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Monica and the two men aiding her finally pulled the older, gray-haired gentleman out of his smashed-up car down the embankment.

“Thanks…thanks. I thought I would freeze to death in there.” The man pulled a big, black, faux fur hat on.

“I’m glad we came along when we did. Let’s get him up to the road and to the Yukon. We’ve got one more vehicle on the road. Has anyone checked on them?” Monica asked.

“It’s a young woman, and she’s belligerent. Every time the trooper tried to get her to open her car door, she screamed obscenities at him,” the one man told her.

“Okay, can you take this gentleman to the Yukon, and then I’ll help Andy deal with the woman?

” They needed to move the drunken woman’s car, which was not as badly damaged as some of the others—a crunched right rear fender and scrapes along one side of the car where someone’s car had slid alongside it.

Maybe they could get the older couple's and the woman’s car and safely transport everyone out of there.

“Yeah, sure,” the one man said.

“Thanks so much for helping out.” Monica followed Andy to the belligerent woman’s car.

“I couldn’t get her to open her car door.” Andy sounded exasperated. “I believe she’s drunk or high on something.”

Monica eyed the wild-haired woman in the car, screaming obscenities at them. “Oh, that’s just great. We need to turn this car around and use it to head back to White Bear. Unless we return to Harvey’s motel and set everyone up in the various rooms until we can get help.”

“Because Eloise took Wendell’s truck from the motel, I’m afraid she knows where they’ll all be, join Denny and the gang, and they’ll have a ride out of there. They might go to the motel to rescue Harvey if they got some more gas,” Andy said.

“All right. We need to get this woman out of her car then.”

Andy touched the frosted window with his gloved finger. “I would break the window, but I don’t have a tool on me to do the job.”

“We can’t stay out in this cold and freeze to death while trying to convince her to open the door.” Then Monica had a thought. “My flashlight. It’s in my backpack.”

She hurried back to the Yukon and pulled her flashlight from the backpack. When she returned to the woman’s car, one of the men helping them joined them.

“I’ve got one of those emergency hammers to break out a car window,” the man said.

“I’ll get it,” his companion said and trudged through the snow to the car down the embankment to get the hammer.

When he brought it back up, he handed the hammer to Monica. She broke out the front passenger’s window. Then she opened the door as the woman screamed at her. “No!”

An open, half-finished bottle of vodka was sitting on the floorboard of the front passenger’s seat, which reminded her of the other woman, Eloise, who had been in Wendell’s camper-covered truck and the bottle of gin.

Monica climbed into the car, reached over the driver—who shoved at her and screamed like a toddler having a tantrum—and unlocked her door.

Andy yanked the door open and pulled the woman out of the car. Monica quickly joined Andy to help him confine her.

“Get off me! Stop! Don’t touch me! Let me go!” the woman screamed. “You have no right to touch me!”

“This is my last pair of handcuffs,” Monica said while she and Andy struggled to get the woman into the cuffs.

“Let’s hope we don’t have to arrest anyone else.” Andy was trying to pin the woman down on the snow-covered road as Monica tried to get the cuffs on her wrists. “Quit resisting, ma’am.”

The drunk woman kicked at Andy and Monica and connected with Andy’s leg. “You’ve just committed battery on a law enforcement officer,” Andy said.

“I don’t care! Let me go!”

“Okay, what do we do now?” Andy pulled the woman up off the road.

“Let me go.”

Monica said, “We should settle people in the three vehicles that can move and then head out. I suggest that the two cars involved in the accident that had been damaged drive ahead of us so we can make sure they don’t have trouble along the way.”

“Agree. How do you want to split up the people?”

“My brother and I can drive the car with the broken window,” the one man said, his gaze shifting to his brother—and she felt there was an unspoken communication between them.

“Yeah,” his brother agreed. “It would be too cold for anyone else to ride in it. We can cover it with an army wool blanket that will work.”

“Are you sure?” Andy asked.

“Yeah. Then you can take the drivers and passengers in the other two vehicles.”

Monica wasn’t too sure about these guys. She wasn’t certain what was making her senses feel that something wasn’t quite right about them—she should have just been grateful they hadn’t been injured and were helping—but she didn’t exactly trust them.

