She would need blankets. She pulled three of them off the shelf of the closet next to the bathroom. Throwing them down on the floor beside the front door, she traded her coat for her snowmobile suit, boots and helmet.
She would have to take the snowmobile. Her car would be useless in this stuff, her driveway already blocked. And she would need the toboggan. She used it when the snow was deep to haul supplies from her car to the cabin or to replenish the wood on the porch from the shed out back.
The toboggan was leaning against the porch. When she came away from the cabin, she lowered it and piled the blankets on it. Then she drew the load around the corner of the building to where her snowmobile was parked. Removing the protective cover from the machine, she roped the toboggan to its rear bumper.
The engine kicked in with a roar on her first try with the pull start. Straddling the saddle, she wove a trail up through the snow-laden firs and pines. The headlights of the helpless car guided her like a beacon.
Their glow seemed to grow weaker the closer she got, which had to mean the car’s engine wasn’t running and that the headlights were operating on a battery whose power was dwindling.
Topping the last rise, she arrived at the scene of the accident. A silver sedan lay half on its side, with its back end buried down in a drift and its hood pointed upward.
Braking her snowmobile and leaving the engine idling, Lauren trudged through the snow, fearing what she would find as she approached the vehicle.
She had a flashlight with her, and when she reached the car, she directed its beam through one of the windows. The driver was still inside, sprawled behind the wheel. He was either unconscious or—
But Lauren refused to consider the worst.
She played the flashlight around the interior. No other occupants. That meant she had only the one victim to rescue. And, providing it wasn’t already too late, she could lose him if she didn’t hurry.
With the car’s motor stalled, he couldn’t have had the heater to keep him warm. There was no telling how long he had been out here in the cold. Certainly he would never have survived the night if, by pure chance, she hadn’t spotted his headlights.
Lauren didn’t stop to question the risk. Stranger or not, she had to transport him to the warmth of her cabin. There was no other option.
It was a decision easier made than executed. Just getting at him was a challenge in itself. The driver’s side was jammed down into the snow, which left that door inaccessible. The passenger door was her only entry, and a difficult one when it was at an angle and several feet off the ground. Lauren somehow fought it open and lifted herself inside, noticing the air bag hadn’t deployed. Well, technology wasn’t infallible.
The driver never stirred. Removing her glove, she groped inside the collar of his expensive-looking leather coat. Her fingers pressed against his strongly corded throat, feeling for a pulse. She got one, slow though it was. He was still alive.
But her relief was dampened when she encountered a trickle of blood. The flashlight revealed its source as a wound on the side of his head. Just how serious it was she would need to try to determine when she moved him into the cabin.
The easy part was clambering out of the car, releasing the toboggan from the snowmobile, and positioning it below the open door.
The tough part was placing him on the toboggan. From what she could judge, he had to be all of a solid six feet in length. And a deadweight. But with a combination of tugging, dragging and sheer stubbornness, Lauren managed to wrestle him out of the car and lower him onto the toboggan. What damage she might be inflicting on him in the process she didn’t dare to think about. It couldn’t be helped.
After trussing him up in the blankets and hitching the toboggan to the bumper of the snowmobile again, she went back to the car to switch off its headlights and remove the keys from the ignition.
Pocketing them, she had a last look around the interior. Her flashlight disclosed a small travel bag on the backseat. She took it and placed it on the toboggan with her unconscious passenger.
It was time for her sled to go into action again.
ONCE SHE’D RECOVERED enough wind to do more than wheeze, Lauren addressed her patient.
“A few words of congratulation would be nice.”
He didn’t answer her plea. He remained inert.
“Please.”
No response. Not so much as a flutter of his eyelids.
It really wasn’t his approval she needed, only some form of reassurance from him that he wasn’t going to expire on her. Though, considering what she had undergone to get him here, she was entitled to that congratulation.
The trip itself back to the cabin hadn’t been eventful. It was what Lauren had achieved after the snowmobile delivered them to the cabin that deserved recognition. Since she’d had to get him inside, and since he was clearly far too heavy for her to carry, she’d used the only means she could think of.
Filling the steps and the floor of the porch with snow, huffing and straining, she had hauled the toboggan and its load up onto the porch. Dragged it across the porch, over the threshold of the front door, and somehow arrived with her burden in front of the hearth.
Only then had Lauren permitted herself to collapse on the floor of the living room. It was where she huddled now beside the toboggan. And where, exhausted, she longed to go on huddling. But, whoever he was, the man she had rescued demanded immediate attention.
The fire first. It had shrunk to embers in her absence. Heaving herself to her feet, she placed fresh logs on the grate, made sure they caught and then went off to the bathroom.
When she returned, first aid kit in hand, the fire was blazing again, radiating a welcome warmth. She started to crouch down beside the toboggan and then stopped.
This is no good. You can’t just let him go on lying there on that hard thing.
Yes, but there was no way she could manage to get him up onto one of the beds. Besides, the bedrooms had to be like freezers now.
All right, if she couldn’t take him to a bed, then she’d bring the bed to him. Or the part that mattered, anyway.
Lauren felt like a player in a comic performance as she tussled a mattress off one of the twin beds in the spare bedroom, squeezed it through the doorway, and stumbled over it twice before she was able to deposit it on the floor between the sofa and the toboggan.
Stripping off her boots and snowmobile suit, she knelt beside the sled and unwrapped the blankets from the figure stretched on it. Then, sliding her hands under his back, she heaved him up and over onto the mattress. It took another effort before she was able to roll him over onto his back again.
There. Much better.
Or maybe not. There was still the matter of his head wound. And who knew what other internal injuries he might have sustained. If he had, there was nothing she could do about them.
Leaning over him, she turned his head toward the light of the oil lamp on the table above her. The wound on his temple had stopped bleeding, but it was a nasty-looking gash. She cleaned it with antiseptic from the first aid kit, applied
