Chapter Two

      The stranger’s strong grip on Tessa’s arm loosened and then dropped away.

      A low cry of distress escaped her. Oh dear Lord, was he dead?

      She ripped off a mitten and touched the side of his throat. The skin was cool beneath her fingers. His face had a grayish cast. But there was a pulse. She felt it beating, steady and true, against the pads of her first and middle fingers. And when she bent her head so her cheek was near his mouth, she felt his breath. Slow. Warm.

       Alive.

      His breath was sweet. But his jacket reeked of alcohol. Strange. But not the issue.

      Help. Getting the man help. That was the issue.

      She jumped to her feet. Thick snow whirled around her. She longed for a cell phone. But she rarely carried hers with her in town. No point in it. In North Magdalene, the mountains messed with the signals and a cell worked intermittently, at best.

      She stared down at the man again. It seemed wrong to leave him alone in the snow, but what else could she do? Try and move him to the warmth of the house?

      No. They always said it wasn’t safe to move the badly injured, that you should wait for the EMTs.

      Swiftly, she struggled out of her heavy jacket. Kneeling again, she settled it over the top of him, tucking it close. “I promise,” she whispered, smoothing his snow-dusted black hair off his forehead, careful not to touch the angry-looking gash there. “I’ll be right back…”

      Again, she jumped up. That time, she made for the house, racing as fast as she could through the deepening snow. Inside, Mona Lou, her aging, deaf bulldog, and Gigi, her skinny, white, shorthaired cat, were sitting side by side in the front hall.

      “Woof,” said Mona Lou.

      “Reow?” asked Gigi.

      She dodged around them, headed for the wall phone in the kitchen, pulling off her mittens as she went.

      Silence greeted her when she put the phone to her ear. She jiggled the hook. Nothing. A snow-laden tree branch had probably taken down a line somewhere. And judging by the look of the storm out there, the PG&E crews would be a while getting to it. She couldn’t count on it coming back on any time soon.

      What now?

      She hustled to her bedroom, her dog and cat at her heels, and grabbed the cell she’d left by the bed. She tried 9-1-1. Nothing happened, except a pair of short beeps a few seconds later that meant the call had been dropped before it ever connected. She tried again.

      No good. So all right. She would have to move the unconscious stranger herself, after all. Somehow.

      And quickly. The snow was coming down so fast and thick now, it was going to be hard to see two feet in front of her face out there. At least her Subaru wagon had all-wheel drive. She would have to get the stranger into it and take him to the clinic herself.

      Somehow…

      Sled, she thought. She had a small one, a gift from her dad years and years ago, propped up on the enclosed front porch. She put her mittens back on, whispered, “Wish me luck,” to Mona Lou and Gigi, and grabbed another jacket. She got a wool blanket from the closet and snatched her car keys from the key rack in the kitchen. As ready to face the near-impossible challenge as she was likely to get, she rushed back out the way she had come, only pausing to command Mona Lou, “Stay.”

      The dog couldn’t hear much, but she picked up expressions and body language. She dropped to her haunches with a disgruntled whine.

      On the porch, Tessa grabbed the sled and hoisted it under her free arm. The porch door bumped shut behind her as she emerged into the storm.

      Lucky she’d put her purple coat on the man. The wind was blowing so hard, the heavy-falling snow swirling and eddying. She would have had to spend several precious minutes walking in circles until she stumbled on him—if not for the bright purple quilted fabric wrapped around his chest.

      Muttering unheard apologies for moving him, she managed to hoist his head and torso onto the too-short wooden slats. She tucked the coat around him tighter and wrapped the blanket around the coat and under his legs. He didn’t look comfortable, not in the least. His poor head was canted at an odd angle on the red steering bar, his legs and feet dragging in the snow.

      But it couldn’t be helped. She couldn’t carry him—she was strong, yes. But not that strong. What there was of the sled would have to do most of the work. Pausing only to check one more time and make sure he was still breathing—he was, thank the Lord—she looped the sled’s towrope over her shoulder and hauled him, with considerable effort, toward the Subaru, which was parked in her driveway not far from the house.

      How she did it, she hardly knew. But grunting and puffing, she dragged the man’s limp body to the door behind the driver’s seat. She even managed, by bracing herself in the open door and getting him firmly beneath her arms, to hoist him up across the backseat. Then she threw open the other door, wedged herself at the end of the seat, and dragged him the rest of the way inside. Finally, she raised his knees enough to get his boots clear of the door, tucked the coat and blanket around him again and shut both doors on his still form.

      Panting, starting to sweat in spite of the frigid wind, she got behind the wheel and turned on the engine. Switching the heater on high, she aimed the defrost jets at the frozen, snow-thick windshield, which wouldn’t be clearing any time soon unless she gave it a hand.

      With a low moan of impatience and frustration, she found her scraper in the console, got out and scraped at the icy snow frozen to the glass, aware the whole time that precious seconds were ticking past and the stranger needed aid immediately. When she had the glass mostly cleared, she climbed behind the wheel again, shifted to reverse and backed the wagon toward the snow-covered road.

      Luck was with her. She got turned around and pointed in the right direction, even got onto the road. But the snow was coming down so hard and so fast, she could hardly see, even with her wipers going full speed—which they weren’t, since the snow had piled up so swiftly on the windshield, her wipers were laboring almost from the start. She saw that the snow would stop them. So she put it in park, got out and tried again to clean the snow out of the way.

      Behind the wheel once more, she forged ahead. But the wipers were laboring again almost immediately, even though she had the defroster going full blast. The snow was just too much. She’d never seen such a storm.

      Then the wipers stopped.

      She turned them off, and then started them again. They made half an are of the windshield, scratching ice, dragging snow, and then quit. So again, she turned them off. She stopped the wagon, got out, and again went through the process of brushing as much of the snow free of the wipers and windshield as she could.

      When she got back behind the wheel, she tried them again. They worked. For a minute or two. But it was no good. No wipers in the world could keep up with the sheer volume of the white stuff tumbling down from above.

      She tried leaning her head out the side window and driving that way. But the whirling snow made it almost impossible to see more than a few feet in front of her nose.

      It wasn’t going to happen. She didn’t dare go on.

      Moaning in distress for the unconscious man on the seat behind her, she put the Subaru in Reverse and backed it the way she had come. It was rough going, agonizingly slow.

      But she made it at