Page 98

The plow driver looked at my tires.

He knew.

I watched him know.

His shoulders dropped in the resigned way of a man meeting a bad decision that had already acquired momentum.

"Stay in the tracks," he shouted. "If you lose the road, don't chase it. Stop. Understand?"

"Yes."

"Visibility gets worse, stop."

"Yes."

"Silver Bend turn's maybe twelve miles."

"I know."

That answer changed something.

His gaze came back to my face. Took in the braid, the exhaustion, the coat too big through the shoulders. Whatever he saw, he stepped away from the window.

"Go slow."

"I will."

He slapped the roof once.

The sound made me flinch so hard my foot nearly hit the brake.

He did not see. Or pretended not to.

I rolled the window up and drove on.

Twelve miles left. At twenty-five, that was less than half an hour. At fifteen, it was longer. Time had become unreliable anyway. It stretched inside the white and snapped around small tasks. I would look at the dash and find three minutes gone. Then one curve took years.

The valley opened around me, though there was nothing open to see.

I knew it by the wind. It struck without trees to break it, broad and hard off the fields. Snow flowed across the road in sheets. The mountains were gone. The sky was gone. Land and air had become the same moving substance, and I traveled through it by memory and the occasional red eye of a reflector.

My phone had no service.

I looked at it too often.

No messages could arrive, but the habit remained: glance, hope, road.

Boone had been released or he had not.

Hutchins had read the screenshots or he had not.

Derek had woken to an empty couch. Maybe he had called. Maybe he had already begun turning the night into another story where he was patient and I was sick.

I could not fix any of that from the truck.

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