She got Andy to the side of the road out of their hearing as the brothers went down the embankment on the other side to get the blanket and maybe their personal items out of their car.

“There’s something not quite right about these guys.

They seemed so keen to move away from their car right after the accident.

When they realized you were a uniformed law enforcement officer, they were eager to help. ”

“Watch what they’re bringing up from their car.”

“I’ll do that. You ask the older couple who own the car if they want to come with me and I’ll drive it. They both appear too visibly shaken to drive,” Andy said.

“Okay.”

The drunk woman was still screaming her head off about being released. “You have no right to cuff me!”

“What do we do with the drunk woman?” Monica was exasperated that they had to deal with her on top of everything else.

“You can’t take her to the Yukon with Harvey there. She would have to sit in the back. She’s so loud and aggressive, I’ll have to take her if the owners of the car are all right with it,” Andy said.

“That sounds good to me. I’ll go talk to the other couple then.”

Monica glanced at the two men down the embankment and thought they were taking a long time to gather whatever they needed from their vehicle. When she reached the Yukon, she told the couple, “Andy is going to drive your vehicle if that’s okay with you. You can ride with him if you would like.”

“Oh, sure.” The gentleman looked less pale now. “This is my wife Jessica, and I’m Tom Richardson. After that wreck, I feel a little shaky.”

“I don’t blame you. I’m Monica O’Connell. Are you all right otherwise?” Monica sure didn’t want him to be suffering a stroke or heart attack.

“No, I’m okay.”

Monica looked back at his wife. “What about you, ma’am?”

“I’m okay. Just shaken up. If the trooper drives our car, that’s fine with me.”

“Perfect. I have one other question. We arrested a woman in the other car that we’ll be driving back to White Bear or the first location we can reach. She’s drunk and belligerent and kicked Andy while resisting arrest. I’ve got a prisoner in the back of the Yukon?—”

“My vehicle,” Harvey reminded her.

“So is that all right if she travels with you?” Monica asked the couple.

“Yeah. We’re both retired cops, so we’re used to pulling over drunk drivers,” Mrs. Richardson said.

“Great! I’m so relieved. I was afraid you might be offended.”

“She can’t say anything we haven’t heard already,” Mr. Richardson said.

The couple left the Yukon, and Monica walked with them back to their car.

“We’re going to start the car and make sure it’s running all right, but from the looks of it, it appears it should be okay.” Andy started the engine.

“They said they were fine with having the drunk driver in their car.” Monica was so pleased to have retired law enforcement officers with them who knew the ropes. “They’re retired police officers.”

“Oh, great.” Andy smiled warmly at them.

“We’ll sit in the back seat,” Tom said. “You can keep the drunken driver in the front seat.”

The owners climbed into their car. Then Andy went to get the drunk woman into the passenger seat and strapped her in. She finally looked like she was about to fall asleep and was no longer combative, thankfully.

Once they shut the doors, Monica asked Andy, “Are the two men still in their vehicle?”

“Yeah, I’m going to check on them. This is taking too long.”

“I’ll go with you.” She was starting to have a bad feeling about this.

Monica and Andy headed over there, but before they could start down the embankment, the two brothers hurried out of the vehicle, each carrying two black bags and an olive-drab army blanket.

“Hey, are you ready to go?” The man sounded slightly startled that they were coming for them.

“Yeah, we thought you might need some help,” Andy said. “We’re ready to leave.”

“No, no, we’re good. You can see how hard it was to get into the car the way it had plowed into the snowbank and was half buried in snow.”

“Right.” Monica still felt they had taken way more time to get their bags out. They didn’t look like bags filled with clothes and personal items someone would take on a trip.

“We can follow behind you.” The man readjusted the one bag on his shoulder.

“No. You’ll go in the middle. We don’t want the wrecked vehicles following in the rear of the caravan if either of them should have car trouble,” Andy said. “We wouldn’t want to leave you behind by mistake.”

The two men exchanged glances. Why would they want to drive behind the caravan unless they planned to take off in the other direction, which was probably the way their car was going from the track their car was pointed in?

