She stuffed the coat and blanket into the bin on the back and climbed astride. Even the keys looked rusty.
It coughed to life on the third try. The vibrations from the engine shook her bones, but the gas tank was full.
She managed to shift the machine into drive and, after a few necessary seconds getting a feel for the accelerator and suspension, she gunned it.
She followed the tracks away from the house, away from the worried Lois. The wind, on one of the higher points of the island, was bitter and brisk, already erasing parts of Ben’s trail. Her tracks would be easier for the search team to follow.
The woods loomed in front of her, beautiful and brutal. Snow clung to naked branches and sharp needles. The sky melted into the horizon of the hill. White on white. Thick clouds bringing the promise of more snow soon.
“Couldn’t have picked a nice warm summer day to wander off,” Remi said to herself over the whine of the engine. Glancing over her shoulder, she noted the cloud of blue smoke. She was definitely going to have to make sure Lois had this beast serviced when she got back.
When she got back with Ben.
The trail was wide and thankfully neatly groomed. She wished she would have asked Lois what her husband had been wearing. Hopefully it wasn’t white or brown like every damn thing in front of her.
Trees speared toward the white sky above. Boulders and brush shot up out of the snow from below.
The trail crested the hill and opened into a small pasture. The airport was just to the north. But the forest thickened ahead. The tracks were getting fainter, and she urged the engine to go just a little faster. She couldn’t afford to lose the tracks.
Wincing, she spotted an empty indentation in the snow. He’d fallen. Or sat down. Then got back up. In another spot, his tracks circled themselves before continuing on.
She had to be getting close. Another gust of wind hit her from the side, stealing the breath from her lungs.
She heard the faint wail of sirens in the distance. The island was small enough that residents always knew when there was an honest to goodness emergency.
“Thank god,” she whispered. The trail dipped down and to the right around an outcropping of rock. She followed it another twenty feet before the tracks stopped.
“Damn it.” She stood on the back of the snowmobile and scanned in all directions. Had he turned around? Had he followed his own footprints back and then veered off the trail?
“Ben!” she shouted into the icy wind. “Ben Kleckner!”
She paused but couldn’t hear anything over the ticking of the engine. She shut it off and repeated the call.
“Ben!”
Silence.
“Ben Kleckner! I have cookies!”
Her body tensed before her ears even registered the sound. It was faint and far away. Carried by the wind. It sounded like “help.”
“Ben!” she bellowed. “Where are you?”
There was no response that she could hear.
“Damn it,” she muttered.
She zeroed in on the direction she thought the sound had come from and started the engine again. Down the trail, she went another fifty feet before turning the engine off and repeating her calls. The wind was picking up, and the flakes in the air looked suspiciously like new snowfall, not white stuff tumbling off branches.
Another fifty feet. “Ben!”
“Help!”
This time she heard the cry more clearly. Her heart pounded in her chest as her teeth started to chatter. “I’m coming! Where are you?”
“Help me.” The plea was feeble, and Remi realized she hadn’t thought about what condition she might find him in.
“I’m coming, Ben. If you can move, head toward the sound of the engine!” she shouted. Her throat was raw. The cold stripped the air from her lungs, burning them. She did not have time for an asthma attack right now.
Breathe. In. Out.
The engine coughed but wouldn’t turn over. Finally, on the fourth try, it choked to life. She followed the direction of Ben’s voice and veered off the path into the woods, heading downhill.
She wanted to fly through the trees and rocks to get to him, but running the man down with his own machine wouldn’t exactly constitute a rescue. So she kept her momentum slow, even as her heart pounded in her chest. Go. Go. Go.
A few seconds later, she spotted an opening in the trees and an indentation in the snow. More footprints. She was on the right track.
“Halle-freaking-lujah,” she whispered. When she coasted out of the tree line, she spotted something bright red against the snow across the clearing.
“Ben!” she shouted over the engine.
There, tucked between a boulder and the trunk of a huge pine, Ben Kleckner raised an arm in the air, and she gunned the accelerator and flew toward him. The machine zipped across the snow, rattling hard. And for a second, she thought everything was going to end just fine. But the rattling got worse, and just as she eased back on the accelerator, the suspension disengaged from the right ski.
“What the f—”
She didn’t get to finish her thought before the ski wrenched off in the absolute worst position, tipping the snowmobile and Remi over. It threw her, sending her skidding across the snow a good ten feet over sharp, hidden rocks and very not soft tree roots before she finally came to rest on her back.
Surprise. Shock. Pain. They all coursed through her. Her breath came in short pants, and she realized it was too late to prevent the attack. She was already in it.
“Damn it,” she wheezed. This is how people got hurt. Her luck with snowmobiles was 0 for 2 this winter.
She heard muffled applause and, after making sure she wasn’t actually dead, lifted her head.
“Sure know how to make an entrance,” Ben said through blue lips.
She really needed a cookie now. And that coffee.
Patting her pockets, she dug for her phone only to come up empty. Damn it. Her mom was going to murder her. And when Chief Ford was done murdering her, Brick was going to get in line.
23
Cleetus trotted out of the stables, and Brick steered him toward the center of the island. A missing person report was never fun. In the summer, at least they had the weather on their side. Today, the snow was just beginning again, and the wind had a mean bite to it.
When the call had come in, he’d headed off to the stables to saddle up Cleetus. They’d attack the search coordinates on foot, snowmobile, and horseback to cover the most ground.
He nudged his mount into a lumbering trot up the road.
The department SUV and ambulance were parked in front of the Kleckner house when he got there as well as a half dozen snowmobiles.
There was a buzz on the scene. Emergencies always had a kind of frenetic energy to them. But it was worse when it was one of their own.
He urged Cleetus around the side of the house to the backyard, where he found Chief Ford and the rest of the crew hunched over a table with a map of the island. Volunteers were arriving on foot and joining the planning session.
Lois Kleckner, cheeks and nose bright red, huddled to the side in a parka. She spotted him and came running.
“Awful glad to have you here, Brick,” she said, wringing her hands.
“We’ll bring him back, Lois. We’ll find him,” he promised.
“Listen. Remi Ford was visiting when I realized Ben wasn’t in the bedroom. She went after him.”