Foot off the accelerator.
Steer in the direction of the slide.
It sounded good in theory, but the tires felt like skis, locked in position and built to glide. Her hands cranked the wheel all the way to the left, but the van was out of control. A second later, the hood tipped off the road, and they were headed down a steep embankment on a slow-motion roller-coaster ride through a pillowy quilt of snow.
She pumped the brakes in a desperate attempt to avoid the tall pine that had appeared out of nowhere directly in their path. The tree loomed larger and larger as the teens in the back seat shrieked in fear. In three seconds flat, her brain went from white-knuckle terror to stunned relief as the brakes finally engaged and the van lurched to a stop just inches from the spiky trunk.
She took a steadying breath and turned to check on the kids.
“Everybody okay?” She craned her neck to peer into the back seat. It was suddenly very dark inside the van as a shower of soft flakes fell from the branches and covered the windows with a frosty mantle of snow.
“We’re all fine,” Josh, one of the younger boys, reported. “If we had been moving faster, it might have been fun.”
Fun?
Stuck in a snowdrift somewhere in North Dakota in the middle of a raging winter storm with no bars on her phone and no way to call for help. Fun wouldn’t be the word she’d have chosen to describe their predicament.
A sense of dread washed over her as she tried shifting into Reverse, but the vehicle’s back wheels only spun deeper into the rut.
“Do you want us to get in front and push?” Josh asked.
It was a tempting thought. But mixing seven excitable teens, a five-thousand-pound conversion van and a thirty-foot tree seemed like a recipe for disaster.
“Maybe we can try it as a last resort.” She gave the teenager an encouraging smile as she rechecked the reception on her phone.
There was a sudden movement outside the van as a patch of gray light opened up on the windshield, courtesy of a flat yellow mitten pushing away the snow. Her heartbeat revved as she conjured the faces of the men in the tan SUV. Had they followed the van down into the ditch? A scream caught in her throat as the circle grew wider to reveal the face of a huge hairy stranger with icicles dangling from his beard. White clouds from his breath lingered above his frozen eyebrows, and she stared at him with openmouthed alarm.
She peered through the windshield, her body frozen with indecision. She needed to think fast while dusk was still a memory in the darkening sky. Pulse racing, she slid sideways on the seat and turned to face the kids. “Sit tight while I check things out.” As she pushed the door open and stepped outside, a mini avalanche of snowflakes fell on her head.
“Are you okay?” the man asked in a voice that was low and husky. “Lou and I were coming through the trees when we saw you take a nosedive into the ditch.”
Lou? Who was Lou? She looked past him into the white wilderness but didn’t see anyone else. Still, the stranger’s concern was heartening. Relief bubbled up in her throat. “Did you notice another car on the road?”
He shook his head. “With the whiteout conditions, the highway was a blur. Why? Was there some sort of problem?”
“I felt a bump right before the accident, and I thought that maybe...” What exactly had she thought? That the tan SUV had pushed the van off the tarmac? Given the slippery road conditions, the idea seemed far-fetched.
“Miss Jones?” Lucy’s piping voice trilled from the back seat, pulling Dani’s attention to the van. “Are we still going to the reservation?”
“I hope so.” Dani turned to once again face the stranger. “Any chance you have a vehicle that can pull us out of here?”
He shook his head. “My truck is out of commission. Even so, it would probably take something with a lot more horsepower to haul a van of this size out of a ditch.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell. “I thought about calling for a tow, but I haven’t been able to get any reception. Do you have a landline we could use?”
“Sorry. I don’t. I heard on the radio that all of the cell towers are down.”
Helplessness washed over her. Something nudged her from the side, and she turned to find a massive German shepherd intent on checking her out. She flinched and took a step closer to the open door. So, this was Lou. The shepherd growled softly and watched her through glowing eyes. Her back stiffened. This probably wasn’t a good time to mention her fear of big dogs, especially ones who seemed determined to push their way uninvited into the van.
The man must have sensed her unease, because he looped a mittened hand around the edge of the dog’s collar and held him fast. “Lou and I seem to be forgetting our manners. The name’s Gideon Marshall, ma’am.” He raised his voice to be heard over the gusting wind.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Marshall. I’m Dani Jones. The kids and I are headed to the Dagger Lake reservation as part of a mission outreach from our local church.” She looked up at the dark sky through the thick flakes that seemed to be falling faster by the minute. “But it doesn’t look like we’re going to make it tonight.”
“My cabin is just across the ridge. You’re welcome to camp out on my floor until you can arrange for a tow.”
Then he smiled, and, despite his huge stature, there was something warm in his crinkling brown eyes that quelled her anxiety.
Lou strained against his master’s hold, nudging his large wet nose closer to the van’s open door. A stinging gust of wind flicked the end of her scarf across her face and issued a sharp reminder of the dwindling number of options available to her at the moment. She needed to make a decision, and fast.
She stuck her head into the van to address her charges.
“Hey, gang. Mr. Marshall has invited us to crash at his place until we can call for help. Bundle up, grab your gear and get ready to go.”
The winds were picking up speed as they climbed up the embankment and began the slow trek to the cabin. Packed-down footholds merged into three-foot-high drifts where the wind had pushed the snow willy-nilly along the path. Dani tried not to overthink her decision to trust the grizzled backwoodsman, but her imagination was running wild, picturing their destination as a run-down shack filled with animal skins and mounted antlers. Or worse.
Gideon strode ahead, undeterred by the blowing and drifting snow. Behind him came a line of stragglers slipping and sliding as they struggled to match his pace. Dani slowed so that she could walk with Lucy, at twelve and a half the youngest of the group. The girl’s face was crumpled, and she was on the verge of tears.
“What’s going to happen if we don’t show up for the opening ceremony at the reservation?” Her voice trembled. “Will someone call our parents and tell them we’re missing? What if we get stuck here and don’t make it home for Christmas?”
Dani squeezed the young girl’s hand through her glove. “No worries, Luce. By tomorrow night, this will all seem like a great adventure.”
Or a bad memory. She shivered as a trickle of snow melted into the liner of her thin leather boots. Clearly, she should have chosen more appropriate footwear when packing for this trip, but she hadn’t expected to be trekking through a foot of hard-packed snow.
She was panting from exertion by the time they reached the top of the ridge where Gideon stood waiting, his arm stretched out, pointing toward a thick stand of pines. From a distance, the neat little cabin nestled in the center of the grove of trees looked like a scene painted by Thomas Kincaid. To the left of the main building was a barn with