Snowbound with a Stranger Read Free

with her hands, blushing even though no one was there to see.
    Where was the rest of the group now? Had they found their way to safety? And if someone had stayed behind to look for her, was he in danger too? How many lives, exactly, had she placed at risk today?
    She cursed herself for putting any of them into this predicament. All because she was too modest to pee next to the damn trail or to ask the group to wait for her.
    In any case, to support her own rescue, she’d need to stop acting like a moving target. A log by the side of the trail offered as good a seat as any. She brushed off the snow and sat down.
    Her pack was well stocked. Enough food and water for one day. Weatherproof matches. Not that she’d know how to build a fire in this wet mess. Mylar blanket. Hand-crank flashlight. It was probably noon at this point, so she had plenty of hours of daylight, but the torch was nevertheless a comfort.
    By two o’clock, if no one had come for her, she’d have to start thinking about shelter.
    For now she simply sat and waited.
    * * *
    Dannie wasn’t the type to panic. Countless shifts at an urban hospital had made her reliable in a crisis. She’d learned how to remain calm and do her job no matter what happened around her.
    Right now what was happening around Dannie was a severe winter storm. It was already three o’clock. She hadn’t strayed from the spot where she’d last stopped except to pace in an effort to keep her blood moving. Snowflakes covered her face but with wet gloves any effort to brush them off only made matters worse. And by now she was too frozen to care. The sky was dark enough with the storm clouds overhead, but in a matter of hours it would be night, and then she would really be screwed.
    Despite her training, Dannie was scared. There was plenty of snow-covered brush in the woods but she didn’t have the first clue how to make a shelter. No doubt there were animals in these woods that would be all too happy to come upon a tasty snack like her in the middle of the night. Although she’d tried, she couldn’t seem to make a fire with the wet wood around her.
    She tried not to think about how cold she was. Her many layers could only offer so much protection against the ocean of ice she was standing in. She’d practically dug a trench on the trail with her endless walking back and forth, but even so, her fingers and toes were numb. Her face stung from the frozen wind. The backs of her legs prickled with fiery cold.
    The cabin couldn’t be far from where she now stood—maybe an hour’s hike—but she had no idea which direction it was in. Looking for it would at least give her a goal, though. A chance to do more than sit here and catalog the medical stages of hypothermia. She shook the snow off her back and reached for her pack.
    In the distance a branch snapped.
    Dannie froze.
    On their last hike they’d seen a bear down the trail and had chosen to wait, silent, for it to pass before they continued.
    Didn’t bears hibernate? So there wouldn’t be one tromping around the forest in the middle of a snowstorm, right?
    It was an early storm, though. It was only November. Maybe it was getting ready to hibernate, and looking for some extra meat to bulk itself up before the long sleep. A nice big hunk of living flesh like her. She squatted down, hoping to make herself invisible.
    Weren’t you supposed to make noise, though, to scare them? She thought she’d read that somewhere once. It would be able to smell her anyway; it wasn’t like she could hide. She stood back up and blew her whistle as loud as she could.
    Silence.
    A gust of frozen wind flew against her face.
    And then out of the wall of white came an answering whistle.
    Dannie’s knees buckled and she actually fell to the ground. Oh, God. Oh, thank God.
    “Dannie?”
    A deep voice called out from the distance.
    “I’m here.” Her voice was shaky. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Here. I’m right—”
    A dark mass came