Snowbound - Harlequin.com

JANICE KAY JOHNSON
15
capable of seeing through that driving veil of white. Her
neck and shoulders and arms were rigid. Somebody would
probably have to pry her fingers from the steering wheel.
Her frozen fingers, she thought morbidly. After the van
disappeared into a snowbank and its tracks filled in. Or
perhaps her fingers wouldn’t be frozen anymore, if
nobody found the missing teacher and her pupils until
spring.
“Wait a minute!” Dieter jerked. “Did you see that?”
She braked. “What?”
“I think…wait. Let me get out.” He reached back
for his parka, grabbed the flashlight from the glove
compartment and sprang out, disappearing immediately
in the dark.
Fiona just sat, too exhausted to move. Too exhausted
to worry, even when he didn’t come back for
several minutes.
“Where’d he go?”
“Why are we stopped?”
One of the girls, voice high and rising, “Are we stuck?”
Fiona was too exhausted to answer, as well.
The passenger door opened again, and Dieter said
exultantly, “There’s tire tracks. And a turn here. I think
there’s a sign. I bet it’s Thunder Mountain Lodge.
Remember how I told you my family comes up here?”
Tire tracks.
“What if whoever made the tracks came out?” Kelli
asked. “And they’re, like, gone, and even if we find the
lodge it’s cold and dark?”
A lodge. Fiona’s mind moved sluggishly over the idea.
“We could build a fire,” she said.