Snowed In With Mountain Daddy

1. Stella

STELLA

The windshield wipers screech with every pass, smearing slush and ice across the glass instead of clearing it.

I lean forward until my nose nearly touches the steering wheel, squinting into the wall of white ahead.

The highway markings vanished ten minutes ago.

Maybe twenty. Time feels slippery when you can't see more than five feet in front of your car.

"Stella, are you listening to me?" Jack's voice crackles through the Bluetooth speakers, sharp enough to make me flinch. "The advance team needs to be there by four o'clock to set up the welcome materials. Four. O'clock."

"I'm listening, Jack. It's just that visibility is basically zero right now and I think maybe we should?—"

"I don't care about visibility. I care about our clients arriving tomorrow morning to find their retreat materials professionally displayed and ready to go. This is a seven-figure contract, Stella. Seven figures."

My fingers ache from gripping the wheel.

The yellow sleeve of my peacoat looks ridiculously cheerful against the gray leather, like a child's crayon scribble on a funeral notice.

I should have worn something sensible. I should have checked the weather more carefully.

I should have said no when Jack volunteered me for this assignment, but people like me don't say no to people like Jack. Not if we want to keep our jobs.

"I understand, but the storm?—"

"It's just weather. You're several hours out. Drive faster."

Something dark looms ahead in the whiteout. I tap the brakes, and the car shudders beneath me. Wrong move. My stomach drops as the tires lose their grip on something slick and invisible beneath the snow. The steering wheel spins uselessly in my hands.

"Jack, I have to go?—"

"Don't you dare hang up on?—"

The car slides sideways. My heartbeat thunders in my ears, drowning out Jack's nasal complaints.

I pump the brakes the way my dad taught me years ago, back when I still lived in Connecticut and knew how to drive in snow.

But this isn't Connecticut snow. This is Montana snow, wild and vicious and utterly indifferent to my survival.

The rear end whips around. I see nothing but white, then dark shapes that might be trees, then white again. The car spins in a lazy, sickening circle. My body slams against the seatbelt hard enough to bruise. The world tilts.

"Stella? STELLA?"

Jack's voice sounds very far away.

The car tips. My stomach lurches as gravity shifts and suddenly I'm not on the road anymore.

I'm falling. The vehicle tumbles down what must be an embankment, crashing through something that crunches and snaps beneath the wheels.

Branches. Trees. The airbag explodes into my face with a powder-scented punch that steals my breath.

Everything spins and crashes and breaks in a symphony of shrieking metal and shattering glass.

Then nothing.

Silence presses against my eardrums like cotton wool. I taste blood. My head throbs with each heartbeat, a metronome of pain keeping time with my ragged breathing. Something cold touches my cheek. Snow. It drifts through the broken windshield in lazy spirals, settling on my eyelashes.

I try to move. Bad idea. Pain shoots up my left leg, sharp and immediate and real enough to punch a whimper out of my throat. The deflated airbag drapes across my lap like a dead jellyfish. I shove it aside with shaking hands and look down.

My leg is pinned beneath the crumpled dashboard. The whole front end of the car has accordioned backward, trapping me in a cage of twisted metal. The yellow fabric of my coat peeks out from beneath the wreckage, absurdly bright against all that gray and white.

"Help." The word comes out as a whisper. I try again, louder. "HELP!"

The wind howls in response, whistling through the broken windows. Snow accumulates on the seats, on my lap, on the backs of my hands. I can already feel the cold seeping into my bones, turning my fingers stiff and clumsy.

The radio crackles. Static hisses and pops, then Jack's voice cuts through, tinny and distorted.

"—completely unacceptable—need you to—professionalism?—"

I fumble for the button to disconnect the call. My hands won't cooperate. They're shaking too hard, fingers fat and useless inside my leather gloves. On the fourth try, I manage to jab the right spot. Silence floods the car, broken only by the wind and my own harsh breathing.

Think, Stella. Think.

