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He turned back to the snow and dug. The set of his jaw told her she’d struck a nerve.

“I think this is good enough.” Chris set his shovel aside. He’d leaned the rifle against the door of the garage while he worked, but Gianna had noticed that he never took his gaze from the woods for more than a few seconds. If someone wanted to shoot at them, the two of them would be easy targets, but they’d agreed to take the chance. He handed her the rifle and bent down to pull up on the giant door handle. The door stuck. He grabbed the handle with both hands, planted his feet, and yanked. It slid upward, its horizontal panels neatly arcing up and into the garage in its tracks.

A set of rectangular headlights stared back at her. The old Ford truck was tall; its giant black tires had huge teeth designed for getting traction in deep snow. She didn’t know the technical term, but she recognized what her friends would call a “redneck truck.” If any truck could handle the snow, this was it. But she understood his doubts; the snow was deep. If those big tires got stuck, they could be stranded.

She crossed her fingers.

His garage was as immaculate as she’d expected. Everything in its place. “Help me with these,” he said as he started to load a few small concrete blocks into the back of what seemed to be the longest truck bed Gianna had ever seen. “It needs some weight over the back wheels.” Together they added a dozen blocks. Chris grabbed a few pieces of wood, two sleds that were hanging on one wall, and several lengths of rope, and stowed them in the bed near the cab. Sliding open a garage cabinet door, he pulled out two heavy-duty canvas duffel bags and added them to the truck’s bed. He saw her watching and said, “Emergency supplies.”

She wasn’t surprised. The man had
always prepared
tattooed on his forehead.

He also pulled out a helmet and a few pairs of ski goggles. “For the snowmobile.” Gianna nodded. The falling snow had bitten into her eyes and skin on her trip back without Frisco. She hadn’t cared much at the time.

Together they shoveled the drifts into a semblance of a ramp leading out of the garage. Once they’d eliminated the drifts, Gianna estimated the snow’s depth to be about two feet. How deep would the truck sink? Was it even possible to drive in snow that deep?

He added their two snow shovels to the bed. “Let’s see how she does.”

It’d been a hard decision, but Chris finally felt it was worth the chance. He’d kept picturing his old Ford stranding them in deep snow, but with Gianna’s suggestion about Frisco’s snowmobile, they now had a solid backup plan. He never liked to make a risky decision without a secondary option. Walking ten miles wasn’t a practical secondary option.

Gianna’s gaze had rested on his duffel bags, but she hadn’t asked questions. He had a second set he kept at his home in Portland and a smaller version in every vehicle. Foodstuffs, flashlight, batteries, Leatherman tools, tarps, blankets, fire starters, to list a few. In other words, peace of mind.

They both held their breath as he started the engine and drove out of the garage. The big tires bit into the snow and the truck groaned as it sank and pushed through the deep white fluff. Chris clenched his teeth. He’d never driven in this depth, but the truck managed. He drove carefully from the garage and parked as close to the cabin porch as possible. His brain filled in the details of the landscape that were buried under the snow, and he steered to avoid the border of small boulders he knew lined the driveway. He loved the old truck. It’d been through hard times and had the scrapes and dents to prove it, but it kept going. Sorta like him.

They stomped the snow off their boots on the front porch and went in to check on Violet. The cardboard boxes he’d set on the kitchen island and asked her to load with food were full. He’d shown her how to use the shotgun before they’d left for the garage, believing it was the best option for her even if the kickback was strong. She didn’t need to aim that much if she was threatened; she just needed the guts to pull the trigger. Her face had paled as he explained how it worked, but she’d paid attention, listening closely and nodding at the right moments. The shotgun was still by the door where he’d placed it when he and Gianna had left.

Violet was nowhere in sight.

“Violet?” Gianna called, looking up at the loft.

Silence.

Chris’s heart rate increased.

The teen stepped out of the tiny bathroom at the back of the cabin, wiping her eyes, and he took a deep breath.

Gianna hurried over to her daughter and took her hand. “What’s wrong?”

Violet slowly shook her head, staring at the floor. “I don’t feel good. I thought I was going to throw up.”

Gianna slipped her arm around the girl’s shoulders and hugged. “It’s anxiety. You know it gets to you. This has been stressful and now we’re about to make it worse.”

Violet brushed her eyes and took a quick glance at Chris, lowering her voice. “This feels different. I think I ate something. Maybe the bacon . . .” Chris heard her and did a mental check of his stomach. He’d eaten nearly half the bacon and felt fine.

“I really think it’s your nerves,” said Gianna with sympathy. “There’s been a lot to take in this morning.”

“My legs are shaky.”

Gianna guided her to the couch and the two women sat. Chris grabbed the garbage can and set it next to the teen. She gave him an embarrassed look.

Should we be leaving if she’s sick? Is Gianna right and it’s just nerves?

He glanced back at the shotgun and wondered if his little lesson had been more than she was ready for.

We need to leave.

The thought hung above his head. He’d been arguing to stay at the cabin for twenty-four hours, feeling it was their best decision, but now he felt the opposite. And the feeling was growing stronger with every passing moment. It’d felt wrong outside; he didn’t know how to describe it, but there was a tension in the woods similar to what he’d felt when he first saw the burned cabin.

