Ice Read online

  A man’s head suddenly appeared on the other side of the window. A squeal almost popped out and she choked, slapping a hand over her mouth. She stared, so frightened she could barely move, and abruptly she recognized him. Her heart leapt, and her knees almost buckled. The relief that washed through her was as warm as the sun she longed for at this moment.

  Gabriel McQueen.

  Chapter Four

  By the time Gabriel reached the turn off the main road, the combination of rain and low clouds had deepened to the point that he needed his headlights on to see. The wind had picked up, too, tossing the trees and whistling around the truck. Wind was bad; it would make the limbs and trees begin coming down just that much sooner.

  He would much rather have been with Sam, but he never once thought of turning around and simply telling his dad that he hadn’t been able to make it up the mountain. Giving up wasn’t in his DNA; he’d fetch Lolly off the mountain if he had to drag her down by the hair, which probably wasn’t what his father had had in mind when he sent Gabriel on this mission, but then the sheriff didn’t know Lolly the way Gabriel knew Lolly.

  She’d always been a spoiled brat, nose in the air, convinced she was better than anyone else. Some kids took teasing well; Lolly wasn’t one of them. Hostility had rolled off her in waves. Once she’d looked at him with complete disdain and said, “Worm!” He’d hidden his reaction, but inside he’d been furious that she’d dismissed him so completely with that one word. He was the sheriff’s son, he was popular and athletic and invited everywhere, and she thought he was a worm? Who the hell did she think she was? Oh, right, she was a Helton, and she didn’t associate with people like him.

  She had held herself separate from everyone else, not part of a crowd, never at any of the parties. Looking back, Gabriel wondered now if she’d ever been invited to any of the parties. Probably—but only because she was the mayor’s daughter. None of the kids had liked her, and wouldn’t have willingly invited her anywhere. He didn’t know if that had bothered her, because she certainly hadn’t been a joiner. The only school activity she’d been involved in was keeping her nose buried in a book, if that counted.

  He wondered if she was still that way—different, and alone. From the distance of years, he could now also wonder which had come first: her attitude, or the teasing. His own parents seemed to like her well enough. Would his dad have bothered to send him on this errand if it had been anyone other than Lolly Helton who was out of cell range and possibly unaware of what was coming? Harlan McQueen had been lifelong friends with the Heltons, and that hadn’t changed just because the Heltons had moved to Florida, trading ice storms and snow for the occasional hurricane.

  Meeting up with her again after all these years should be interesting. He just hoped she wouldn’t give him any grief about coming back to town with him.

  A new weather bulletin came on the radio, and he turned up the volume to listen; evidently it looked as if the storm was going to take a turn for the worst, and faster than expected. He slowed down, looking at the trees, checking for icing. Surely even Lolly would see the wisdom of getting off this mountain before she got stuck here for possibly weeks, without electricity. Unless she had laid in a lot of provisions, she’d be out of food, too. If enough ice coated the trees some of them would come down, blocking the road. Clearing this road wouldn’t be a high priority for the county, because the Helton house was the only one on it. Once there had been a couple of other houses, but one of them had burned years ago, and the other had been so neglected the county had condemned it and had it torn down.

  One way or another, he didn’t want to waste even an extra minute of time on this assignment. He was going to do as he’d been told, then get his ass off the mountain while he could. He missed Sam every day, but at the base he could bury himself in work. Now, with the kid so close, being away from him was an almost physical pain.

  The road took a sharp curve, and curled upward in a steep grade. His tires skidded on the pavement and he took his foot off the gas pedal, letting the truck slow to a crawl. Was the road icy already, or had he skidded simply because of the steepness of the wet pavement? His snow tires weren’t worth a damn on ice; nothing was, except chains, but even here in Maine not many people had chains. If the weather was that bad, the smart thing to do was park your ass and wait it out, not go out for a Sunday drive.

  Damn her, why couldn’t she stay in a house that was more accessible? This damn road wasn’t much wider than his truck, and trees overhung the pavement in a way that made him wary as he eyed them. Not only would they be deadly if the ice got bad, but they made the road even darker by blocking out whatever light was left.

  The temperature gauge on his truck said the outside temp was thirty-two degrees now. Great. Just fucking great. Even as he watched, the digital readout changed to thirty-one. As the road climbed higher, the temp was dropping like a rock. That was ice on the road, all right. He slowed down even more, letting the weight of the truck provide what traction it could.

  Turning around wasn’t even an option; his truck was too big, the road was too narrow, and the left side was nothing but a steep drop-off. The first place where he’d be able to turn around was at Lolly’s house. He was as stuck as a rat on a treadmill, with no way to get off.

  His frustration and temper ratcheted up a few notches. If he got up there and no one was home, if Lolly had left town that afternoon and the sheriff just hadn’t realized it, Gabriel was going to be royally pissed. He couldn’t be mad at his dad, but Lolly was another matter. He might even make a point of hunting her down to tell her what a thoughtless bitch she was.

  Odds were he’d find her right where she was supposed to be, though, as cool and detached as always, surprised that he’d show up at her door in the middle of a fucking ice storm when he could be sitting at home with his kid. Hell, he was risking his life to get to her, and that made him even angrier, because he had to stay alive for Sam; his little boy had already lost his mother, and that had been a lot for a four-year-old to get through. Thank God they’d had each other when Mariane died; he couldn’t imagine how he’d have made it without Sam. What would Sam do if something happened to him, now? Gabriel couldn’t make his mind go there.

  The truck powered slowly up the hilly road, but he could feel the tires spinning some, feel the truck sliding to the right as the surface became slicker. The higher he got, the worse it was going to be.

  That thought had just formed when he eased into a right-hand curve and suddenly the truck began sliding to the right. This wasn’t just the tires skidding; the entire truck moved sideways, the banking in the road, as slight as it was, taking him toward the inside of the curve. As soon as his right tires left the asphalt and hit the shoulder they grabbed traction and began slewing him around, throwing him toward the outside edge where there was nothing but a long drop.

  Gabriel shoved the gear into neutral, stopping the tires from grabbing, and let the truck slide back toward the inside. He had no traction, so braking wasn’t an option; instead he worked with the truck’s momentum and steered away from the edge, toward the mountain side. With a thump, the right front tire crossed the shallow ditch that ran along the inside of the road and his bumper dug into the soft dirt of the bank, bringing him to a stop.

  Swearing a blue streak, he stared through the icy windshield at the road ahead.

  No way was his truck going to make it up that hill, and no way was he even going to try it. The rain was still falling, a wickedly gentle rain that wasn’t heavy enough to run off, which would at least reduce the amount of ice that could form on the trees. No, this was the worst possible rain, a slow, light rain that the cold air would freeze before it could slide off the leaves and branches, and had now made the road impossible to drive. With a sinking feeling in his gut, he looked over his shoulder at the road behind him, remembering some of the hills and curves he’d already maneuvered.

  Damn it, fuck, and son of a bitch! If he’d arrived in town an hour earlier, he