“No.” Nick shook his head sharply. “In this case, two people are worse than one. You’ll just slow me down. Trust me; I know what I’m doing. Your job is to look after your uncle. When I find your aunt, she’ll be suffering from hypothermia. Whether mild or severe depends on how long she’s been exposed. So I need you to make sure you have plenty of warm blankets on hand. Put a big pot of water on to boil. Make sure a cup of hot tea with sugar is ready.”

She opened her mouth to argue and he clasped her shoulders hard in his big hands and shook her. “Blankets. Big pot of boiling water. Tea with sugar. And don’t even think about coming with me. I don’t want to have to end up chasing your pretty tail out there.”

Before she could reply, he’d slipped out the door and was lost in the swirling storm.

Nick had learned to track from the best of the best. Colonel Lucius Merle had grown up in the Ozarks with a shotgun in his arms and five generations of Merle hunters behind him. Tracking was in his DNA. Oddly enough, the colonel had done most of his professional tracking in filthy urban streets and that was the lore he’d passed on to Nick, in Baghdad and in Basra, in Kabul and Kandahar, in Caracas and Cartagena.

Still, sign was sign.

Nick scanned the ground right outside the big French windows. They gave out onto a covered terrace, so the snow hadn’t accumulated much. There were clear prints in snow half an inch lower than the surrounding grounds. Nick followed them as they angled sharply off to the left.

He wished he knew the terrain better. Damn! It hadn’t occurred to him to scout out Charity’s elderly relatives’ home while he’d been studying her. He wished he had now. He wanted to find the old lady fast. Out of the house less than a minute, he was already cold and he was young, healthy, and conditioned. He didn’t want to think of what was happening to a frail, elderly woman.

His heart had clenched watching Charity’s uncle, shaking and defenseless, almost naked in his fear.

Got to him every time. Old people and kids. Adults can fend for themselves, life sucks, you embrace the suck and go on, but he had a real soft spot for geezers and ankle biters.

The wind bit at his heavy coat, icy fingers reaching inside. Jesus. It was fucking freezing.

For just an instant, Nick flashed back to the heat of being inside Charity. The soft, warm, wet feel of her. That warm back heating his entire front. And Jesus, his cock in her. Clamped tight, so hot it was like sticking his dick in a little oven. Just the memory sent a flash of heat over him and then it was gone.

Get your head out of your dick, Ireland, he told himself. Now.

The snow was easing up, thank God. Where before it had been almost a complete whiteout, now he could discern big dark shapes all around, punctuated by the feeble glow of lamps. At least the old geezer kept outdoor lights on. Local scumbags would simply assume that rich old folks would have an airtight security system to go with the security lights. Otherwise they would long since have broken in.

Nick didn’t buy for a minute Charity’s nonsense that this was a crime-free zone. There was no such thing as a crime-free zone. Where there were humans, there was robbery and murder and rape. That ancient couple living alone with no security was a burglary just waiting to happen. If not worse.

Nick had only spent a few minutes inside the house, talking to Charity and her uncle, but he could multitask and he was a good observer.

The Prewitts were loaded. Old money. With lots of expensive stuff, just begging to be carted away by dickwads who’d rather steal than work. Thick antique Persian carpets, real artwork on the walls, loads of antique silver. They were lucky to still be alive.

Nick followed the footsteps down from the terrace to the gardens below and for a second lost the trail. Fuck! She’d been out in this cold for at least an hour, probably more. With each passing minute her chances of surviving went way down.

Nick crouched, taking out the powerful Maglite he always kept in the car. It had a narrow intense beam, which he focused on the surface of the snow.

There! A slit in the snow, like a little valley. His jaws clenched. He knew what that long depression meant. It meant that a few steps outside the house, she was already shuffling. Probably already losing sensation in her feet.

This was not good.

Still crouching, holding the light at an oblique angle, he followed the depressions, the ground dipping beneath his feet. A big oak was ten feet to his right, a building that looked like a garage to his left. Another building was visible just beyond it.

For a horrifying moment, Nick lost her track, then noticed a pink puff of material hanging from a laurel shrub and next to it, another long depression. The tracks paralleled the thick shrubs that ended abruptly next to another large building. This one was made of glass, dimly lit from within. Nick could make out rows and rows of plants in terra-cotta vases.

A greenhouse. The orangery, Judge Prewitt’s generation would have called it.

He followed the shallow depressions around the building, hoping they were going to lead to the greenhouse. Greenhouses were often heated. It was the one place an old lady could have a hope of surviving a snowstorm.

Nick opened the side door of the greenhouse, trying to make out shapes in the gloom. The temperature inside was at least thirty degrees warmer than the icy hell outside but it was still cold. He had to check this place out fast. If she wasn’t here, her time would be running out.

Nick walked fast down the aisles, exactly as if clearing a room during combat, checking in a grid. Five minutes later, he was back at the door, teeth clenched. The old lady wasn’t here. It was entirely possible she was already dead. Charity would be devastated.

He stood with his hand on the door, still and silent. He had to move fast but something stopped him. A hunch. He trusted his hunches. They’d saved his life more than once.

Something…

He stopped breathing for almost a full minute. The sound of air in his lungs was distracting him.

There was something…again! A—a snuffling sound. At two o’clock.

Nick headed for the sound at a run, heavy boots pounding, the echoes loud in the large space. And there she was, curled up behind some gunnysacks. He saw one long, bony white foot attached to a pink slipper.

The animal in her had found the one place she could survive outside her home. In the northeastern corner was a pile of fertilizer sacks and empty gunnysacks. She’d nestled in them, and they had saved her life.

Nick lifted a sack. There she was, huddled in on herself, rail thin and bony. Once beautiful, now ravaged, shaking with cold, lost and forlorn. But for all that, alive.

She turned her head, pale blue eyes blank and rheumy.

“Frank-lin?” She blinked rapidly, mouth trembling. “Franklin, I want to go home. Take me home. I’m cold.”

Nick crouched next to her. She reached out a hand and touched his face. Her hand was thin, long-fingered, the skin crepey and mottled. She was shaking as she laid the flat of her hand against his cheek.

“Franklin,” she sighed, a tear falling down her wrinkled cheek. “Home.”

Nick’s chest felt tight. “Yes, Franklin,” he said softly, sliding his arms out of his coat and wrapping it around her. “I’ve got you now.” He lifted her as easily as if she were a child and strode to the door. “I’ve come to take you home.”