by Ember Leigh
Table of Contents
The Last Resort
Publication Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Epilogue
About the Author
Also Available
Also Read
Thank You
The Last Resort
by
Ember Leigh
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
The Last Resort
COPYRIGHT © 2017 by Ember Leigh
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Contact Information: [email protected]
Cover Art by Diana Carlile
The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
PO Box 708
Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708
Visit us at www.thewilderroses.com
Publishing History
First Scarlet Rose Edition, 2017
Print ISBN 978-1-5092-1309-2
Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-1310-8
Published in the United States of America
Dedication
To the non-conventionals out there.
Chapter One
Rose gripped the steering wheel tighter as snow fell in a steady sheet, cartoonish against the eager beams of her headlights. Following the road involved a delicate mixture of guesswork and mathematical study of the tail lights in front of her. Firs and pines blended into a formless wall at the sides of the road as she slowed to a crawl on the winding mountain highway.
What had poets and artists found so captivating about the white stuff? This was a rapidly worsening weather situation, not a serene moment for reflection, unless perhaps the point was to make amends before death. Or maybe this highlighted the real difference between the north and the south. She, the southern girl accustomed to flurries and wispy snow covers, couldn’t imagine navigating through the millions of pounds of snow hurtling through the sky on a regular basis.
From the backseat, the girl cooed.
Rose sucked in a deep breath, hoping this would calm her heart or settle the nervous swirl in her belly. She glanced at the rearview mirror—though she couldn’t see the baby’s face, Rose assumed the outdoors absorbed her, probably keenly aware of the pending snowstorm. Small kids had that sense—or was it wolves? Either way, babies could probably tell.
“Lots of snow, huh?”
The girl didn’t respond. Rose clicked the heat up a few more notches, dismayed by the loose fit of the child-size parka she’d bought in preparation for this trip. It had said twelve to fifteen months, but apparently Emmy weighed in on the smaller side of the size scale. The girl seemed to like it despite the poor fit—the color even brought out the bright blue of her wide eyes, a feature so stunning she’d nearly tripped over herself as she smuggled the kid out of her father’s house.
The road continued to wind and dip. They’d been nearing the Appalachian Mountains for eons, but really, the snowfall had halted the progress of her trip in a way she hadn’t expected. This was a new region for her, probably pretty when not being ambushed by white crap and the road wasn’t disappearing before her eyes. She hated driving in the snow as much as she hated being helpless.
All sorts of bad omens fell from the sky as she pressed forward.
The baby giggled sharply, tossing blonde ringlets from side to side. Rose’s heart swelled and then constricted—two seconds her eyes had been on the rearview mirror, and the car listed to the left. Focus.
“If this snow keeps up…” She strained to look out the windshield, sensing the descent of a whiteout. She’d been in one only once before, purely by accident, but then again, nobody ever planned to be caught in a whiteout. That experience had been traumatizing enough, and she hadn’t even been the driver. She struggled to swallow her fear. “We can make it, can’t we?”
“Yep!”
The girl proved little consolation— “yep” marked her only verbal word in the client profile. Rose had picked up this case a couple weeks ago, and it marked her first gig on the east coast, and her very first experience with a full-blown winter.
The mountains pressing in heavy at the edges of the highway an hour ago had dissolved into a dense white. The taillights of the car she swore she’d been following had disappeared completely.
In the backseat, the baby made a kissy noise.
“We’re gonna be fine,” Rose croaked weakly. “Just fine.”
She struggled to make out anything beyond the windshield, yet nothing materialized. Was this the ether? Or perhaps like a preface to an Alice in Wonderland adventure, this was the split second after falling into the rabbit hole. She blinked once, twice, then eased onto the brakes.
The car responded by losing traction completely. The tail-end swung wide, and Rose corrected by veering the other way, a bad idea the second she’d done it. The car spun. She screamed, pumping the brakes until something gave.
One more traumatic spin and the car slowed. Rose panted in her seat, desperate for a landmark but seeing nothing. The girl whimpered in the backseat.
“It’s fine… It’s fine…” She pushed the bangs off her forehead, now sweaty despite the cold overtaking the car. She grabbed her cell phone with a shaky hand and flipped through recent messages, eager to find one that had come through as she and the baby had left Michigan in the afternoon.
The message said EMMY WATTS.
She had to let her boss know about the weather situation in case they didn’t make it through this cursed northern maelstrom. Her hand shook as she typed, barely able to focus on the letters with the adrenaline pumping through her veins. In the back of her mind, she struggled to make sense of how the car might have righted itself—were they on the side of the road? The middle? In the path of an oncoming car?
