Snowstorm of Our Past novel · Chapter 32 of 32
Chapter 32: Cake in the Snow
"You're on your honeymoon," Gabe said.
"So are you."
"I'm the team leader."
"I'm the forecaster." I pulled the thermal over my head. "And you're short a probe."
He looked at me for one more second.
Then he threw me my socks.
We were at the trailhead on Tennessee Pass by six thirty, in the blue dark, with the snow still coming down.
The rest of the team pulled in behind us one truck at a time.
The kid climbed out still wearing his tie from the wedding under his jacket.
The schoolteacher had brought a thermos and a box of leftover wedding cake.
"For the subject," she said. "When we find him."
The dog handler had brought the dog from the diner.
He jumped out of the truck and sat down on my boots.
A deputy met us at a little silver hatchback buried to its windows at the edge of the lot.
"Twenty-six years old, from Denver," he said. "His sister called it in at midnight. He told her he was doing one lap before the storm."
"Beacon?" Gabe said.
"She says he always wears one. She bought it for him."
I looked up at the slopes above the trailhead.
I couldn't see them. The storm had swallowed everything past the first row of trees.
But I knew them.
I'd written the forecast for them all week.
"Where would he go?" Gabe asked me quietly.
I thought about it.
The wind had come out of the southwest all night, hard. A skier in a whiteout follows the easy line downhill without knowing it.
"He drifted east," I said. "Into the drainage below the old boundary. It funnels down into the trees. If he was smart, he stopped when it got dark and dug in."
"And if he wasn't smart?"
"Then we'll find him anyway."
Gabe looked at me for one second.
Then he turned to the team.
"Mal's call," he said. "East drainage. Line search through the trees, beacons on search. Let's go."
We went up on skins in a line, in the falling snow.
It was quiet.
Just our breathing, and the hiss of skins, and the dog crashing through the drifts ahead of us.
We dropped into the drainage at eight.
The trees closed in. The snow was waist deep in the gullies.
At eight twenty, my beacon beeped.
I stopped dead.
Faint. Far. But there.
"Signal," I said. "I've got a signal."
Gabe was at my shoulder.
"Which way?"
I followed the arrow down through the trees.
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