Everything is wrong.

He wasn’t a slave to his instincts, but he listened to them very closely. “Is she going to be okay?”

“Yes,” said Gianna simply, keeping her gaze on her daughter. Her expression ordering her daughter to agree with her.

“I don’t know if I can walk . . . if we have to walk,” Violet said slowly.

“We shouldn’t have to do much walking,” Chris said. He told her of her mother’s idea about the sleds and relief flowed through the teen’s eyes. “Let’s finish packing.”

He directed them to carry the food and the heavy coats he kept at the cabin. He fought the urge to pack every blanket and all his firewood into the truck.
Eight miles. Nothing could happen where we’d need all that within eight miles. I know where we are and where we’re going.

He had accurate maps of the terrain in his truck, and he knew that once they made it close to the highway, they’d have cell phone reception.

I can do this.

After a careful scan of the area, he followed them out of the cabin and locked the door behind him. It felt like a useless gesture. If anyone wanted to break into the cabin, they could.

They threw their supplies into the back. He snapped his fingers at Oro and pointed at the open door of the cab. The dog leaped in and sat in his usual place on the passenger side. “In the back.” The dog followed his gesture and scrambled over the center console to the rear bench seat of the extended cab. Chris brushed the snow off the passenger seat. Gianna gave her daughter a hug, and Violet got into the vacated seat.

Gianna had goggles around her neck and the helmet in her hand. Her brown eyes were confident and he wished he felt the same. “I’ll follow you,” she stated. “Good luck.” She stepped through the snow to Frisco’s snowmobile.

Chris watched her go. She looked like a child wearing an adult’s helmet as she climbed on the machine. He settled into the driver’s seat of the truck and started the engine.

Violet stared at the two long stick shifts on the floor of the cab and struggled to buckle the limp seat belt. “How old is this truck?”

“Old,” stated Chris. “Close to twenty-five years. They don’t build them like this anymore.”

The look on Violet’s face said she didn’t find his words reassuring.

We have to get out of here.

He looked out across the faded red hood, hearing an echo of words in his mind, spoken by a young boy decades ago. Determination flowed through him.

This time they’d
all
survive.

Violet wanted to cry.

Her stomach wouldn’t calm down and twice she’d nearly lost the eggs she’d eaten for breakfast. Each time she thought about food, it made her stomach worse, and now the stress level in the cab of the truck was more intense than it’d been in the house. She held her breath and clutched the handle on the cab’s door. Chris’s jaw was clamped shut and his arms jerked with each turn of the wheel as the truck bounced and heaved its way through the drifts. The trip was slow. Twice Violet had looked back, surprised to see how short a distance they’d moved. At least they were still going forward and the heater in the truck blasted hot air in her face.

She wished her mother were with her. Gianna was following on the snowmobile with no apparent problems. Violet wished she’d asked to ride behind her mother. Riding on the snowmobile might be colder, but no doubt it was smoother.

A deep lurch in the snow flung Violet against the door.

“Geez,” she muttered. Chris hadn’t flinched, his concentration on the road . . . actually the lack of road.

Chris wasn’t nervous; he was focused with a laser-beam intensity that Violet found both reassuring and slightly terrifying. Their journey rested on his skills. There was nothing Violet could do to help their situation.

No wonder my stomach’s in knots.

She’d spent too much time feeling out of control over the last few months. First her grandmother’s death and then her mother’s announcement that they were moving. All the way across the United States to some city that didn’t even have a subway system. She’d never been to Portland before, and she’d never seen so many beards in her life. And the beards were on guys barely older than herself. They weren’t old men; these were guys who discussed the IBUs of their beer and spent hours wandering through a used bookstore that occupied a full city block. And bikes—the nonmotorized kind—were everywhere on the roads. Several times her mother had nearly hit one, before she learned to check her right mirror before making a right turn.

Violet missed her friends, her school, and their skinny, tall house with the kind neighbors. But most of all she missed her grandmother. It was a soul-deep lonely ache. For the last six months, each time Violet had walked by Nana’s bedroom it’d felt startlingly empty. She’d begun avoiding that part of the house.

Nana had died in her sleep. A heart attack, her mother said. One day she’d been fine and the next she’d been gone. Each day after school last spring, Violet had stepped into their home and opened her mouth to greet Nana, only to realize the house was empty. Her mother was at work most days, but she had cut back her work schedule after Nana’s death.

She missed Nana with every ounce of her being. No more scents of dinner cooking or the welcome sight of her kind smile after a boring school day. She’d always wanted the gossip about Violet’s girlfriends and asked what boy she was interested in. Her mother never mentioned those things. Her mother asked about grades and homework. It wasn’t until Violet had missed a curfew last summer that her mother took an interest in her friends. Too close an interest. She’d discovered Sean had been arrested for possession and cracked down on Violet’s time with him.

Violet had already figured out Sean was a loser, but when Gianna had ordered her not to see him anymore, it’d made her bitter. Nana would have asked her what Sean did to make her life better and how he made her feel. Gianna saw a one-time drug arrest and put her foot down, claiming that she knew where drug users ended up: her table.

Violet’s eye-roll during that conversation had gotten her phone confiscated for two days.

I didn’t deserve that.