Page 103 of The Cowboy and the Baby

“Hoss!” he shouted. “I can barely see!”

“I know!”

I left the machine idling, stepped off, and waded ahead. My stomach tightened into a hard knot.

Oh, no.

I spun in a circle, not seeing a thing. Not a track, not a tire. Not a hint of life. When had I missed the tracks? Where had I missed them? Visibility had been tough for almost a mile. Had I . . .

“Where’s the tracks?” I called.

Wyatt held up both hands.

“I don’t know!”

My heart pounded. I couldn’t search much longer and risk our lives. Right now, we had clarity because we could see our tracks leading home. But the storm would cover all of this up soon enough, and we wouldn’t find our way.

I pulled my phone out. With any luck, I could pinpoint our location on the GPS, find the forest service road, and head toward it in the hopes of checking for tire tracks there. The snow swirled so thickly that I had to turn my back to the wind and hold the phone close to my chest to see.

At some point, we had driven into an area with reception. There definitely wasn’t any here, but three text messages had popped up. One from Cora, one from Hawk, and another from a number I didn’t recognize. I tapped it, my thumb almost numb. There was a link that I couldn’t open, but then there was a photo. It hadn’t downloaded all the way, but I saw enough details to know exactly what I looked at.

A terrain-style map, and a dot. A message lay beneath the image when I scrolled farther down.

Unknown number: This is Noah, Hawk’s brother. I’ve found a potential location for the grandparents. It’s not exact.

I frowned, studying the picture and terrain. In it, I made out a few vague details. Nothing certain, but a hint of rock formations that I felt relatively positive we’d already passed.

Wyatt climbed off his machine, waded over. The snow gripped him almost to his thighs.

“What’s up?” he called.

“I think . . . I think we’re too far east.”

“What?”

“I think we’re too far east!” I cried. I pointed west. “If we go that way, we might find them!”

Wyatt glanced at the phone, shrugged, and said, “I’m at three quarters in my gas tank. We have plenty of gas.”

A veritable don’t get scared now, if I ever heard one.

“We have to find them,” I shouted, but Wyatt didn’t need convincing. “Doesn’t matter what happens, they won’t last long in this weather.”

He spun his hand in the air with an impatient flick of his wrist. “Why are we still talking about it? Let’s keep going.”

A surge of gratitude welled up in my chest. Wyatt, the impetuous disaster of a young man had always been welcome at my ranch, and he always would be. This kind of raw courage was a difficult trait to find.

I slapped him on the shoulder.

“Follow me.”

Instinct surged again as I guided us out of the clearing, toward what I hoped was due west. We had to navigate through trees, away from the tracks that once nudged us farther northwest. I followed the intuition in my gut. The one that urged me to try the two-track in the first place.

I listened to it now.

Ten minutes later, after alternately easing around trees and through thickets or charging across open snow, I saw a distant glimmer. At first, I considered it a trick of the light. Then it came again.

I held my breath.