The girl breathed softly in the backseat, unaware of the danger. Her name was Emmy, something pulsing quiet and forceful in the back of her mind as she coordinated the silent and swift escape from her convict father’s mobile home several hours earlier. The guy hadn’t known she’d entered, barely aware as she slipped Emmy, quiet and cooing, from the pile of blankets on the floor and into the warmth of her leather jacket. From the odor and the depth of sleep, she’d guessed prescription pills and whiskey. Whether her amateur drug assessment proved true, Emmy was now on her way back to Mommy—the dad, however, had another thing waiting for him once the police got the okay.
She paused in her typing. “Emmy…everything’s going to be—”
Headlights broke through the whiteness. Rose’s words turned into a scream.
****
“Watch out, Wesley!”
Garrett’s stomach shriveled as the rear end of a car appeared in the truck’s headlights. Wesley swore and pumped the brakes, but the two cars connected with a sick crunch. The car jerked forward as the truck shuddered to a stop.
“Oh, Christ.” Garrett grabbed his gloves from the console. “We gotta help them.”
His older brother
rummaged beneath the front dashboard for something, eyes wild. “We still got those flares, right?”
“I think so.” He pulled his face warmer down and leaped out of the truck, blasted with a wall of frigid white that stole his breath. After only four tentative steps, the world beyond had ceased to exist, like he was underwater with his eyes closed. He groped his way to the other side of the truck via the bumper, straining to catch sight of his brother.
“Wesley? Wesley, can you hear me?”
A muffled reply came, and Garrett took a few more steps in his direction. The snow pelted him, the coldness cutting through the multiple layers like a paring knife. He called out his brother’s name again, and this time the response came louder.
A gust of wind nearly toppled him. He swore, and caught sight of his brother, his body shimmery in the snow like a mirage.
He stepped toward him, the ground slippery and uneven. The “winter-ready” boots he and his brother were conned into buying at the hardware store were about as useless as high heels in this stuff. He squinted, struggling to see anything against the pelting snow, and he could barely make out the faint outline of the black car before him. Seeing the wreckage intensified his anxiety—there were few vehicles able to survive an impact with their truck. A cement-pouring truck, maybe. But a sedan? Never.
A flare lit up, barely visible through the haze of white. Whoever they’d hit…this cold could easily kill them. Even a half hour in this stuff could bring down a grizzly bear. His throat tightened. They had to work fast.
He inched his way toward the driver side door, one hand on Wesley, the other touching the side of the car. Mangled bits of metal snared his fingertips. He tried to peer into the car, but the windows were hopelessly frosted. He pulled at the door once, then twice. He turned to Wesley.
“It won’t open.”
Garrett swore and kicked at the side of the car. Desperation made paralyzing steps across his chest, and with the cold, it elevated him toward hysteria. Lurid scenes of the mangled human remains inside clouded his mind. Another gust of wind pummeled them; Wesley lost his footing and disappeared briefly into the white. Garrett reached for him, found nothing, then finally a gloved hand clawed at the side of the car. Wesley had pulled himself to standing.
“Try it again.”
Garrett pulled again, and it groaned loudly, the hinge releasing reluctantly. They leaned into the car; a woman lay slumped over the middle console of the car, unmoving.
“What should we do?” Garrett scanned her for signs of injury. Snow swirled into the open door, obscuring his view, but from what he could tell, she was alive. She hadn’t been wearing her seatbelt, from the way her hips sat in the seat, and he worried real injury might mean she shouldn’t be touched.
“Is she hurt?” Wesley peered into the car.
“I can’t tell. But if she broke something, isn’t it best to wait until paramedics arrive?”
Wes shook his head. “Paramedics won’t make it out here. We have to move her ourselves.”
His brother was right. Garrett swallowed his fear and leaned into the car as much as he could. He tried rousing her, and she murmured something. A good sign she hadn’t broken anything, if she wasn’t screaming in agony. He scooped her into his arms, wondering if frostbite could set in yet. Maybe it already had.
“See if she has any stuff we should bring with.” Garrett turned and shuffled toward the truck, turning his head away from the unrelenting sheet of snow. After a couple of steps, the woman shifted in his arms. She murmured something he couldn’t hear.
“You’ll be fine.” He almost choked on the flecks of ice making their way into his throat.
She struggled against him, like trying to get away.
“No, we’re helping you. I promise, you’ll be fine.”
He looked behind them; he thought he saw Wesley, but it could be a mirage, like the illusions caused by deliria in the desert. Was this a whiteout whimsy? He strained to see but could make out nothing.
The woman coughed, followed by the word “Where?”
“Where are we going? Back to our hotel, where you can get warm.” He coughed as icy wind blasted his throat.
She struggled again, more forcefully this time. He didn’t know if the overpriced boots or the weather had him off balance, but her struggling in his arms nearly sent him to the ground. Her foot connected with his knee, and he gasped. The kick had been something more than a struggle, like maybe she knew the right pressure point to attack.
