Chapter Six
This was not how Lily wanted to spend the night.
She was cold, tired and hungry. The thought of trying to sleep in the snow without even a sleeping bag made her want to cry.
But worse yet was the thought of spending long, idle hours with Scott.
They had gotten along well enough all afternoon, and the other night at the bar, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was judging her, and she could never relax around him.
He was so freaking calm and competent—anything she said or did wasn’t going to be good enough.
But she wasn’t going to tell him any of this. She wouldn’t give him the opportunity to label her as a complainer. Instead, she looked him in the eye and said, “What can I do to help?”
“We need a fire, and we need shelter,” Scott said. “I’ll start the fire. See if you can find some dry wood.” He knelt and began clearing snow from a patch of ground. Both dogs lay down to watch.
She turned in a slow circle. Everything was covered in snow. The few tree branches she spotted on the ground would be soaking wet.
“Look underneath trees and deeper in the undergrowth,” Scott said, not looking up. He had taken out a knife and was shaving a twig into small pieces.
She turned and walked away, heading for the far side of the clearing. She plunged into the undergrowth, snow dumping onto her back, head and arms. She shook off the deluge and pulled at a tangle of branches. What she came up with wasn’t exactly dry, but she supposed it was drier.
Shelby plunged in beside her and began tugging at a branch and biting at the snow. She looked up at Lily, snow crowning her head and back, then shook hard, filling the air around her with a cloud of icy white. Lily laughed. The pup made it impossible to stay in a bad mood.
“What are you doing?” Scott called.
“Getting firewood,” she called, and gathered branches into her arms.
She dumped the wood beside Scott. He frowned at her offering. “That doesn’t look very dry.”
“If you think you can do better, you’re welcome to try.” She studied the small blaze he had made. If it snowed much harder, the fire didn’t stand a chance.
Scott stood. “We need to make a shelter,” he said.
“With tree branches?” She pictured the one they had found at the other campsite.
“A snow cave would be warmer.” He pulled the collapsible shovel from the back of his pack. “Help me pile up a bunch of snow to work with.”
For twenty minutes they shoveled, clearing an eight-foot circle and piling the fresh, wet snow around the perimeter.
“That’s a good start,” Scott said finally.
He stuck his shovel in one pile and pulled a multi-tool from his pocket, opened it and folded out a sawtooth blade, then handed it to her, handle first. “See if you can cut some pine branches. We can pile them beneath us to help insulate us from the cold ground.”
For the next half hour she sawed away at green pine branches, until her fingers ached and her gloves were sticky with sap.
She managed to cut a decent-sized pile of leafy branches, and dragged them back to where Scott was putting the finishing touches on a sort of igloo, with built-up snow sides and tarp-covered branches for a roof.
“Get inside and I’ll pass the branches to you and you can lay them out on the floor,” he said.
Inside, there was scarcely enough room for her to rise up on her knees. When she stretched her arms out, she could almost touch the sides. “Is this going to be big enough?” she asked.
“We’ll need to huddle together with the dogs for warmth,” he said.
She recognized the logic of what he was saying, but her stomach fluttered nervously. She wasn’t worried Scott would try anything…improper. But the thought of being that close to him unnerved her.
“Here. Take this branch.”
She took the pine boughs he passed her and spread them on top of the snow floor of their shelter. When she was done, he handed her a second orange tarp. “Lay this over the branches. Do you have an emergency blanket in your pack?”
“Yes.” The Mylar blankets were standard first aid supplies.
“Good. We can wrap up in those. Now come out and let’s see what we have to eat.”
She joined him by the fire as he fed in larger twigs from which he had shaved the bark, revealing mostly dry wood beneath. The blaze wasn’t large, but it burned bright and hot. “How did you get the fire going so fast?” she asked.
“Cotton balls soaked in petroleum jelly.”
“Huh. I bet you were a Boy Scout.”
“Eagle Scout.”
“I guess that’s where you learned to be so prepared.”
“That and the army.”
“When were you in the army?”
“Eight year ago.” He turned his attention from the fire to his pack. “What have you got in the way of food?”
