Page 3 of Whiteout

“And every storm starts with just one.”

Illuminated beneath a lone lamppost, snowflakes flitted in the wind. Still sniggering, Breanna tossed her jacket onto the passenger seat and got behind the wheel of her ‘girly’ car. Asshole. Okay, the guy was nice to look at, which she found disconcerting, but he had a helluva lot of nerve. Like his opinion mattered. How was she any of his business, anyway?

Figuring it would be better to text Kayleigh before cell service became spotty, and so she could concentrate on the road, Breanna tapped out a quick message letting her know she’d made it. So what if she wasn’t exactly there yet? She was close, regardless.

As soon as she switched on her headlights, the door to Hank’s store opened. Plowing his fingers through thick, dark hair, the man from the diner pulled his hat back down on his head. He paused in front of her car, and dipping his chin, the corner of his mouth rose. Breanna watched him walk over to a Ford Raptor. Knew it. Then she put her car in gear and slowly drove out of the parking lot.

With a thumbs-up, they waved her through the checkpoint. Here, on the valley floor, the driving surface was level, the snowfall light and pretty. Releasing the tension in her shoulders, Breanna turned on her playlist and settled in for her journey up the mountain.

She imagined the surrounding vista was breathtaking in daylight. Lights twinkled from the village ahead. Dark, majestic peaks, soaring ten thousand feet into a pink-hued sky—its color a warning—loomed in front of her. A real doozy of a snowstorm was waiting, all right. She only hoped she reached the summit, and Dalton House, before it unleashed its wintry fury.

The foothill village, a testament to a bygone era, was small and quaint. Gas lampposts. Old buildings, the year of their construction etched into the brick, lined either side of the four-lane road. Vintage-looking script painted on storefront windows. A couple of older gentlemen walked into a bar. Other than them, the sidewalks were empty.

Breanna came to a stop sign at the edge of town. The road ahead narrowed from four lanes to two, before curving to the right. No longer level, it felt like the pavement beneath her tires tilted in that very direction. Flakes of snow melted on her windshield, the air outside thirty-four degrees. She turned the wipers on.

A sign of fluorescent yellow warned motorists the pass lay ahead. Steep drop-offs. Narrow shoulders. Eight percent grades. She read aloud to herself, “Use caution. Alternate routes advised.”

Yikes.

And below that, a rectangle of green and white. “Dalton Pass Road.” Dalton? What the hell? “13 miles to summit. Elevation 10,264 feet.”

She bent her neck to look at the sky. The surrounding mountains appeared to shoot straight up into it. Releasing a breath, she turned off the music and pressed her foot to the accelerator. “I can do this.”

Following the curve to the right, Breanna took it slow. Nestled into the side of the mountain, a lone dwelling appeared on her left. Then up, up, and away, with her fingers curled tightly around the steering wheel, she cautiously began the brutal ascent.

The higher in altitude she climbed, the lower the temperature dropped. And the harder it snowed. Flurries tumbled out of the sky, whirling in front of her headlights. Thirteen miles never felt so far away.

“Ten,” Breanna muttered to herself, clenching the wheel steady on the switchback. She’d made it three so far.

As much as she wanted to go faster, she didn’t dare. One glance to the right and her heart was in her throat. No shoulder to speak of. No guard rail. Nothing but a hairpin drop-off into a chasm far below.

“Suicide. Chains or no chains, she’s gonna slide right off the mountain in that thing.”

Perhaps she should’ve heeded the stranger’s warning. How many vehicles before her had done just that? Now that Breanna was driving on this death trap of a road with her name on it, she understood how easily it could happen. One small miscalculation could have her slipping over the edge, careening into the void. And certain death. She didn’t want to even imagine it.

Reciting a Hail Mary in her head, she white-knuckled the wheel, traveling at a snail’s pace. At this rate, it would take another hour to reach the summit and Dalton House. And the weather was worsening by the minute.

The clock told her it was well past dark, but all she could see was white. Powerful gusts blasted her windshield with snow faster than the wipers could clear it. Breanna couldn’t just stop. In a white car, she’d be invisible—a sitting duck. There was no place to pull over or turn around to go back to the village and wait out the storm. With no choice other than to keep going, she was fucked.

Her breath locked in her lungs, panic speared at the walls of her throat. Battery acid coffee churned in her gut. Beads of nervous sweat erupted on her forehead, trickling down her skin. Every foot forward, a blind walk on a tightrope with no safety net.

“In three hundred feet, turn left,” the British voice instructed her.

Driving in a snow globe tossed in a blender, Breanna couldn’t see three feet in front of her, never mind three hundred.

“Turn left.”

“Left where?” Like she expected the voice to answer.

If Breanna missed the turn, she’d be even more fucked than she already was. The map displayed on the screen showed here, so.

It’s now or never.

She cut the wheel to the left.

“Fuck!”

Lifting her head from the steering wheel, Breanna couldn’t be sure how long she’d been sitting there. Seconds? Minutes? Hours?

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