Framed For Christmas. Jaycee Bullard

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СКАЧАТЬ of them in a gaggle of oblivious teenage excitement, sliding along the snow-covered pavement, their voices loud and high-pitched as they raced through the lot and climbed into the van. Their boisterous enthusiasm distracted her from the feelings of unease swirling in her stomach. Why hadn’t the driver seen her? Had his brakes failed, or was it something more sinister? Surely the accident hadn’t been deliberate. But then, why the rush to flee the scene? She could have been pinned between the vehicles. Crushed. Broken. Dead.

      But she couldn’t allow herself to think about that now, with the blizzard increasing in intensity and streams of white powder roiling across the road. There was nothing to do but forge ahead. They were less than fifty miles from the nearest town, and more than an hour from their destination. Slow and steady, that was the trick. She just needed to stay alert until they reached the reservation.

      She climbed back into the van and signaled her turn onto the highway, her eyes darting in every direction, searching for signs of the tan SUV. So far so good. She tightened her grip on the wheel and directed her focus to the road ahead. An hour passed, and still there were no other cars behind her. According to the GPS, they were five miles from the town of Dagger Lake. Just in time, too. Visibility had decreased to near zero, and thick flakes were blanketing the windshield as quickly as the wipers worked to clear her view. In the rearview mirror, she could see the faces of the kids in the back seat. Two hours ago, they were laughing and singing Christmas carols, but now seven sets of worried eyes watched her every move.

      “We’re almost there.” She tried to sound reassuring, but she was finding it hard to disguise the anxious tremor in her voice. Dread coiled up within her as a set of headlights flashed in the mirror, closing in fast. “Once we make the turn onto 81, we’ll—”

      The rest of her sentence hung in the air. A bump shook the chassis, and the van heaved forward, spinning onto a sheet of black ice and careening sideways across the pavement. Frantically, she tried to remember what she had been taught when she learned to drive.

       Foot off the accelerator.

       Steer in the direction of the slide.

      It sounded good in theory, but the tires felt like skis, locked in position and built to glide. Her hands cranked the wheel all the way to the left, but the van was out of control. A second later, the hood tipped off the road, and they were headed down a steep embankment on a slow-motion roller-coaster ride through a pillowy quilt of snow.

      She pumped the brakes in a desperate attempt to avoid the tall pine that had appeared out of nowhere directly in their path. The tree loomed larger and larger as the teens in the back seat shrieked in fear. In three seconds flat, her brain went from white-knuckle terror to stunned relief as the brakes finally engaged and the van lurched to a stop just inches from the spiky trunk.

      She took a steadying breath and turned to check on the kids.

      “Everybody okay?” She craned her neck to peer into the back seat. It was suddenly very dark inside the van as a shower of soft flakes fell from the branches and covered the windows with a frosty mantle of snow.

      “We’re all fine,” Josh, one of the younger boys, reported. “If we had been moving faster, it might have been fun.”

      Fun?

      Stuck in a snowdrift somewhere in North Dakota in the middle of a raging winter storm with no bars on her phone and no way to call for help. Fun wouldn’t be the word she’d have chosen to describe their predicament.

      A sense of dread washed over her as she tried shifting into Reverse, but the vehicle’s back wheels only spun deeper into the rut.

      “Do you want us to get in front and push?” Josh asked.

      It was a tempting thought. But mixing seven excitable teens, a five-thousand-pound conversion van and a thirty-foot tree seemed like a recipe for disaster.

      “Maybe we can try it as a last resort.” She gave the teenager an encouraging smile as she rechecked the reception on her phone.

      There was a sudden movement outside the van as a patch of gray light opened up on the windshield, courtesy of a flat yellow mitten pushing away the snow. Her heartbeat revved as she conjured the faces of the men in the tan SUV. Had they followed the van down into the ditch? A scream caught in her throat as the circle grew wider to reveal the face of a huge hairy stranger with icicles dangling from his beard. White clouds from his breath lingered above his frozen eyebrows, and she stared at him with openmouthed alarm.

      She peered through the windshield, her body frozen with indecision. She needed to think fast while dusk was still a memory in the darkening sky. Pulse racing, she slid sideways on the seat and turned to face the kids. “Sit tight while I check things out.” As she pushed the door open and stepped outside, a mini avalanche of snowflakes fell on her head.

      “Are you okay?” the man asked in a voice that was low and husky. “Lou and I were coming through the trees when we saw you take a nosedive into the ditch.”

      Lou? Who was Lou? She looked past him into the white wilderness but didn’t see anyone else. Still, the stranger’s concern was heartening. Relief bubbled up in her throat. “Did you notice another car on the road?”

      He shook his head. “With the whiteout conditions, the highway was a blur. Why? Was there some sort of problem?”

      “I felt a bump right before the accident, and I thought that maybe...” What exactly had she thought? That the tan SUV had pushed the van off the tarmac? Given the slippery road conditions, the idea seemed far-fetched.

      “Miss Jones?” Lucy’s piping voice trilled from the back seat, pulling Dani’s attention to the van. “Are we still going to the reservation?”

      “I hope so.” Dani turned to once again face the stranger. “Any chance you have a vehicle that can pull us out of here?”

      He shook his head. “My truck is out of commission. Even so, it would probably take something with a lot more horsepower to haul a van of this size out of a ditch.”

      She reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell. “I thought about calling for a tow, but I haven’t been able to get any reception. Do you have a landline we could use?”

      “Sorry. I don’t. I heard on the radio that all of the cell towers are down.”

      Helplessness washed over her. Something nudged her from the side, and she turned to find a massive German shepherd intent on checking her out. She flinched and took a step closer to the open door. So, this was Lou. The shepherd growled softly and watched her through glowing eyes. Her back stiffened. This probably wasn’t a good time to mention her fear of big dogs, especially ones who seemed determined to push their way uninvited into the van.

      The man must have sensed her unease, because he looped a mittened hand around the edge of the dog’s collar and held him fast. “Lou and I seem to be forgetting our manners. The name’s Gideon Marshall, ma’am.” He raised his voice to be heard over the gusting wind.

      “Nice to meet you, Mr. Marshall. I’m Dani Jones. The kids and I are headed to the Dagger Lake reservation as part of a mission outreach from our local church.” She looked up at the dark sky through the thick flakes that seemed to be falling faster by the minute. “But it doesn’t look like we’re going to make it tonight.”

      “My cabin is just across the ridge. You’re welcome to camp out on my floor until СКАЧАТЬ