only the tire tracks from her car. Virgin snow in both directions. No one had passed in quite some time.
A quick glance at the dashboard told her it was already 4:15 p.m. Dusk was approaching with frightening speed, decreasing her visibility. In this part of the world, rural upstate New York, there were no street lamps to illuminate the way.
Dying light stretched out the shadows of the huge pines lining both sides of the road, and huge oaks, their branches whipped bare of leaves, reached to enclose the road in a spiny tunnel of darkness.
Kylie inched forward, trying to get a better grip on the steering wheel. She could barely see the road through the thick cloud of falling snow.
Reaching down, she fumbled for the button on the side of her seat, desperate to get closer to the windshield. No sooner did her hand leave the steering wheel than the back tires of her rented Honda Civic skidded on an icy patch.
She clamped her hand back on the wheel and eased her foot off the gas. Don’t brake. Don’t brake, she chanted, her voice echoing hollowly inside the tiny car.
The car went into a stomach churning slide across the middle line and headed for a ditch on the opposite side of the road. She tried steering into the skid. Pine trees whipped by the window in a blur.
“Damn!”
She fought the wheel and touched the brake in an attempt to ease out of the skid. The car straightened out, but not before the left front tire clipped the edge of the road, sending her bouncing along a deep rut for several hair raising seconds. Finally she was able to steer back onto the snow covered pavement.
Sucking in a shaky breath, Kylie guided the car back onto her side of the road. Lucky for her people rarely used the road during the winter, preferring to visit the lodge during the glorious summer months that were legendary in the Adirondack Mountains. If another car had rounded the curve during her skid, Kylie knew she and the Honda would have been toast.
A tiny trickle of sweat popped up beneath the collar of her ski jacket and slid down the side of her neck. She didn’t make any attempt to wipe it away. It was time to focus and keep both hands on the wheel.
Her shoulders cramped with tension as she realized she had made a big mistake. She should have listened to the clerk in the tiny convenience store in Keene who had warned her of the worsening of the storm. She should have waited until morning to make the trip to the lodge.
But she’d been too eager reach her destination, believing that the sooner she got there, the sooner she could leave. But now Kylie realized that she’d made a serious miscalculation.
Dark, heavy clouds rolled and tumbled overhead, pressing down on the tiny car and unloading a hail of snow and ice pellets with a vengeance. The sleet tinkled ominously against the windshield and froze into stubborn chunks beneath her wipers.
She reached out and pushed the defrost to high, savoring the blast of heat that poured out from the vents and flamed her cheeks. Hopefully the added warmth would melt the ice build-up and prevent her from having to stop, get out and chop at it with the pathetically small scraper sitting on the floor of the passenger’s seat.
The precipitation covered over the icy patches in the road, leaving behind a deceiving blanket of slickness. The wheel shimmied harder beneath her tightly clenched fingers, making them ache.
Something told her that the standard all-weather tires on the little Honda weren’t going to cut it. She should have rented a SUV. But as soon as the thought entered her head, she dismissed it.
Who was she kidding? She didn’t have the cash to rent something as extravagant as an SUV. She’d barely had enough money to keep the economy car filled with gas for the eight-hour trip north. She was down to her last ten dollars and her bank account wasn’t in any better shape.
She pressed the gas pedal, giving the car more speed, hoping the momentum would keep her on track. She needed to reach Cloudspin soon. The thought of ending up in a ditch in the bitter subzero January temperature outside sent a shiver of fear through her.
The sooner she reached the lodge, the sooner she’d find warmth. And the sooner she reached warmth, the sooner she’d be able to complete her business, hop back in the car and return home to her comfortable little apartment in the Bronx.
She smiled to herself without real amusement. Residing in the city had resulted in an increased hatred for the bitter, forbidding winters of the Adirondacks. She hadn’t been back to Cloudspin in over eleven years.
Instead her father had taken on the responsibility of making the trips down to see her. But with him taking care of the lodge and her working on completing her fourth year of medical school, the visits had been few and far between.
Now he was gone and she was coming home to take care of business. Business that meant cleaning out the caretaker’s cottage. A cottage she’d lived in throughout her childhood, witnessing at age eight the slow painful death of her mother from ovarian cancer and watching in wide-eyed wonder the wealthy patrons of Cloudspin vacation in their private, sprawling Adirondack paradise. The contrasts had been stark and painful, making her homecoming bittersweet.
She leaned forward and peered through the ice accumulating on the windshield. The comforting thump thump thump of the wiper blades soothed the tension in her shoulders. Getting closer.
Up ahead, she could make out the final S curve. A few miles beyond that and she’d reach the main gates of the lodge.
Relief washed over her as she eased the car into the final curve. But then, out of the dim light, something fast and dark flashed out into the center of the road.
A skier! Where in God’s name had he come from?
Kylie hit the brake.
She gripped the wheel and watched in frozen horror as the car skidded toward the man poling to reach the cutaway trail on the opposite side of the road.
What kind of fool skied in a snowstorm at dusk? Not to mention doing so dressed in black!
Time shifted into slow motion and the car slid sideways, the tires silent on the smooth ice. The skier glanced up, his expression hard. Determined. He knew the danger.
He dug in, moving for the opening with quick, powerful strides. His shoulders bunched beneath the sleek black jacket and his muscular thighs strained to propel him out of her way.
“Oh, God, he’s not going to make it,” Kylie wailed.
But she was wrong. He reached the cutaway as she skidded past him sideways. She overcorrected and the car fish-tailed.
A sharp crack filled the silence and she cringed. She knew without actually seeing it that one of her tires had hit the back end of his skis.
In the rearview mirror, she saw him stumble and then pitch forward into the snowbank.
She hung on and eased her foot onto the brake. The car slid to a stop on the opposite side of the road and the hood gently hit the snowbank.
Stunned, she sat perfectly still, unable to loosen her death grip on the wheel. But then squirts of adrenaline shot into her bloodstream, hitting her hard. She reached up and unsnapped her belt. As she reached for the door handle, she prayed she’d find him alive.
A blast of frigid air hit her, taking
