Page 17 of Face Her Fear

Trying to tamp down her annoyance, Josie asked, “What was your plan if something went wrong? If there was an emergency of some sort?”

“I, uh, Cooper was supposed to come back! Or one of us could walk to the bottom of the mountain and find the closest area with cell service.”

There were grumbles all around them. Alice said, “What if someone was injured?”

“I—I have a first aid kit,” said Sandrine.

Nicola glanced at the windows. “I don’t think we can get to the bottom in this.”

Brian, finally feeling the cold, walked over to the wood-burning stove and knelt in front of it. He took logs from a bucket beside it and started loading them into the stove. “There is no cell service anywhere on this mountain. Not even in the parking lot.”

Taryn gave him a sharp look. “You brought your phone?”

“Of course I did.”

Josie sighed. “I did, too, but Brian’s right. The service is practically non-existent. I got something yesterday when I was at the top of the mountain, but it wasn’t enough to get through to anyone.”

“How can that be?” asked Nicola. “There’s like no place in this country where youcan’tget cell service.”

Alice huffed. “There are plenty of places you can’t get service, especially in remote areas like this.”

Sandrine said, “Sullivan County is definitely remote. That’s why I chose it for this retreat. Did you know there’s only one traffic light in the entire county?”

“Great,” said Nicola with an eye-roll.

“Even if we can find service somewhere, my phone can’t keep a charge.” Brian rifled through a second, smaller bucket for kindling. “Stupid roam sucks the battery dry so fast that my charger can’t keep up.”

Alice said, “Brian, you and Josie should charge your phones as much as you can before the generators run out of fuel. Can you make emergency calls?”

Brian shrugged and then turned his attention back to the stove, using a lighter with an extension on it to light the kindling he had placed atop the logs.

“Possibly,” said Josie.

She’d been in situations before where she was out in the mountains, on the outskirts of Denton, with limited cell service. Situations in which she had tried to make an emergency call. It hadn’t worked. But she didn’t want to scare the others. It was possible they could get back to the summit and try to make a call from there. There might also be pockets of service elsewhere on the mountain.

Alice looked at Josie. “Why were you trying to use your phone yesterday?”

“To check the weather,” Josie said. “But listen, none of this is important right now. Our priority is finding Meg. Once we do that, we’ll reassess things and figure out our next steps.”

“Next steps,” said Taryn, voice wobbly. “We’re stuck here. There is over a foot of snow out there and it’s not even slowing down. It’s a long way to the bottom of the mountain. Without Cooper’s Gator, we can’t get down there. Even with it, at this point, there’s too much snow for the Gator to operate.”

Brian watched as the flames caught the kindling. Quickly, he closed the door to the stove and jumped back from it as if he might get burned. “We might be able to walk to the bottom.”

“That’s too dangerous,” Josie said. “It’s at least two miles, if not more. None of us have the proper winter gear for a trek like that in this weather. Don’t forget, there is also a bear out there.”

Alice moved closer to the stove. “Even if we could walk to the bottom, our cars would be snowed in. Then we’d just be stuck down there.”

Brian watched as the window of the stove began to glow orange. He took another step back. “But we could wait for someone to drive by the parking lot and flag them down.”

“That’s a big risk. What if that’s what Cooper was doing and something happened to him—” Nicola began.

Sandrine put her hands up again. “Okay, everyone, let’s take some deep breaths. I’m sure Cooper is fine. He’s got the SAT phone in case any issues arise. He may have simply stayed in the nearest town so he could find resources to get us off this mountain tomorrow as scheduled. I have every confidence that he is just fine.”

“Really?” Alice took off her gloves and held her palms over the stove where heat from the fire within now shimmered. “Not to be disrespectful, but he’s got to be in his seventies, at least.”

Sandrine gave a strained smile. “Like I said, I have every confidence he is fine and lining up some help for us as we speak. Josie is right though, we need to find Meg. Immediately.”

TWELVE

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