's been fixing it up…"
"So I heard," she said wryly, thinking back to Sky's reaction to the mere mention of Valerie's name the night before.
"Yeah, well, if you can get to the cabin, you should be fine. Get a good fire going and wait out the storm."
"I think Val must already be there. I saw smoke from the cabin when I drove past. I just hope there's enough wood to get us through the storm."
"There's plenty." Even through the phone line, she could see Trevor's lopsided grin. "Seems like Sky spent most of the past six months chopping wood and stacking it next to Val's back door."
"I see. Well, then, the cabin should be nice and warm, and I can sit out the storm safely with Valerie."
Assuming I can get there.
"Quinn?" Trevor asked as she was about to say good-bye.
"What?"
"Call back when you get there so we know that you made it."
"I will. Tell Mom not to worry," she assured him. "I'll be fine."
Or I will be, once the snow lightens up.
It was almost twenty minutes more before the storm appeared to ease. She opened the car door tentatively, then slammed it in the face of the vicious wind. Another fifteen minutes passed before she tried again. This time the wind had died down a little, and so she grabbed the ice scraper from under the front seat and set about cleaning off her windows. In so brief a time, a blanket of snow had wrapped around the car, and it took her several minutes to clean the windows sufficiently to allow her to see. With the defroster on full steam, she shifted into first gear and headed toward the void between the towering shadows of the pines that marked either side of the makeshift road. Inch by careful inch she crept along through a snowfall as thick as clotted cream, straining her eyes to distinguish shape from shadow, keeping her speed slow but steady as she made her way down the mountain. It seemed that an eternity had passed before she could distinguish the hanging rock there in the distance. If she could make it just a little farther, she would find shelter in the old McKenzie cabin.
The car continued its tedious crawl until she was close enough to the rock to touch it. She pressed a little harder on the gas pedal until she had passed the landmark, then eased her foot onto the brake. The car rolled to a soft stop, and she slid the gearshift into neutral. Rolling down the window, she looked out onto an icy world that had suddenly turned totally white. The cabin could be but twenty feet from her face and she could miss it in this blizzard. She sighed glumly and turned off the engine, hoping to preserve what little gas she had left, and had started to roll the window back up when movement just slightly to the left caught her eye.
