“I mean, we’re stuck in snow and visibility is negative ten thousand, so I sort of guessed that. How far are we from the cabin?”

“Um. Maybe three miles or so?”

“Three miles! This is absolutely how we go!” It’s already getting dark, and with the blizzard-like conditions, we’ll end up lost in the woods.

But (my anxiety screams at me) we can’t just stay in the truck, either—not with her feeble heat, for as long as it lasts until we run out of gas. “God, I knew this was going to happen!”

Jack shoots me a look that somehow manages to be condescending despite our impending deaths. “You knew we were going to get stuck in the snow on the way home from skiing?”

“I know you and I do not have a good track record when it comes to snow.”

In profile, I see the half-moon tug at the corner of her mouth. “Fine. Here’s what we’re going to do. Our friends the Singhs have a cabin about a half mile up the road,” she says, taking control of the situation just like she did the last time we got stuck in the snow. She leads, just assuming I’ll follow. “I think we can make it there. Hopefully they’ll be home, since they usually come for the holidays. I don’t think my dad can drive down the hill in these conditions, so we’ll have to stay with the Singhs until things clear, and we can come back for Gillian in the morning. Does that sound like a plan?”

“Yes,” I say, teeth chattering. Because I would follow her anywhere.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Now that is what a cabin is supposed to look like.”

The building becomes visible through the heavy snow and muted colors of encroaching dusk. According to Jack, the Singhs are an older couple, both anesthesiologists at OHSU, who usually spend their holidays reading mystery novels together while watching the snow come down in a cozy cabin. As their only neighbors, the Kim-Prescotts have invited them up to the cabin for Christmas Eve dinner almost every year, so they know each other in the way people with proximal vacation homes always do, apparently.

The Singhs’ cabin is a small, square wood house hunkered low in the snow. There’s a stone chimney, a skinny wraparound porch, and absolute darkness. Not a single window is lit. It’s obvious no one is home.