The rain had changed completely to snow, and it began swirling down fast enough that the ground began turning white despite being so wet. He didn’t like that, not just because of the snow, but because after dark the temperature would plummet and whatever was wet would develop a slick coating of ice. Their only hope was if this was a fast-moving front, with warmer rain behind it.

He had other things to do, but he didn’t want to leave Cate sitting alone in the cold any longer than he had to. The sooner she got into their little shelter and he could get a tire started, the sooner she could pull off her wet shoes and socks and start warming her feet. He could finish securing the shelter afterward.

There was about twenty minutes of light left by the time he could make his way back to her; the thin layer of snow was incredibly slippery. Several times he had to use the trenching tool to catch himself. The drops of water still on the tree branches were beginning to freeze, making a faintly clinking sound in the wind.

“I have us a place,” he said, and she looked up from where she’d buried her face against her knees. The poncho was pulled up over her nose to warm the air she breathed, and her eyes were more alert; they had begun to take on the dullness of suffering, which had worried him a lot more than he’d let her see. “It’s dry, and we can build a fire.”

“You said the magic word.” She crawled out from under the sheltering branches with more energy than she’d shown crawling under them. The rest had refreshed her. She would have been in much better shape if he’d insisted she wear boots, but he hadn’t expected rain and snow. He didn’t have arthritis to warn him of changing weather, and he hadn’t been able to watch the Weather Channel for the past couple of days. For all he knew, a record-breaking early-season blizzard had been predicted.

“The rain has started freezing,” he said. “Getting back is going to be tough, because the ground is so slippery. Don’t take a step unless you’re holding on to something.”

“Got it.” She pulled out her hammer and gripped it in her left hand as he loaded himself down with all the gear he’d earlier removed. He started out, moving as easily under the weight as he had without it, and she carefully followed.

Cate’s feel were still miserably cold and wet, but while she’d been resting, she had constantly flexed her toes to increase the blood flow in them, so she wasn’t as clumsy as she’d been before. Still, she hoped the shelter he’d found wasn’t far, because light was fading fast and the snow was getting heavier, filtering down through the trees in eerie silence.

She hoped the valley was getting snow. She hoped the shooters staked out on the mountainside were getting ten feet of snow dumped on their asses. She hoped they’d been in the rain all day, and were now frozen into human Popsicles. The mountains often got snow when the valley didn’t, but she hoped this wasn’t one of those times.

“We’ll have to turn back, won’t we?” she asked softly.

“Probably.” He didn’t sugarcoat it. She was glad. She could deal better with reality than with rosy pictures that dealt more in wishes than fact. “Unless it’s so bad we have to wait it out.”

He paused on a particularly slippery patch and used the trenching tool to hack a stepping place in the ground. With his poncho covering the supplies on his back, he looked like some misshapen monster, but she figured she looked the same.

Physically she was as miserable as she could remember ever being. Steam puffed from her open mouth, and she made an effort to close it and breathe through her nose, which gave her a dragon effect. She distracted herself by thinking about how she could show this to the boys this winter. They would love playing dragon.

“Here it is,” he finally said, sweeping aside the branches of a giant fir and using his flashlight to show her the interior of a slanted overhang. “I swept it out and laid down those fir limbs for a cushion. Crawl in and get comfy while I gather firewood.

She didn’t ask where he intended to find dry wood; she had absolute faith that if there was any out there, he would find it. She stopped at the entrance and pulled off her wet poncho, reaching out to hang it on one of the fir branches, then quickly ducked inside. An extra flashlight would have come in handy, but she didn’t have one.

“Here,” he said, pulling a thin green tube out of his pack. As soon as she saw it, she knew what it was, having seen them in stores that carried outdoor gear. He bent it to start the chemical reaction and the tube began to glow.

Light was a wonderful thing. She immediately felt better, even though she was just as cold and miserable as before.

He knelt at the entrance and began shedding supplies and gear, trying to wiggle out of most of it without pulling off his poncho, though he especially didn’t want to get his blanket and the sleep pad wet. All of the climbing gear went at one end; she pulled hers off and placed it down there, too.

She had become used to the weight of the water in the improvised sling, but as soon as she took it off, she breathed a huge sigh of relief as her back and shoulder muscles relaxed. The water was a big part of their burden, each of them carrying about twenty pounds of it, or two and a half gallons.

“Do you have dry socks with you?”

“In my pocket.”

“Before you do anything else, get those wet shoes and socks off, dry your feet, and put on fresh socks.” Then he was gone, ducking back into the night. She watched the bob of the flashlight for a moment, then did exactly as he’d said. He was the survival expert, not she.

She put aside her wet shoes and with difficulty peeled off the two pairs of socks. Her feet looked dead white. She cupped her hands around her toes, but her hands were also cold and that didn’t give her much relief. Briskly she began rubbing her feet, both to get them dry and to get the blood flow going again. What she needed was a pan of hot water to soak them in, but this overhang didn’t have plumbing, so she kept rubbing and chafing, and slowly began to warm both her hands and her feet.

The light the chem tube gave off was dim and weird green in color, so she couldn’t tell if her toes were getting a little pink or not, but they felt somewhat warmer. Quickly she pulled the fresh socks out of her pocket and put them on. Joy of joys, they had absorbed some of her body heat; it was almost like wrapping her feet in heated towels. The sensation quickly faded, but it was wonderful while it lasted.

Her sweatpants were wet from the knees down, but she didn’t have another pair of pants to put on. Then she remembered the silk long johns she’d put in her jacket pocket. She got them out, then swiftly shucked the wet sweatpants and pulled on the formfitting long johns. They were dry, but felt too insubstantial in the cold, so she pulled her blanket around her, then started arranging the meager space in their shelter.

That consisted of rolling out the sleep pad on the layer of tree limbs he’d put down, then placing his blanket roll on top of it. She moved their slings of water to the back of the space, where she hoped they wouldn’t freeze, and got out a bottle of water for each of them. Their available food was more muesli, some individual boxes of raisins, and miniature PayDay candy bars. To her surprise, his pack yielded some corn chips. She shrugged; maybe he was a corn chip fanatic. She could understand that. For a few days every month, she would kill for chocolate—perhaps not literally, but she would certainly knock down old ladies in the grocery store parking lot to get to any Hershey’s bars they might have in their shopping bags.

A smile touched her lips. Tanner had once offered her a Hershey’s Kiss to make her feel better. She’d burst out laughing and hugged him exuberantly, confirming in his mind that chocolate could heal all woes.