Page 16 of Snowed In with Three Mountain Men

“You gentlemen alright?” he asks us, and I nod, shifting so I’m blocking his direct view to the car.

“We’re just fine.”

“What are you three up to out here, in this weather?” he replies, doing his best to look past me without making it too obvious.

“With respect, sir, that’s our own business.”

He bristles—whoever he is, he’s clearly not used to being spoken to like that. But he seems to take the point, and nods.

“Well, anything I can do to help?”

“We’re good,” Dax calls out, an edge to his voice that seems to act as the final warning shot this guy needs. His eyes narrowed slightly, he rolls up his window and pulls the car away—and I can tell before he’s even out of sight that Dax is not about to take this well.

“What the fuck was that about?” he demands, stabbing his finger in the direction the man came from.”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “But we?—”

“I thought she was just paranoid, but there are really people looking for her, aren’t there?” he continues. His eyes flash with discomfort. I can already tell he’s starting to spin out, whatever calmness he managed to grab on to these last few days already beginning to fade.

“I have no idea, Dax,” I grit out. “But we still need to move this car.”

“You’ve got to admit, it’s weird,” Chuck interjects—as though I need someone else to point that out to me, after what just happened. “Someone rolling up out of the blue like that, in a car like that?—”

“Yeah, it is strange,” I agree. “But that’s all the more reason to move this fucking car before any more come by and ask what we’re doing.”

Chuck seems to snap back into reality, and heads to his position at the back of the car—but Dax is more distracted than anything else, his brows knitted together, his jaw tight.

“This isn’t a good idea, Callum,” he tells me. “That girl, whatever she’s dealing with, it’s not our business?—”

“She’s in our house,” I shoot back, irritable. “It’s already our business, whether you like it or not.”

“Doesn’t have to stay that way.”

“And what the fuck does that mean?” I demand, rounding on him. His face darkens.

“You know exactly what it means?—”

“Guys!” Chuck calls out, cutting through the bullshit before it can go anywhere. I gather myself quickly—the last thing we needis friction between the three of us, not in the midst of whatever the hell this is.

I move back to my spot at the side of the car, and Dax, after a moment, does the same. Steering the car to the right, we guide it into the trees and push it down the hill till it’s out of sight of the road. Dax leaps out of the way at the last moment, and it wedges against a large oak tree at the bottom, immovable.

Breathing hard, we dust our hands off, our breath creating little puffs of steam in the air.

“That should keep anyone seeing it from the road,” I remark, and Dax crosses his arms over his chest.

“Yeah, but what about anyone who comes looking for more?”

“And why would they think to stop here?” I ask, gesturing around. “There’s no reason for them to look at this place and think there’s anything other than trees and cold for as far as they can see. They’d be stupid to start snooping around in these woods without a damn good reason.”

“Unless that guy tells them he saw us moving a car out here,” he mutters. I’ve been trying not to think of that part, because he’s right. It might already be too late. And if that guy has someone to report back to, there’s a good chance he’ll come back with far more trouble to cause for us.

“We don’t know that he had anything to do with it,” I point out. “He could have just been a concerned citizen, offering a hand.”

Dax lets out a short, mirthless bark of laughter.

“You said it yourself,” he reminds me. “Nobody would stop by this place unless they had a damn good reason to. Only people who would make a point to come here would have to be…”

“Total psychos. Like us,” Chuck finishes up, dissipating the tension. Dax and I both laugh—this time, for real.

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