Page 38 of Released from the Sin Bin

“I have one that may fit you.” Gentry comes up from behind us and goes back down to his basement to get the coat. I didn’t even hear him in the kitchen before Luca and Alex woke me.

While Luca gets Gentry’s coat, I call it in and grab supplies from my trunk. The rescue team is further out, and since she’s only been missing a few hours, they aren’t taking me seriously. Luckily, I’m not a lazy fuck like the dispatcher or the rest of Briar Creek fire department. They’re used to people disappearing from lost cell service in a storm and showing up back home before anyone goes out looking for them.

Knowing Willa and her stubborn determination, she wouldn’t quit making it up that mountain just because she didn’t have a cell phone to guide her. There’s no way I’m staying back to let something bad happen to her.

Times like this are exactly why I bought the large sports utility vehicle. It’ll be able to withstand the snow as we go up the winding hills. I can’t imagine Willa making it far in that tiny little hatchback she has.

“She drove up to get to Vic’s cabin,” Luca explains as he meets me out front. “According to Jocelyn, they’re in the last one at the edge of the resort, but Willa never made it there.”

There isn’t time to ask questions as we gear up and get on the road.

Luca’s lucky I have extra. I always carry my work and snow boots in the car for emergencies. The bag I keep has snow pants, gloves, and hats for the possibility of getting a call to help out in an emergency when I’m not near the firehouse. I have fire gear too, but most calls we get in the winter are for accidents at the resort up the mountain.

“What was she thinking going out in this?” The further from campus we get, the worse the wind is. I have floodlights on the top and bottom of my truck, and it’s still hard to make out the lines on the highway.

“She wasn’t.” Luca squirms in his seat. “She left before it got bad.”

“And you let her go?” I snap angrily at him.

What kind of best friend is he?

“No,” he shouts back, matching my tone. “I just got the fucking call that she went and they don’t know where she is.”

“Christ,” I mutter and smack the steering wheel. I would’ve stopped her if I knew sooner.

Luca says she went to meet Vic, and I doubt it was because he asked her to go. If he wanted to be with her, he would’ve stayed back, knowing she was banned from going on the ski trip with him.

“Damn it,” Luca curses and leaves Willa a voicemail, unable to get through to her.

I pass my phone over to him. “Vic’s, and anyone else he may be with, numbers are in here somewhere.” I give him the password and keep my focus on making it to our exit. “The fucking prick is cheating again.”

“Why do you care?” Luca sneers as he scrolls to find numbers for anyone in the Kappa fraternity.

“She’s too good for him,” I answer vaguely, because telling the truth of how Willa reminds me of my mom and what she goes through will unpack a story I will never share with Luca. We may be teammates on the same hockey team, but Luca isn’t a friend of mine. He may be one of the alternate captains and leaders of our team that I’m supposed to be able to turn to when I have a problem, but he isn’t someone I could ever trust.

“Fucking answer,” he groans out into the phone after making several attempts to reach someone.

It takes him several more tries before someone picks up, but they don’t have any information on Willa’s whereabouts.

The closer we get; the more nervous I feel. I know these roads, and there’s no way her car would’ve made it past the treeline on either side. But it doesn’t mean her car couldn’t be wrapped around one of those trees. Images of the different accidents I’ve witnessed on this same road over the last four years come to mind. The most gruesome are the clearest to see, but I keep my focus on the path. Slowly following the narrow curves, hoping Willa’s car will be around the next one. In tacked and unharmed.

We’re not so lucky. So far, she’s nowhere in sight.

The snow isn’t coming down as hard as it was and daylight is breaking through with the sun rising. The radio is saying it’s not over and will continue throughout the day on and off, but this is our chance to find her while there’s a break.

We stop at the first cabin on the old small ski resort’s roadway. They have a single road climbing up the mountain with the cabins lining them that the Kappa’s rented out for the event. The rest of the resort is at the other end of the mountain when you follow the road down the other side.

The first cabin was annoyed to have been woken up before dawn, and had no idea who Willa is.

We stop at each one with similar results. All of them are Drexton Hall students that can’t be bothered. We’ve missed our opening, and the wind is coming back in spurts. The snow picks up again and the flakes are the size of a puck.

We only have a few more cabins to try.

I knock on the next cabin door, hesitating to raise my hand as we run out of hope. Luca bangs on it with a few hard punches of his fist, frustrated that we don’t get an immediate answer.

Penny, a Delta Nu neighbor of Willa’s and the first familiar face we’ve seen, answers.

“What’s going on?” She covers herself with a pale pink robe that matches her hair and squints past us to the sheet of white whipping through the air.

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