“What is it, boy?” he asked. “Got something you want me to see? Maybe a mama dog out there with puppies?”
The dog woofed. Sort of. It was an odd sound, really, not much like a bark at all, but Chappy knew he couldn’t ignore it. If there actually was a litter of pups, they definitely wouldn’t make it through the storm. The snow was falling hard and would continue to accumulate. They were in for at least another foot and a half of the heavy stuff.
“Damn it,” Chappy muttered as he leaned over and placed his shotgun on the floorboards of the porch, then began to tie his boot laces securely. “Give me a second, and we’ll see what you have to show me.” He stood, grabbing the shotgun as he did, taking a moment to brace himself against the wall of the cabin before heading back inside.
Chappy propped the weapon near the door, went to a dresser against the wall, quickly ripped off his jacket, and pulled a sweatshirt over the long-sleeved shirt he already had on. He grabbed his hat and scarf, then put his coat back on. When he was as bundled up as he could be, Chappy went back to the door.
A part of him was hoping the dog would be gone. That he’d be off the hook in trying to figure out what the animal was trying to tell him. But when he opened his cabin door and shone a flashlight into the storm, the dog was sitting right where he’d last seen him.
As soon as Chappy stepped off the porch, the dog turned and started walking in the direction of the road. Which wasn’t a road, per se, so much as a meandering dirt two-track that connected to a rural road in one direction and dead-ended in the other.
Chappy’s cabin was well off the beaten path, which was how he liked it. In all the time he’d been up there, he hadn’t had one visitor except for his friends, and he didn’t count them as visitors. . . they were family. No one had accidentally stumbled onto the cabin asking for directions.
Shivering, and cursing his body and the flu virus raging within him, Chappy trudged after the dog. “Ten minutes,” he muttered. “That’s all you’re getting, dog. Because this is crazy.”
Not even five minutes later, the snow making every step an effort, Chappy was ready to turn around and go back to his cabin when, surprisingly, he thought he saw something in the distance.
He stopped in his tracks and blinked. The dog was standing in the middle of Chappy’s long driveway. They were almost at the end of it, where the path met what the map called a road. As he stood there, the shape in the distance slowly got closer.
It was a person.
Chappy couldn’t have been more shocked. What the hell was a person doing out here in this storm? It made no sense. Just as it made no sense that the dog had led Chappy right to him. If he’d ignored the dog or waited a little longer to see what kind of animal was making the noise or if he’d taken a few extra minutes to put on more clothes, the person probably would’ve walked right by the driveway to his cabin.
The chances that Chappy was here, at the exact moment when some stranger in distress was about to pass, had to be astronomical.
The person had yet to look up, keeping his head tucked to his chest and looking down at his feet while he walked. He was shuffling more than walking, really, as he followed the weak path of the flashlight in his hand, barely illuminating more than a foot in front of him. The snow was around six inches deep now and falling faster and harder than before.
It wasn’t until the person was about six feet away that he finally looked up.
Chappy saw huge blue eyes in a pale white face.
“Oh!” the person exclaimed in surprise.
“What the hell are you doing?” he nearly growled. He hadn’t given any thought to what he might say to this stranger, but his surprise and unease at seeing anyone out in this storm had taken over.
“Um . . . walking?” the person said.
Two things hit Chappy at once. The person in front of him was female—and the dog who had literally led him to her was nowhere to be seen.
“What are you doing?” she retorted when he didn’t respond.
The question sounded just as stupid coming from her as it probably had coming from his own lips. Shaking his head a little, Chappy said, “Come on, we need to get inside.”
To his surprise, the woman didn’t move and, instead, simply stared at him.
“What?” he asked.
“I don’t know you.”
Chappy wanted to laugh. “I don’t know you either. You could be a serial killer who chops off my head as soon as we get inside my cabin. But at the moment, I’m willing to take that chance. It’s freezing out here, I feel like crap, and we haven’t even seen the worst of this storm. You coming, or do you want to die out here?” he asked grumpily.