Page 5

Her car slid on the slick, icy snow, and her brakes felt squishy, not responding. What the hell?

Ohmigod, the trooper wasn’t moving, waving his arms and shouting at her to stop!

Her skin prickled with unease as she honked her horn. “Get out of the way! I can’t stop!”

Not that he could hear her through her closed window. Then she saw her next nightmare: he stood in front of his patrol car as if protecting it from her. It wasn’t in the ditch.

At the very last moment, the trooper leaped out of the way and vanished into the snow on the side of the road down the embankment. She frantically slammed on the brakes again, but there was still no response. With quick thinking, she turned the steering wheel to avoid a head-on crash, though she knew it could potentially lead to an equally disastrous outcome.

Her SUV collided with his vehicle with a loud crash. The jarring impact caused the airbag to burst out of her vehicle's steering wheel and dashboard. For a moment, everything was obscured by a vast whiteness. The airbags deflated, and she could see the shattered windshield and the snow-filled landscape, but the trooper’s car was no longer there.

Shards of glass covered the dashboard, and snow blew in through the broken windshield, engulfing her vision in even more white. Snowflakes gathered on her eyelashes, and glassshimmered on her jacket as she realized in horror that her SUV had knocked the trooper's vehicle off the road and into the vicinity where he’d landed in the snow.

She hoped he’d gotten away before her SUV impacted his. As soon as she tried to open her door, she couldn’t budge it. Her back hurt something fierce, and her right hand did, too. She recalled throwing her hand up to protect herself from the airbag's release and injuring it somehow.

But she had to leave the car and check on the trooper straightaway. She swore under her breath as she tried to release her seatbelt, and her back hurt even more. She hoped she hadn’t broken something. She was going to grab her cell phone sitting on its stand, but now it was on the passenger’s floor.

She released the seatbelt and tried again to open her car door, but the impact had crumpled the frame, making the door inoperable. She had to climb over the console and hoped the passenger door would open. Her body strained as she pushed herself up and over the console, her arms and legs shaking with effort. Her phone lay just inches from her fingertips.

Her body strained as she pushed herself up and over the console, her arms and legs shaking with the effort. Her breath was ragged and heavy. The excruciating pain in her back reminded her that she was injured!

The cold, smooth screen of her phone brushed against her fingertips and she grasped it with relief and triumph. She tried calling 9-1-1, but she had no reception.Great.She slipped her phone into her jacket pocket. She pulled on her hat and goggles and put on her ski mask to protect her face from the cold.

Thankfully, she managed to open the passenger door and climb out of the car. “Hey, are you all right?”

She didn’t see any sign of the trooper. Her heart was already racing from the adrenaline in her blood from the accident, and from trying to reach the kidnapped victim. Still, she swore heradrenaline was on overload while she worried that the trooper was pinned under the wreckage.

“Hello? Can you hear me?” She struggled down the slope through the deep snow to reach his vehicle, fearing the worst when he didn’t respond to her.

2

Until disaster struck, Trooper Andy MacMathan had been patting himself on the back for finding so many stranded motorists in this deadly winter storm and getting them to safety, including one man who had lost control of his car and landed down the embankment. Now Andy laughed darkly at himself.

A snowplow had covered the man’s whole car except for his driver’s side mirror. After several police officers had searched for him in vain, Andy found him and got him aid for hypothermia and dehydration.

But now this.

One totaled cruiser, ontopof him, no less. And pain was shooting through his ankle. It was either sprained or something was broken. Not to mention, he was pinned down now.

“Hey, are you okay?” The woman started a mini avalanche as she descended the embankment, the snow rolling down beside him.

Hell, she’d wrecked his cruiser, buried him with it, and injured him, though not gravely, thankfully, but no, he wasn’tokay. But then he frowned. He thought he recognized her voice, but couldn’t place her.

“Do you have a shovel?” Snowflakes buried his goggles as fast as he wiped them off. His muscles tensed as he tried to free himself, exasperated with being trapped.

Silence. Either she did, or she didn’t have a shovel. He figured she didn’t. “I’ve got one in my vehicle.”

She crunched through the crusty snow as she climbed the incline, opened her hatchback, and closed it. She plowed through the snow on her way down to him. She was dressed in snow boots, waterproof pants, a black parka, and a faux-fur hat, and carried a small shovel. Like him, her face was covered in cold-weather protection—goggles and a ski mask to ward off frostbite.

“Are you hurt?” She sounded worried.

“My ankle. It might be sprained.” After that, he immediately took her to task. “You were speeding too fast for the weather and road conditions.” He took another whiff of the air as she tried to dig some snow out from around his left side. “You’re?—”

She frowned. “A polar bear. Like you. Surprise, surprise. Wait…”

“Monica O’Connell?”

“Andy MacMathan?”