For two seconds, nothing.
Then a woman’s voice.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know if I have the right number.”
Caleb sat straighter.
The voice was controlled.
But barely.
“You have Caleb.”
“I was given this number at a gas station.”
“Okay.”
“My car…”
Her breathing hitched.
“Something happened.”
“Where are you?”
“Mountain road.”
“Which one?”
“The old road toward White Elk.”
Caleb looked through the windshield.
Snow was worsening.
“What mile?”
“I don’t know.”
“Any marker?”
A pause.
“I passed a sign that said fourteen.”
“Heading east or west?”
“East.”
“Vehicle?”
“Range Rover.”
“What happened?”
“I heard something, and then it pulled right.”
“Are you off the travel lane?”
“I think so.”
“Hazards on?”
“Yes.”
“Stay inside.”
Another pause.
“I’m outside.”
Caleb closed his eyes.
“Get back in.”
“I can’t get the door open on that side. The snowbank is—”
“Other side.”
“Yes.”
“Get inside and wait.”
“I tried calling roadside assistance.”
“They said two hours.”
“You called me instead?”
“The gas station man said you were faster.”
Caleb looked toward Ruthie’s.
He could see the man at the counter who had likely given her the number.
“Twenty minutes if road lets me.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.”
The line crackled.
Then the woman whispered something that did not sound intended for him.
“I cannot do one more thing today.”
Caleb heard.
He pretended he had not.
“I’m leaving now.”
He hung up.
Inside the diner, Russ was still talking.
Caleb started the Ford.
The heater coughed cold air.
He pulled onto the road.
The old mountain route climbed east through pine forest before curling along a steep ridge above Millbrook River.
In summer, tourists stopped every half mile to photograph it.
In winter, locals avoided it unless necessary.
Caleb kept the truck slow.
The tires were good.
The truck looked terrible, but Caleb had never confused appearance with maintenance.
The engine had been rebuilt twice.
Brake lines replaced the previous spring.
Battery new.
Tires properly siped.
Rust was cosmetic.
People tended to treat cosmetic problems as moral ones.
Caleb had learned not to.
At mile fourteen, he saw the hazard lights first.
Amber flashes through falling snow.
Then the SUV.
Black.
New.
Expensive enough that Caleb instinctively calculated the cost of a headlight and felt tired.
The rear passenger tire was completely flat.
The vehicle sat partly on the shoulder, partly in loose snow.
A woman stood beside it.
Caleb frowned.
He had told her to stay inside.
She wore a white fur hat, a fitted white winter outfit beneath a luxurious faux-fur coat, pale boots entirely unsuited to roadside snow, and long chestnut-auburn hair that whipped across her face in the wind.
She looked like she belonged in a photograph advertising a ski resort.
Not on a mountain shoulder in a storm.
Her hands trembled around a phone.
When Caleb pulled behind the SUV, she turned.
He saw immediately that she had been crying.
Not loudly.
Not theatrically.
The tears looked almost private, as if she were offended by them herself.