“Where were you going?” Monica tried to decipher what was going on with these two.

“Just west of here to see some friends of ours. They’ll be worried that we never showed up.”

“Well, when we get somewhere that we have reception, you can call them and tell them where you are and that you’ll be a little late.” Monica sure hoped they would get reception too.

“Yeah, all right, but the first place we come to, we’re getting some other form of transportation. You can have someone else take the car to White Bear because we were going the other way,” the one man said.

“Sure. That will work.” Monica was even warier of their intentions now. “Andy, we need to move the kids’ car seats to the Yukon.”

“On it.”

The two of them went down the embankment, retrieved the car seats from the car, and carried them to the Yukon. The mom secured one of them while Andy got the other. Monica checked on Harvey. He looked like he was barely staying awake, no longer combative, which worried her.

“We need to get him some medical attention soon,” Monica said to Andy.

“Absolutely. We're leaving as soon as we get the kids buckled in.”

The brothers got into the drunk woman’s car and turned on the ignition.

Monica told Andy, “The bags the brothers were carrying didn’t look like luggage.”

“No.”

“I didn’t smell drugs on them,” she added.

He shook his head. “I didn’t either. We really can’t detain them without more to go on, though. Besides, we don’t have any more handcuffs.”

“Maybe we’ll get some reception and learn something more before they ditch the car.”

“All right. Let’s get moving before these cars conk out on us or run out of gas.”

Monica climbed into the Yukon’s driver’s seat. Andy returned to the older couple’s vehicle. They drove off, with the brothers in the middle of the caravan and Monica in the rear.

“How do you feel?” Monica asked the man with the fur hat.

“I’m good. Once I was out of the car. I had a horrible case of claustrophobia.”

“I don’t blame you. I would have too. How are you doing back there?” Monica asked the mom and kids.

“We’re good. I’m so glad you came along to help us. No one else showed up,” the woman said.

“In these conditions, it’s understandable. Especially since none of us have cell reception to call out for help.”

“We might not have had the accident if those two men hadn’t been trying to pass me at such a high rate of speed,” the woman said. “They even knocked Mr. Holmes’s car off the road.”

“The two men who were helping us?” Monica was surprised, despite feeling something was off about them. Was it because they had caused the accident and thought they would get fined?

“Yeah. I was so angry when their car spun around after hitting Mr. Holmes’s car and hit mine. I lost control of my car and went off the shoulder and down the embankment,” the woman said.

Mr. Holmes resettled himself on the front passenger seat and removed his hat. “I’m just grateful that no one was badly injured.” He glanced at Monica. “At least you’re going in the direction I wanted to go.”

“Not us. We were visiting my brother and his wife and returning home,” the mom of the two daughters said.

“When we get somewhere with reception, you can call them and arrange to get home.” Monica felt bad for everyone involved in the accident. She was surprised to hear that the drunken woman hadn’t been the cause of the pileup. “I guess the Richardsons were behind all of you and then ran into?—”

“Those two men’s car,” the woman said. “The drunken woman plowed into their tail end. That made the speeder lose control, and he drove off the shoulder and down the embankment. I was glad since they’d caused the accident in the first place.

I would have been angered if they had just driven off and left us all in a mess.

And I’m sure they would have.” She kissed her daughters’ cheeks.

“Of course, at the time, I hadn’t known the driver of that last car was inebriated. ”

“The weather conditions are bad enough. No one should have been trying to navigate these roads under the influence.” Monica got a call on the Yukon’s Bluetooth startling her. The caller ID showed it was from Wendell. She glanced back in the direction of the hatchback.

The woman looked over the back seat. “He’s sound asleep and lightly snoring back there.”

“Good.” Monica answered the call but said nothing, hoping to learn where Wendell was now. Had Eloise made it to the cabin? How did he have reception?

“Hey, Harvey, where the hell are you? Eloise said that she woke up to find two cops in my truck, and they drove it to your motel. She took off in my truck when she heard shots fired in the lobby. Luckily, there was a gas can in storage in the camper bed. When we reached the motel, there was no one there. So where the hell are you?”