Snowstorm of Our Past novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: Hey, Kid

Gabe's hand stopped halfway down into the hole.

For a second, nobody moved.

The wind blew snow off the broken roof and down onto all three of us.

"Dale?" Gabe said.

The man's smile went away.

"Don't know any Dale," he said. "You got the wrong guy, kid."

"You just called me kid."

"I call everybody kid. Get this beam off my leg."

Gabe stared at him.

I watched his face go white under the wind burn, then hard.

"Mal," he said, very quietly. "Get the splint."

We worked the way we'd been trained.

The dog handler and the kid braced the beam with a shovel handle. Gabe and I lifted.

The man screamed through his teeth when his leg came free.

His knee was already swelling through his canvas pants, but nothing was sticking out.

Gabe splinted it without a word.

His hands were perfectly steady. His jaw wasn't.

"What's your name, sir?" the dog handler asked, kneeling with the blanket.

"It's on the mailbox."

The kid went and looked.

He came back and read out a name that wasn't Dale's.

The man nodded.

I looked at him while they rolled him onto the sled.

The long gray beard. The weathered face. The crew cut grown out into a shaggy cap.

The broad, smiling man in the photo by the chapel altar was in there somewhere, under ten years and forty pounds.

He caught me looking.

"You're the girl," he said. "The one who dug the lieutenant out."

I didn't answer.

I took my phone out of my jacket and photographed his face.

Then I took another one, closer, while he was squinting up at the sky.

"Hey," he said. "Put that away."

"It's for your chart," I said.

It was the first lie I'd told all winter.

The clouds had lifted off the lake by the time we got him down to the road.

The helicopter was coming in low over the water.

"I'll fly with him," Gabe said.

"Gabe."

"I'm the medic on shift." He looked at me, and his eyes were wild. "And I'm not letting him out of my sight."

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