Winter's Wonder: Pine Point, Book 2 (9 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Zane stormed to the bar. She knew what he meant? She didn’t have a damn idea what was going through his mind.
You’re leaving me again
. This time, he didn’t even try to pretend it didn’t hurt, didn’t remind him of his father walking out with Christmas carols still playing in the goddamn living room and Goldie whimpering as dear old dad dragged her out the door.

Yes, animals have intuition. Yes, twenty-one cats is about twenty too many to be living in a house. And why do you have to be the one to save them?

But the more Zane turned over the thoughts in his head, the more it all came back to the ache behind his breastbone.
I like you. A lot. And you walked out on me without even saying goodbye.

“Everything okay?” Belinda Zimmerman sidled up to the bar. “Looks like you need another drink.”

But he pushed the empty glass across the bar and shook his head.

“What happened to your date?”

“She had to leave.”

“Why?”

“Emergency at work.” Suddenly, Zane felt like the world’s biggest loser. Here he stood, a grown man sulking because his girlfriend—and, yes, he had grown used to calling her that in his head and in his heart—was putting in unpaid overtime to rescue animals in a snowstorm. He wondered if Becca would even stop to change her clothes or just barrel into the drifts in her impractical leather boots.

“What about you?” Belinda asked as she trailed a finger down his sleeve. “Do
you
have to leave?’

“Actually, I do.” He pushed back his stool. He’d already wasted too much time feeling sorry for himself. But he didn’t have a damn set of wheels, plus, he’d had a couple beers too many over the last hour. His gaze fastened on Belinda’s huge, false-lashed eyes.
Idea
. “Can I ask you a huge favor?”

She rested both elbows on the bar and batted those lashes. “Anything you want.”

He smiled and tapped the enormous diamond ring on her left finger. “Maybe if you were single…”

She lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “Ah. Morals. Just what I don’t like in a guy.” She glanced at the table where her husband still sat. “Fine.” She sighed. “So I don’t get alone time with you. You’re a decent guy, Zane. What do you need? A ride?”

“If you can spare the car.”

“We’ve got it for the whole night. The driver’s probably outside playing games on his phone to pass the time. Lord knows, we won’t be leaving this place anytime soon. Just send him back when you’re done.”

On impulse, Zane leaned over and kissed her cheek, coming away with a mouthful of makeup. “Thanks a million.”

Belinda fluttered her fingers in the direction of the door. “Better hurry. She’s got a good ten minutes on you, and that snow doesn’t look like it’s letting up.”

With the words sparking fear into his veins, Zane grabbed his coat, waved goodbye and hopped into the backseat of a stretch limo for the ride back over the mountain to Pine Point.

Becca stopped at the shelter long enough to change into a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, and a spare pair of Julito’s work boots. She only had thin black stockings underneath, but they’d have to do. She didn’t have time to run home for anything else. She grabbed a pilled black woolen hat and wrapped her long red coat around herself. Then she headed straight for the Kramer house.

A plow passed her on Main Street, scraping the latest coating of snow from the road. She slowed, fishtailed a little and then righted the car in time to slide though the yellow light by the diner. She forced herself to take a breath and uncurl her fingers from their death grip on the steering wheel. The drive over the mountain had been treacherous enough. She didn’t need to end up in a ditch less than a mile from where she needed to go.

He didn’t even try to stop me. Or offer to come with me.
The thoughts bounced around her head as she turned the wipers to high. Maybe she’d misread their night together. Maybe she really was just another warm body to Zane, a way for him to avoid loneliness around the holidays. In that case, she’d be smart to keep her distance. Maybe this call was a blessing in disguise after all. Up ahead, the Methodist Church cast light onto the pavement, and bells played faintly. The week leading up to Christmas, the church played carols every night from seven to twelve. She’d always liked that tradition, the idea that Christmas should last longer than a brief twenty-four hours at the end of December.

She said a quick prayer to the tune of “What Child Is This?” and then turned and followed County Route 78 out of town. Just past the Pine Point limits, the road worsened. She cut her speed to twenty. No moon, no stars, just snow falling from what seemed like every direction. She stopped thinking about Zane and focused on the cats.

“Just another half-mile,” she said aloud. She squinted into the distance. When the lights for Mountain Glen appeared, she’d know to look for the narrow road on her right.

Mountain Glen. Zane. The women from the party
. So much for not thinking about him.

