Chloe Carter's Arc

Chapter 3 of 12

Chloe dug until her arms burned. She used the flat of a broken board, then her gloved hands, then a rubber floor mat from the driver's side, wedged under the rear tire for grip. Snow came down harder now, fat and steady, filling the ruts as fast as she cleared them. She did not stop to think about the man on the logging road, or the cat, or the wet sound she was still hearing in her head. She dug. Then she stopped. She stood up straight beside the cabin and made herself think. She did not know if he had come alone. He had walked toward her like a man with time. Men with time usually have someone waiting at the bottom of the road, or a radio in a coat pocket, or a partner sitting in a truck at the switchback. If she drove off blind, she could drive straight into the next one. She walked back to the tree line where he had fallen. The drag trail was already softening under new snow. His knife lay on a rock, the steel dark with blood, the handle striped red and green like something bought at a gas station. She picked it up and wiped it on her sleeve. No radio on the rock. No phone. She made herself follow the drag ten yards into the brush and crouched by what was left of his coat. Empty pockets except for a folded gas receipt and a single car key on a plain ring. No second phone. No note. No name. One key. One man. One car, somewhere down the mountain. It was not proof. It was enough. She went back to the sedan. She slid the knife under the passenger seat where she could reach it. She rocked the car, reverse to drive, reverse to drive, feeding the mat under the tire each time it spat free. The rear end broke loose of the drift with a lurch, and she was on the driveway, then the road. The sedan slipped the second the tires touched ice. The back end swung wide on the first bend and she caught it, barely, palms slick inside her gloves. Rear-wheel drive on a mountain in a blizzard. She had known. She had known when she signed the papers. She crawled the car down at fifteen miles an hour. On the second switchback the tail slid again and she rode it out, pig on ice, tapping the brake the way her mother had once shown her on a wet parking lot years ago. The cabin disappeared behind the pines. Ahead, somewhere below, was whatever car the key in her pocket belonged to. She kept both hands on the wheel and drove toward it.