She opened her pack and pulled out everything she had shoved in there before she left her apartment this morning: protein bars, peanut butter pouches, cheese sticks, nuts, four candy bars, two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, energy gels, two water bottles, instant hot cocoa mix, and two tiny bottles of peppermint schnapps.
Scott cradled the schnapps in his hand. “What made you bring these?”
“For medicinal purposes.”
He laughed—one of the few times she had heard him laugh. It was a nice laugh, deep and rumbling, and it set up a flutter in her chest.
He surveyed the items she had laid out. “You must have been hungry when you packed all this,” he said.
“I thought we would be searching again, and when we found Jackson he would be hungry.”
He nodded, all mirth gone. “Yeah, he probably is. Though maybe whoever is with him has food.”
“We found that candy wrapper,” she said. “I hope that means Jackson is eating something.”
His own contribution to their stores included chicken bouillon cubes, more protein bars, beef jerky, instant coffee, energy gels, and two ham and cheese sandwiches. “We won’t go hungry,” she said.
He took out a metal mug, filled it with snow, and set it on a rock beside the fire. “I only have the one cup, but we can share.”
He made cocoa and added a slug of the schnapps, then offered the mug to her. The hot, sweet liquid was heavenly, sending a jolt of warmth through her. She refrained from gulping it all and passed it back to him.
They shared the sandwiches and a candy bar each, and a second cup of fortified hot chocolate. By the end of the meal she was drowsy and mostly warm.
The dogs ate jerky and one of the ham sandwiches, and some of the bottled water.
“I feel almost human again,” she said as she passed over the empty cup.
“I’m sorry I got you into this situation,” Scott said.
The comment surprised her. “I don’t think you could have predicted this. And I volunteered to come with you, remember?”
“I should have come by myself. I shouldn’t have risked someone else.”
“Isn’t one of the chief rules for recreating in the wilderness not to go out alone?” she asked.
“I should have gone with my original plan to take Connor.”
“Why? Because he’s a man?” Her contented mood had vanished, replaced by weary annoyance.
“No. Because he’s more experienced.”
“What would he have done that I haven’t?” she asked. “Except that he would eat more food and take up more room in the snow cave.”
He nodded. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have said that.”
She leaned toward him. “What is it about me, exactly, that you don’t like?
” she asked. “Because if it’s just the fact that you didn’t personally handpick me for your exclusive team, then you need to get over yourself.
” She clamped her lips shut. Had she really said that out loud?
Maybe the schnapps had been stronger than she anticipated.
He stared at her, his face flushed. This was it. He was going to fire her, and management would back him up. She’d been out of line—even if what she said was true.
“That’s not it at all,” he said.
She remained silent, waiting.
He leaned forward, hands gripping his upraised knees. “I didn’t want to add you to the avy dog team,” he said. “But it had nothing to do with you, personally. I didn’t want to add anyone else to the team.”
“Why not?”
“Because there are some members of the corporation’s board of directors who think the program is too expensive and unnecessary. There’s a big push to cut costs these days. It’s why Kingdom Mountain was shut down—it wasn’t proving profitable enough.”
“Kingdom Mountain was at a lower elevation than SkyCrest,” she said. “The season became too short to be profitable.”
“Right, but they could have added snowmaking or tried to expand terrain. Instead, they shut it down. Some people at the corporate level are pushing to shut down the avy dog program here, too.”
“And one more patroller and dog makes the program that much more expensive,” she said. “But if they really want to cut the program, one team more or less isn’t going to make that much difference.”
He began rubbing Hunter’s ears. “I know that. I was just grasping at straws. I didn’t mean it personally.”
“Instead of keeping this to yourself, you should tell all of us what’s going on,” she said. “Maybe if we all work together, we can come up with new donors or ways to cut costs or improve our image to the board members.”
“I don’t like to worry people that their jobs are in jeopardy.”
“Except it’s the kind of thing we need to know.”
He fed another piece of wood to the fire. The temperature had dropped and while the front of her was warm enough, cold seeped through her clothing into her back. Shelby lay on her side between Lily and the fire, snoring softly.
“I hate that a child is in danger,” he said. “But if we can find him, it might persuade people who matter that the avy dog program is worth it.”
“Do you think Jackson is the one who made that camp we found?” she asked.
“You know him better than I do. Do you think he could have built that shelter and started that fire?”