An SUV passed her in the opposite direction, spraying up snow. She braked and slid to the left. “Hang on,” she willed her tires. There. Faint glimmers up ahead. That meant the road to Helen’s would be about another hundred yards on her right.

Becca almost missed it. At the last minute, she swung the wheel hard to the right and swerved across both lanes into Diamond Road. “Shit!” Her SUV slid wide, heading for the ditch. Becca held her breath. Somehow, she stayed on the road. Creeping along at ten miles an hour now, she nosed the vehicle forward. In a few minutes, she spied figures standing along the drifted shoulder, and as soon as she rounded the curve, the Kramer house came into full view, lit up like the Fourth of July.

“Oh, thank God.” She pulled into the unplowed driveway and hauled herself out into the storm. Wind nearly took her breath away, and she buttoned her coat all the way to her chin.

“Bec?” Janet emerged from the dark, covered in snow from head to foot. Her cheeks were bright red, her nose running furiously. “We’ve got eighteen of them.” She motioned to the front porch, where Becca could make out the shapes of Julito and Kevin and cat carriers of various sizes.

She looked around, trying to get her bearings. “Do you have any idea where the others are?”

Janet bounced on her toes and rubbed her arms. “Damn. I think it’s snowing harder than it was a half-hour ago.” She looked around. “I’m going to do another sweep back by the garage.” She motioned at the small structure behind the house.

“What about the woods?”

“We found two right at the edge. Julito wants to go back in there, but there’s a few inside in rough shape.” Janet nodded toward the porch. “I told him to stay with them, get a couple of heat lamps rigged up and find any blankets and towels he could. We’ve got to get them back to the shelter ASAP. Kevin’s got a friend with a van. He should be here soon.”

Janet didn’t say the words. She didn’t need to. They should focus on saving the ones they had instead of going after ones they might not even find.

Becca squinted into the dark. “Do you have an extra flashlight? And a pair of gloves?”

“Bec, tell me you’re not. You’re not dressed for it.”

“If we don’t have all twenty-one, I have to try. I won’t go far. Just to see if there’s any prints, any sign they went in there.”

“The guys have extra supplies in the house.”

“Where’s Helen’s son?” If Becca had any strength left at the end of this night, she’d throttle him with her own bare hands.

“Don’t know. Staying in a hotel somewhere, I think.”

Becca darted inside the porch, took a quick look at the cats huddled in their cages, then pulled on a pair of thick leather gloves and took the Maglite Kevin handed her. “Be careful,” he said. “Remember there’s a ravine about a hundred yards in.”

“Thanks.” She took another thirty seconds to breathe in the protective warmth and light. Then she bent her head against the wind and headed for the darkest, thickest part of the woods. If she were an animal, lost and scared and seeking shelter, that’s where she’d go. No question about it.

Chapter Nineteen

The limo moved slowly through the storm, its tires cutting an even path along the road that led over the mountain. Zane’s legs jiggled with nerves. He checked his phone half a dozen times and finally sent Becca a text that didn’t go through. When he looked outside, all he saw was white against dark. Falling snow and sky. Suddenly, the limo came to a sharp stop, and Zane pitched forward.

“Sorry, sir,” said the driver. “Looks like there’s an accident up ahead.” As he spoke, red lights whirled through the dark, and an ambulance squeezed by them on the shoulder.

Shit. Double, triple shit.
Zane thumbed through the numbers in his phone. He couldn’t sit there unmoving. “Whereabouts are we?”

“Just over the top of the mountain. Think we got a pickup that went into the ditch.”

“Can you get by?”

“Not right now. They probably called for a tow.” The wipers flicked snow from the windshield, but as fast as they cleared the snow, it fell and stuck again.

They were about four or five miles from the edge of town. Zane went through the contacts in his phone again. Ten o’clock on a Saturday night, the roads fast shutting down, and he was stuck in the back seat of a limousine that wasn’t going anywhere.
You can take that white Christmas and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine
, he thought with a scowl. Who’d wished for snow, anyway?

A tow.
Zane blinked. If he hadn’t been so caught up in thinking about Becca, he would’ve realized his answer ten minutes ago. He jabbed a button and waited for his friend to pick up. If anyone could help Zane tonight, it was Mike Springer, who in addition to owning a gym also ran the only towing company in Pine Point. He just hoped Mike was on his way to this wreck, and not on the other side of town pulling someone else out of trouble.

