He brought the blade up and severed the second rope. The woman dropped softly, and he caught her securely against his chest. Her skin possessed the terrifying, cold density of porcelain. Her eyelids fluttered, half-open, revealing clouded blue eyes that rolled aimlessly without focusing. A thick layer of frost coated her eyelashes, and her exhales were barely visible in the frigid air.
Her pale lips parted, trembling as a barely audible whisper escaped into the wind. It sounded like a name, but Logan leaned his ear close just to be sure.
“Don’t talk,” he instructed softly. “You’re safe now.”
He laid her gently beside her husband, immediately stripping off his heavily insulated outer tactical jacket to drape it over both of their shivering forms. Their civilian clothes were damp, porous, and entirely inadequate for a mountain freeze. He grabbed the emergency radio clipped to his rig, but only the dead, mocking hiss of static answered his thumb on the transceiver. The blizzard had entirely severed all signals.
He was left with two impossible choices: attempt to carry two incapacitated bodies through waist-deep snow back to the truck, or find immediate shelter nearby before hypothermia stopped their hearts entirely. Neither option offered a guarantee of survival. Leaving them was out of the question, and dragging them through the drifts alone would be fatal. He swept his gaze toward the eastern ridge.
Etched faintly against the graying sky was the rigid, unnatural geometry of a man-made structure. It was likely the abandoned ranger outpost he had remembered, or perhaps just a cruel illusion born of desperate wishful thinking. Arrow barked again. This time, it was not a sound of observation; it was a blaring alarm. The dog’s massive head snapped sharply toward the west, his wet nose twitching aggressively.
The boot tracks in the snow led exactly in that direction, and they were entirely too fresh. The falling snow hadn’t even begun to round out the heel strikes. Whoever had orchestrated this nightmare had not gone far. Logan crouched low, his eyes narrowing into slits as he studied the impressions. The metallic, bitter taste of pure adrenaline flooded his mouth. The architects of this cruelty might still be out there, watching from the tree line.
“Arrow,” Logan whispered, his voice a blade in the dark. “Eyes up.”
The shepherd immediately took a defensive stance directly over the two motionless bodies, completely silent and statuesque, guarding the helpless from whatever unseen threats lurked in the timber. Logan felt a profound, grounding gratitude for the animal—a complex bond forged equally from mutual respect and absolute dependence. He turned his attention back to the old man in the snow.
Walter’s chest rose a fraction of an inch, paused for a terrifyingly long second, and then fell. The next breath did not come. Logan immediately pressed two fingers deep under the angle of Walter’s jaw, desperately searching for a rhythm. The heartbeat stuttered wildly against his fingertips, fluttered, and then stopped entirely.
“Come on,” Logan hissed through his teeth.
He leaned his considerable weight forward, locking his elbows and beginning chest compressions with brutal, measured force. His hands took over automatically, driven by a thousand hours of repetitive emergency training. His conscious mind fractured into two distinct halves: clinical control and rising panic. Evelyn stirred weakly beside him, murmuring softly in her delirium, while Arrow paced a tight, anxious circle around them.
Logan aggressively counted the compressions under his freezing breath. Thirty deep compressions, two forced breaths, repeat. After the brutal completion of the third cycle, the old man’s back arched slightly, and he dragged in a massive, ragged gasp of air. It was a sound sharp enough to slice right through the freezing wind.
Logan froze in place, letting out a deep breath of his own before gently easing Walter onto his side to clear his airway. The old man coughed weakly, his clouded eyes violently fluttering open. Absolute confusion washed over his sharp features, rapidly chased by raw, unfiltered terror. Then, his cracked lips parted, and a fractured voice broke the silence.
“Jimmy?” Walter rasped, his tone desperate. His violently trembling hands reached upward blindly, his stiff fingers desperately gripping the thick fabric of Logan’s flannel shirt. “Jimmy… you came back.”
Logan went entirely still, his breath hanging suspended in a thick white cloud between them. The name hit him with the kinetic force of a physical blow. It wasn’t because the name belonged to him—it didn’t—but because of the profound, crushing weight of how the word was spoken. Beside them, Evelyn remained silent, her eyes tightly closed as she drifted in and out of exhausted consciousness.
Logan did not attempt to correct the old man. There was absolutely no point in breaking his fragile reality, not when it might be the only thing keeping his heart beating. Instead, he reached out his large hands, gently but firmly tightening his thick jacket around their shivering shoulders.
“Rest,” Logan commanded quietly, his voice carrying an unshakeable, manufactured calm. “You’re going to be all right.”