But the outline of the truck appeared, and his pace quickened as she struggled harder. His feet and hands were already numb, and he couldn’t imagine what possessed her to struggle like this, especially when on her way to safety.
“What is it, lady? What’s wrong?”
This time, one word rang clear.
“Baby!”
He froze, heart leaping back into his throat. He turned toward Wesley and screamed, “She’s got a kid in there.”
His brother came near enough for Garrett to catch the fear in his eyes. Wes turned on his heels and disappeared into the white void once more.
“Don’t worry, lady. We’re getting your baby.”
Garrett’s left hip connected hard against the bumper of the truck, and using this as a guide, he shimmied himself to the passenger side. He squeezed his eyes shut as he reached for the handle. When his hand connected with it, he struggled to keep the lady safe in his arms as he struggled to open the door against the torrential wind.
It swung open with a reluctant groan. He pushed her up into the passenger seat and then climbed in after her. The wind slammed the door shut behind him, only a moment after he’d brought his foot inside. Garrett tore off his mask—the eye holes had crusted over with sleet and ice.
“Are you okay? Can you see me?”
The woman before him wore a serious expression despite being possibly unconscious. He placed her in her early thirties. Long, brown hair flopped over her shoulder in a neat braid. Short bangs glittered with snow, frozen in place. No response.
“Are you okay? Please, let me know if you’re okay.”
She groaned, eyebrows knitting together. Her right hand twitched.
“You can hear me, right? Lady, are you okay?”
Her eyes rolled beneath closed lids, and her fair skin had a gray tint to it, like her soul had temporarily stepped out of her skin. Garrett cranked the heat in the truck and then leaned over her once more. “Answer me.”
“Emmy…”
“Emmy? Is that your name? Or your kid?”
She nodded, face still looking like she glared at someone in a dream.
“Lady, don’t go to sleep. You gotta stay awake. Don’t you worry about Emmy, she’s fine. Wesley got her, and she’s fine.”
She gave no response but tried to sit up. Failing, she slumped against the seat once more, head lolling to the side. Dark blood matted the right side of her head.
“Oh Jesus…” His stomach heaved while his conscious mind soared to the stars. Could this be a head injury? Did that mean keeping them awake and talking, or was that for something else? Why hadn’t he and Wesley ever thought to take a first aid course? Or join the damn Boy Scouts? He flipped foreclosures, for God’s sake. He didn’t know anything about saving people.
He rubbed his hands together, seriously concerned she could die in front of him because he’d opted out of Boy Scouts as a kid.
“Ummm…oh. Tell me your name. Okay? Tell me your name.”
Her head lolled. “Rose.”
He furrowed a brow, struggling to think of questions while his brain inched toward shut down. “Umm…does your head hurt?”
More of a delay, and then, “A little.”
He strained to see out the window, wondering why Wesley took so long. Anxiety clawed at him. The lives of two people were in his and his brother’s hands, when the day had otherwise started out so normal and inane: the regular corn flakes breakfast, a brief quarrel about pool-room dimensions, the regular bickering o
n the way to the supermarket about whether they would need two carts or not, and then…this? If it weren’t for the bloody scratch on her head, he might try waking himself up from this nightmare.
“How about your last name? What’s your last name?”
She sighed then groaned. “De…Delaney.”
“Good. Things are going to be fine. I think I see Wesley now.”
The vague outline of his brother’s body appeared. He approached slowly, head tucked against the ferocious wall of wind that had similarly pummeled Garrett, and lugged something much larger than the body of a child. He bit his lip, momentarily forgetting about Rose De-whatever.
Wesley banged at the driver’s side door. Garrett clambered across Rose and heaved against it, inviting inside a gust of wind that knocked him backward. Wesley’s red face appeared, and he pulled the front seat forward and shoved a baby seat into the extended-cab back seat. He tossed a bag in next, pushed back the seat and hopped in, swinging the door shut.
Everything became still.
“Holy…crap.” Wesley tore off his hood. “That thing was strapped in there.”
Garrett eased himself to the far side of the truck, between Rose and the door.
He peered at the child in the back seat, who whimpered softly but otherwise appeared fine. “Crank up the heat,” Garrett said. “The kid is probably freezing to death. You think they’ll be fine?”
Wesley sighed, appraising the small girl. “We couldn’t have been going more than ten miles an hour when we hit them.”
“But…look at her head.” Garrett carefully tilted the woman’s face to the side, exposing the bloody patch.
“She probably cracked it on the window…more than likely it’s a cut. We’re lucky they don’t have more injuries.”
His brother was right—in his first whiteout ever, Garrett now understood why all the townsfolk had fretted about the pending weather pattern for days.
Wesley squeezed the steering wheel. “Should we try to make it back to the hotel? Conditions haven’t changed much.”
Garrett frowned. “I dunno, bro. What if we hit somebody else? We don’t have the room for more victims.”