Page 3

C old, depleted, and depressed, Adam made his slow way back to where he’d run the truck off the road. He needed to pull himself together before facing Peter again. Reliving the horror for Peter wouldn’t help his brother. Peter had already experienced more than his fair share of heartache.

Although he and Peter had suffered the same loss, Adam had more memories. Peter had only been twelve. Too often, Adam would recall something about Dad or Mom, and Peter’s face would go blank, needing cue after cue before it sparked recognition.

Not that Adam would ever forget, but tonight was a moment he’d never want to recount.

How would he even be able to explain what happened without breaking into tears?

He hadn’t even insisted on seeing Thomas.

Should he have? Was it better that his last memory was Thomas asking without words: You good ?

Or should he have asked to bury Thomas himself?

Adam glanced up at the night sky. The storm had come to a near stand-still with only an occasional burst of snow flurries.

The sudden storm — and its just-as-sudden departure — felt ominous, as if the drug dealers brought the blizzard with them.

Or… maybe what had been meant for evil worked for the good.

If the storm hadn’t hit so quickly, Adam might not have driven the truck off the road.

If he’d successfully turned the truck around, both he and Peter might also have died.

Adam stopped in his tracks. Moonlight on fresh snow made everything clearer than it should have been.

The truck lay straight ahead, not in the ditch.

He approached cautiously, praying there hadn’t been another team of bad guys who’d — please , God, no — confronted Peter.

He wouldn’t be able to handle losing Peter, too. He was all the family Adam had.

Holding his breath, Adam peered through the fogged-up window before reaching for the door handle, but he couldn’t see through the haze and grime.

Dear God … Please. Please let Peter be safe .

He clenched the silver door handle and yanked. The rusty hinges shrieked like a territorial screech owl.

Peter reared up off the seat, fists lifted. “What the — oh, Adam!” His kid brother launched himself out of the truck and into Adam’s arms. “I was so scared. I got the truck out of the ditch, but then I didn’t know what to do.”

So much for his composure. When Peter released his grip, Adam squeezed him tighter, holding on for dear life.

No doubt, Peter had heard the gunfire.

“A… ad… am,” Peter stammered. “You’re crush… ing… me.”

Adam released his grip and lowered his head, gesturing to the truck. He fought back tears; he couldn’t let Peter see him fall apart. He needed to be strong for his brother.

To Adam’s utter relief, Peter scurried back inside the truck — no questions asked.

Adam scooted into the driver’s seat and stared forward at nothing but inky blackness in the distance. He didn’t even have a driver’s license. How was he supposed to get a job and take care of Peter when he hadn’t even earned the right to drive?

Yeah, he could drive — he’d been driving his father’s tractor, dirt bikes, and their three-wheeler for years.

Oddly enough, the three-wheeler had been the one thing Adam hadn’t been sorry to see go.

When Thomas announced that he was selling it right after their parents died, Adam felt relieved.

Peter had pled with Thomas and Adam that they’d ridden the three-wheeler when they were his age.

Yep, they had, and both he and Thomas had flipped the dangerous beast more than once.

Driving the truck on the highway, though…

The fact of the matter was that Adam had never concerned himself with getting a license because there wasn’t anywhere he needed to go.

Even if he had wanted to go somewhere, he certainly couldn’t afford to fill up the gas-guzzling F-100.

The only time he ever left the property was when Thomas took him to school or the occasional party.

Other than the special drive-in-movie night, it’d been forever since Thomas went out with friends.

The last time Adam had gone with him was right before their parents died. The night Adam had connected with —

“Adam?”

Peter’s one-word question snapped Adam back to the present.

Adam continued to stare at the deserted road, though. “Yeah?”

“What are you doing?”

Adam turned and faced his brother. “I don’t have a license.”

Peter flicked on the overhead light, then pulled the backpack off the floor, digging through it. He pulled out Thomas’s driver’s license. Their older brother had gotten his license the day he turned sixteen, then begged his parents to use the truck to take out his girl, Lala.