My phone. I need my phone. I pat down my pockets, my purse, the passenger seat. There. The corner of my phone case juts out from beneath the deflated airbag. I grab it with numb fingers and thumb the screen to life.

No service. Of course there's no service. I'm at the bottom of a ravine in a Montana blizzard with a smashed car and a pinned leg and absolutely no bars.

The cold wraps around me like a living thing.

It crawls up my trapped leg, settles into my chest, makes each breath feel like inhaling knives.

I should do something. Flag down help. Build a fire.

Except I can't move and there's no one to flag down and I don't know how to build a fire even if I could get out of this mangled death trap.

"Okay." My voice sounds strange in the empty car. High and thin and scared. "Okay, you're fine. You're totally fine. People survive this kind of thing all the time. There was that guy who cut off his own arm with a pocket knife. You're not even close to that bad yet."

Yet.

I squeeze my eyes shut against that thought.

The cold presses closer. Snow continues its steady invasion, piling up on the dashboard, the steering wheel, my lap.

How long does it take to freeze to death?

I remember reading something once. An hour?

Two? Less if you're wet, and my leggings are definitely wet now, soaked through from the snow melting against my body heat.

Time does that slippery thing again. I might doze off. I might pass out. When I surface again, the light has changed. Grayer. Darker. The snow looks blue in the fading afternoon light. My leg has stopped hurting, which seems like it should be good news but probably isn't.

I can't feel my toes.

I wiggle them. At least, I think I wiggle them. There's no sensation to confirm the movement. That's bad. That's very bad.

"Someone will come." I say it out loud because the silence is worse than my own voice. "Someone always comes. This is a highway. There are other cars. Someone will see the tracks where I went off the road and they'll stop and call 911 and everything will be fine."

But the wind swallows my words, and the snow keeps falling, and I'm so cold now that my teeth won't stop chattering long enough to form coherent sentences anymore.

The light fades further. Darker. Darker.

I let my eyes drift closed. Just for a minute. Just to rest them.

A sound jerks me back to consciousness. Something moving outside the car. Footsteps crunching through snow. My heart kicks against my ribs, hope and fear tangling together.

"Help!" The word scrapes out of my raw throat. "Please, I'm stuck, I need?—"

A shadow falls across the broken windshield. Huge. Dark. Man-shaped but too large to be real. The dying light backlights the figure, turning him into a silhouette cut from black paper.

I blink snow from my eyelashes. He's still there. Real. Solid. Moving closer.

Relief crashes through me so hard and fast that tears prick at my frozen eyes. "Oh thank God. Thank God. My leg is trapped and I can't get out and my phone doesn't have service and?—"

He doesn't speak. Doesn't call out reassurances or ask if I'm okay.

He circles the car with heavy, deliberate steps, assessing.

I track his movement through the windows, twisting in my seat as much as the pinned leg allows.

He's wearing dark clothes. Heavy boots. His face is hidden in the shadow of a hood, features obscured.

He stops at the driver's side door. I see his hands now, bare despite the cold, as he grips the door handle and pulls.

Nothing happens. The door is jammed shut, crumpled in the crash.

"It won't open," I tell him through chattering teeth. "I already tried. The whole front end is?—"

He pulls again. Harder. The metal groans but holds.

A sound rumbles from him. Low. Frustrated. He adjusts his stance, plants his feet wider, and wraps both hands around the door frame instead of the handle.

Then he rips the entire door off its hinges.

The shriek of tearing metal splits the air. He tosses the door aside like it weighs nothing, and it tumbles down the snowy embankment behind him, disappearing into the storm. Wind and snow rush into the car's interior, and for the first time, I can see him clearly.

Not him. It.

My breath stops.

He's a monster. Has to be. No man is built like that.

He towers over the car, broad and massive, shoulders blocking out what little light remains.

His face is all hard angles and dark beard, eyes shadowed beneath the hood but catching the faint glow of the dome light when he leans in.

Those eyes pin me in place, and suddenly I'm not sure if I've been rescued or if I've just traded one kind of death for another.