The woman let out a shaky breath. “I can’t believe I let this happen.”

“You didn’t let anything happen. You are doing a damn good job given the shitty circumstances,” Remi insisted. “This is not your fault. We’re going to find him and bring him home and have coffee cake and cookies. Okay?”

Lois was wide-eyed but nodding. “Okay,” she repeated. “Okay.”

Remi ran for the front of the house and pulled on her gear. She spotted Lois’s phone sitting on the counter and grabbed it. “Here,” she said when she returned to the mud room. “Call dispatch. They’ll be here in five minutes, and with any luck, I’ll have already found him. I have my phone on me, and you have my number.”

Lois nodded again, looking numb and terrified.

Remi grabbed the blue parka and a fleece blanket that had been folded neatly on top of the dryer. She snatched the keys that said Arctic Cat off the hook by the back door.

Lois’s hands shook as she dialed her phone. “Thank you, Remi. Be safe, and you call me the second you find him.”

Remi nodded grimly and bolted through the back door. Her adrenaline surged as she trudged through knee-deep snow, making the air seem warmer than it actually was. She pulled out her phone and, after a hesitation, dialed.

Voicemail.

Shit.

“Hey, Mom. It’s Remi. I’m at the Kleckners. Ben wandered off about half an hour ago without a coat. Lois is calling dispatch. I’m taking their snowmobile and following his tracks. It looks like he might have headed toward the woods.”

There. See? She didn’t need to call Brick for every little thing. In fact, she was going to be the hero this time. Ben Kleckner was not going to stay missing. She’d find him and deliver him back to Lois before the cops had even assembled.

Remi found the ancient snowmobile under a tarp next to a garden shed.

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.