Peter held up another ID to the dome light. “I never noticed how much you look like Thomas —”

Adam took the ID from Peter and stared at it — Thomas’s temporary access badge. Adam had forgotten that Thomas pre-registered for the U.S. Coast Guard Reserves in high school. He’d received the badge so he’d have access to training events, but then never followed through.

Anger battled with grief. Adam dropped both IDs on the floor.

I might look like Thomas today . But every day that passes, I’ll look a little less like the kid in that photo . I’ll keep aging. Thomas won’t. He’ll always be eighteen .

Eighteen … Tears exploded from Adam’s eyes, so he reached up and switched off the light.

He turned the key in the ignition, pulled the knob for the headlights, then shifted the gear.

Thomas should have entered the military with Jeff, or at least finished entering the U.S. Coast Guard Reserves. Thomas should have shipped the two of them off to a foster home. Thomas should have… How many times will I have to play over the should-haves in my head ?

Adam pushed the pedal to the floor, speeding down the center of the highway, so there was less chance he’d run off the road again.

“You shouldn’t have forced me to leave,” Adam muttered under his breath, hoping that the roar of the engine drowned out his cries and senseless words, words that no longer mattered.

He had left. And nothing would change that.

Nothing would bring back his brother. Thomas was everything to him.

Yeah, Thomas had screwed up, but what he’d done, he’d done out of love.

God help me , Adam prayed silently. If Peter ever utters another bad word about Thomas, help me not to throw him down .

At the intersection of their road and Park’s Highway, Adam looked both ways — not that anyone would be out past midnight; well, no one other than drug-dealing murderers — then carefully turned left.

The radio crackled softly, the silence broken by a familiar chord. Free Bird . Lynard Skynyrd. Thomas’s favorite song.

Peter reached for the knob, turning up the volume.

“No.” Adam’s voice was low, but he flicked off the radio hard enough to rattle the knob.

Peter’s hand hovered over the dash. “Dude, I love that song. Thomas said it was the —”

“I know what he said,” Adam said quietly, eyes locked on the road. “I have to concentrate. The road is slick.”

After a few minutes, Peter removed his jacket, rolling it up like a bedroll and shoving it between the seatback and window.

He curled his long lanky legs beneath him and rested his head on the makeshift pillow.

A few minutes of soft whimpers emanated from Peter’s side of the cab, but then his breathing settled into a deep and steady rhythm.

The car remained silent as Adam carefully threaded the mostly two-lane highway.

He did his best to follow the tracks of previous drivers, mindful of the high snowbank on his left.

Like the road to his house, the right side of the highway — the east-facing side — got more sun, so the snowbank was shorter, nothing like the five- to ten-foot drifts on the east side of the road.

Even driving south, the left-side of the road was still dangerous.

If he hit black ice or, stupidly, swerved so he didn’t hit a moose, he could end up buried in that snowbank.

His grip on the steering wheel tightened as he recalled Dad telling Thomas when he was teaching him how to drive, “Ya go slipping in’ta one of those snowbanks, and no one’ll fin’ ya ’til spring. Parks swallows cars like The Big Su swallows trees — whole.”

Squished on the bench seat between Thomas and their father, Adam hadn’t thought much of the warning at the time, just chalked it up to one of Dad’s lessons.

Adam scoffed quietly. His father had taught them how to hunt — and not be prey — and yet, he’d never warned them about gun-wielding drug dealers who showed up at midnight.

While their father was a horse trainer by trade, he worked search and rescue whenever needed, so he was forever teaching his sons about the dangers of the land.

Ironically, even with all of his father’s training, both he and his mother had died in an auto crash — after a 7.

6 magnitude quake caused landslides and cracked roads.

Adam blinked back the memories and the tears that came with them.

* * *

Although the sun wouldn’t come up for another hour or so, deep-pink and red-fringed clouds hovered above the white-draped Chugach Range.

At just over thirteen thousand feet, Mount Marcus Baker stood out among its neighboring peaks, which average around six to seven thousand feet.

Thomas had said that even though Denali was seven thousand feet higher, technical challenges and glaciers made Marcus a tougher climb.

Still, Thomas had insisted that someday …