“Look,” Tuck said, and the hopeful tone in his voice made me whip my head his way. He was pointing off into the distance. “I see smoke. Do you see that?”

I jutted my head forward and squinted my eyes. “Um… I think so! Yes!” I said excitedly. It was definitely a trail of smoke coming from what looked like a few miles away past a thick forest. “Let’s go,” I said. Whoever’s home it was would have heat and a phone and a bathroom with a door.

Tuck’s arm jutted out, stopping me in my tracks. “In the morning,” he said.

“The morning?” My mouth fell open. “Why spend the night out here in the dark and the cold when there’s a house right there?” I pointed at the wispy trail of smoke.

“Because for one, it’s not right there. It’ll probably take us a couple of days to travel that distance. It’ll be slow going through those woods and it’s not safe when we can’t see. It’ll be dark any minute now.”

“A couple days?” Oh God. Then my estimation of a few miles was definitely off. This nightmare just kept getting worse.

“And for another,” he went on, “if it is a house, we have no idea who lives there. It seems like a strange place for a singular home with nothing else around. It could be dangerous. But at least we have a place to shoot for. We’ll bed down here tonight and get up with the sun.”

“Bed down?” Charlie asked, his tone as incredulous as mine had been. “What exactly should we bed down on?”

“The ground,” Tuck said. He glanced at the suitcase Charlie was sitting on. “With all the clothes you brought along, you can drape them over yourselves and be nice and toasty. There’s a tree right there that will provide some shelter from the wind. We’ll be fine.”

I didn’t like the thought of sleeping on the cold ground under a tree either, but Tuck mentioning sleep made me realize how exhausted I was. It wasn’t just the hours of walking while carrying a heavy suitcase with improper footwear. It was the toll from the adrenaline that had been bursting through my body as our plane went down. I suddenly felt so tired I wanted to drop to the ground right there, press my cheek to the dirt and close my eyes.

Tuck adjusted his duffel bag and started walking toward the tree. Its leaves were gone, but it was massive, and its branches alone provided cover.

“Come on,” I said to Charlie, pointing over to the tree, which was only about three hundred feet away.

“Can we just sit here another couple of minutes? My feet are killing me.”