When Doug finally spoke, his voice was quiet and in control. “Arlo, let’s get behind this thing and push. Or we’ll never get out of here.”

The two men positioned themselves behind the Jeep, Arlo at the right rear bumper, Doug on the left. They were both grimly silent, as if Arlo’s outburst had never happened. But Maura had seen the effect on Elaine’s face, had watched it freeze in a mask of humiliation.

“Give it some juice, Maura,” Doug called out.

Maura put the Jeep into first gear and lightly pressed the accelerator. She heard the wheels whine, loose chain links clanging against the chassis. The Jeep inched forward, propelled by sheer muscle power as Doug and Arlo pitted their weight against the vehicle.

“Keep feeding it gas!” ordered Doug. “We’re moving.”

The Jeep rocked forward and rocked backward, gravity tugging it once again off the road’s edge.

“Don’t stop!” yelled Doug. “More gas!”

Maura caught a glimpse of Arlo’s face in her rearview mirror, bright red from exertion as he strained against the car.

She goosed the accelerator. Heard the engine roar, the chains banging faster against the wheel well. The Jeep gave a sharp jerk and suddenly there was a different sound. A dull thumping that she felt more than heard, as though the Jeep had hit a log.

Then came the shrieks.

“Stop the engine!” Elaine banged on her door. “Oh my God, stop it!”

Maura instantly shut off the motor.

The shrieks were coming from Grace. Shrill, piercing wails that did not sound human. Maura turned to look at her, but didn’t see why the girl was screaming. Grace stood at the side of the road, hands pressed to the sides of her face. Her eyelids were clenched shut, as though desperately blocking out something terrible.

Maura shoved open her door and scrambled out of the Jeep. Blood was splattered across the whiteness of snow in shockingly bright red ribbons.

“Hold him still!” Doug yelled. “Elaine, you’ve got to keep him still!”

Grace’s shrieks faded to a choked sob.

Maura ran back to the rear of the Jeep, where the ground was awash in more blood, steaming on the churned-up snow. She could not see the source of it, because Doug and Elaine blocked her view as they knelt near the right rear tire. Only when she leaned over Doug’s shoulder did she see Arlo, lying on his back, his jacket and trousers saturated. Elaine was holding down Arlo’s shoulders as Doug applied pressure to the exposed groin. Maura caught sight of Arlo’s left leg-what remained of it-and she reeled backward, nauseated.

“I need a tourniquet!” yelled Doug, struggling to keep his blood-slicked palms positioned over the femoral artery.

Maura quickly unbuckled her belt and yanked it free. Dropping to her knees in the bloody snow, she felt icy slush soak into her pants. Despite Doug’s pressure on the artery, a steady stream of red was seeping into the snow. She slipped her belt under the thigh and blood smeared her jacket sleeve, a startling stripe across white nylon. As she looped the belt, she felt Arlo trembling, his body rapidly sinking into shock. She yanked the tourniquet tight, and the stream of blood slowed to a trickle. Only then, with the bleeding controlled, did Doug release his grip on the artery. He rocked back to stare at the torn flesh and protruding bone, at a limb so twisted that the foot jutted in one direction, the knee in another.

“Arlo?” Elaine said. “Arlo?” She shook him, but he had fallen limp and unresponsive.

Doug felt Arlo’s neck. “He’s got a pulse. And he’s breathing. I think he just fainted.”

“Oh my God.” Elaine rose and stumbled away. They could hear her throwing up in the snow.

Doug looked down at his hands, and with a shudder he scooped up snow and frantically scrubbed away the blood. “The tire chain,” he muttered, rubbing snow against his skin, as though he could somehow purify himself of the horror. “One of the broken links must have snagged his pants. Wrapped his leg around the axle…” Doug rolled back on his knees and released a breath that was half sigh, half sob. “We’ll never get this Jeep out of here. The chain’s broken all to hell.”

“Doug, we have to get him back to the house.”

“The house?” Doug looked at her. “What he needs is a fucking OR!”

“He can’t stay out here in the cold. He’s in shock.” She rose to her feet and glanced around. Grace was huddled off by herself, her back turned to them. Elaine was crouched in the snow, as though too dizzy to stand straight. Neither of them would be any help.

“I’ll be right back,” said Maura. “Stay with him.”

“Where are you going?”

“I saw a sled in one of the garages. We can drag him back on that.” She left them and started running toward the village, her boots slipping and sliding in the ruts left by the Jeep’s ascent. It was a relief to leave behind the bloody snow and her shell-shocked companions, a relief to focus on a concrete task that required only speed and muscle. She dreaded what came after they moved Arlo back into the house, when they’d be forced to confront what was left of his leg, now little more than mutilated flesh and splintered bones.

The sled. Where did I see that sled?

She finally found it in the third garage, hanging on wall pegs alongside a ladder and an array of tools. Whoever lived here had kept an organized household, and as she pulled down the sled, she imagined him hammering in these pegs, suspending his tools high enough that young hands couldn’t reach them. The sled was made of birch and had no manufacturer’s label. Handmade, it had been crafted with care, the runners sanded smooth and freshly polished in readiness for winter. All this she registered in a glance. Adrenaline had sharpened her vision and made her reflexes hum like high-voltage wires. She scanned the garage for anything else she might need. She found ski poles and rope, a pocketknife and a roll of duct tape.

The sled was heavy, and dragging it up the steep road soon had her sweating. But better to labor like a draft horse than to kneel helplessly by your friend’s mangled body, agonizing over what to do next. She was panting now, struggling up the slippery road, wondering if Arlo would be alive when she got there. A stray thought slipped into her head, a thought that shocked her, but there it was nonetheless. A little voice whispering its cruel logic: He might be better off dead.

She yanked harder on the towline, pitting her weight against the drag of snow and gravity. Up the road she trudged, hands cramping around the rope as she curved up hairpin turns, past pine trees whose snow-heavy branches hid her view of the next stretch of road. Surely she should be there by now. Hadn’t she been climbing long enough? But the Jeep tire tracks still curved ahead, and she saw the shoe prints she’d left when she’d run down this same road a short time earlier.

A scream pierced the trees, a pain-racked shriek that ended in a sob. Not only was Arlo still alive, he was now awake.

She rounded the curve and there they were, exactly where she’d left them. Grace was huddled by herself, hands clasped over her ears against Arlo’s sobs. Elaine cringed back against the Jeep, hugging herself as though she were the one in pain. As Maura dragged the sled closer, Doug looked up with an expression of profound relief.

“Did you bring something to tie him to the sled?” he asked.

“I found rope and duct tape.” She positioned the sled beside Arlo, whose sobs had faded to whimpers.

“You take the hips,” said Doug. “I’ll move his shoulders.”

“We need to splint the leg first. That’s why I brought the ski poles.”

“Maura,” he said softly. “There’s nothing left to splint.”

“We have to keep it rigid. We can’t let it flop all the way down the mountain.”

He stared down at Arlo’s mutilated limb, but could not seem to move. He doesn’t want to touch it, she thought.