Becca took her time picking through the drifted snow. It took her a long five minutes to reach the edge of the woods, but by the time she stepped inside the thickly packed pines, the wind and snow ceased. Silent. Almost peaceful, if not for her constant shivering. Becca shone the flashlight ahead of her.

There.

Without the wind blowing snow every which way, the paw prints showed up clearly. One set wove a serpentine path through the trees. She bent down to make sure they weren’t rabbit or deer tracks. Someone shouted behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder to see Janet holding two cats, one under each arm. Becca wiped her nose. Good. Maybe only the last one had ventured this way. She straightened and pulled off her gloves to blow on her hands. She could barely feel them. She could barely move them. Her eyes watered, and suddenly the wind must have shifted, because the far-away sound of church carols floated to her.

She jammed her hands back into the gloves and pulled her hat down as far as it could go. At least it wasn’t below zero tonight. The temperature had actually warmed up to almost fifteen degrees, according to the weatherman. Thus all the snow.

Becca followed the footprints. “Hey, baby,” she called into the dark. “You out there? You don’t have to be afraid. I’m right here.” She swept the flashlight left to right, straining for a glimpse of anything that looked alive. As she walked, the branches brushed her shoulders, dumping snow onto her again and again. Twice, she had to stop and rub her face. Her eyelashes felt stiff. Her nose and lips burned.

Five more minutes and I’m turning around
. She’d be no good to the other twenty cats if she caught frostbite tonight.

Something moved in the stillness. Becca froze. She lowered her flashlight and let her eyes adjust to the dark. She whistled low. A meow echoed from the trees to her right. In tiny, incremental movements, Becca turned. She whistled again. It meowed again.

“Okay, I’m coming in there,” she said quietly. She eased her way to the tree and pulled back the low-hanging branches. A terrified-looking black cat, its long hair dragged down with snow, looked back at her. It opened its mouth and meowed again.

Becca squatted and reached forward, but the cat turned and bolted. “Shit.” Thankfully, it was easy to spy against the white snow, and the drifts were so deep in places, it made little headway. It emerged from the other side of the tree and stopped, panting.

“Baby, let me help you,” Becca said. She propped the flashlight against a fallen limb and took halting steps through the snow. This time, exhausted, the cat didn’t even meow a protest. When she bent down and scooped it into her arms, it closed its eyes and nestled into the warmth of her chest.

“There you go,” she murmured. “Everything’s all right now.” Tears slipped down her cheeks but froze in an instant. “We’ve got heat and warm blankets and your friends waiting for you.” She turned back toward the house and stopped. The flashlight must have burned out; either that or the snow had picked up enough that she couldn’t see its beam anymore.
Which way do I go?

“Just follow your steps back,” Becca said to herself, but that was easier said than done. She couldn’t see the lights from the house either, which meant she had to bend over to find her earlier tracks. A branch swiped her across the cheek, and she almost lost her balance. The cat dug its claws into her chest, trying to climb up her shoulder. “Oh, no you don’t.” She tucked it inside her coat and tried to circle around an enormous tree, but almost at once, the ground sloped downward.

“The ravine. Damn.” Becca eyed the subtle shift in the drifted snow. It wasn’t steep or particularly deep, but the ravine ran about a quarter-mile along this part of the woods. She and Ella had played here as children a few times, before her sister had discovered boys and makeup in middle school.
I wonder if it would be easier to go this way
. Though Kevin had warned her about it, the ravine was a straight shot back to the road, without any trees blocking her way.

As if making up her mind for her, Becca’s feet slipped in the snow, and before she knew it, she was tripping down the slope. She gripped the cat tightly, but it barely moved in her arms.
You know, don’t you? You know I’m trying to save you
. Zane was right about one thing—animals did have tremendous intuition. She ran her gloved fingers over its head, trying to soothe it. “Five minutes, ten tops, we’ll be back safe and sound,” she said aloud.

She yawned. Events from earlier in the night—Zane, the kitchen counter, the party—seemed to have happened a hundred years ago. Or perhaps not at all. Her eyesight fogged. One foot in front of the other, she trudged through the snow, now up above her ankles.
Take your time, Bec
. But she could barely feel her extremities, and fatigue crashed over her in waves.

Maybe I’ll just rest for a minute. Catch my breath.
That seemed like a good idea. With the sound of Christmas music still in her ears and the cat pressing into her ribs, Becca sank to her knees in the snow and closed her eyes.