I wake up freezing my balls off on the couch, Mia curled up against me, a blanket pulled up tight around us.

I don’t remember falling asleep. After we slept together, we stayed up talking about nothing, mostly just smiling and laughing. And then we fucked again as the fire started to die down and the night grew deeper. After that I guess we passed out.

I pull the blanket off and get up, grunting to myself. It’s fucking cold as hell in here. I pull my clothes on before running up into my room to put on something warmer. It takes me a second to realize that the house doesn’t have any power.

Mia’s awake when I come back downstairs. “It’s freezing in here,” she says.

I nod, frowning. “Generator must have gone down last night.”

“Does that happen?”

I shrug. “Sometimes. Not often. I have to go check them.”

“Okay,” she says. “I’m gonna go put on something warmer.” She gets up and scampers upstairs, blanket still wrapped around her.

I frown to myself as I pull on my boots and head outside.

The snow’s still falling, though it’s starting to slow. Jones scampers around in the snow, hopping up and jumping down. I’d guess there’s at least a foot on the ground, maybe a little bit more. I have to trudge my way through heavy snow toward the small shed where I keep the generators and some of my tools.

I pull open the door and frown to myself. I could have sworn I locked the shed the last time I was in here, but it’s not unusual for me to forget. I step inside, shutting the door behind me and stomping the snow from my boots. Just ahead, the generators are set up in a row against the far back wall.

Two of them are still humming. I walk over and check them, and they seem fine. The center and the far left generators are the main power, and the far right generator is the backup. It’s only supposed to run if one of the first two fail. Fortunately, it’s running, but it doesn’t produce enough power to keep everything in the house going. The backup is purely for essential functions, although I can’t help but wonder why the heat would have been turned down, since that’s the most essential of all the functions. I know I didn’t run out of gas for the heater, since I had my enormous tank filled up just a couple of weeks ago.

I sigh and start to inspect the generator that isn’t running. It takes me a few minutes to realize that one of the fuel lines shattered, and the connection to the pump body itself is broken. That’s a critical error right there, and I can’t fix it without getting a part. Maybe I could rig something up, but it’s not worth the risk.

“How the hell did this happen?” I mumble to myself. I keep fiddling with the generator, hoping that I can make it work, although I’m pretty sure I can’t.

This thing confuses me. If they were outside, I could see the line freezing then expanding and cracking, but they’re not outside. Sure, it’s cold in the shed, but I doubt it dipped down so much in here to do serious damage. Then again, I haven’t been paying close attention to the weather lately, so maybe I missed something.

I grumble to myself, and then I hear something outside. I frown and head over to the shed door, pushing it open to spot Mia working her way through the snow toward me, wrapped in a big, heavy winter jacket.

“Hey,” she calls out. “You okay?”

“Yep,” I call back. “Get inside here.”

She steps into the shed with me, brushing herself off. “It’s brutal,” she says. “I really regret leaving the house.”

I laugh lightly at her. “Welcome to the mountains in the winter. This is actually a nice snow, believe it or not.”

“I don’t believe it,” she grumbles.

“We can go skiing in this, if you want.”

“Maybe some other time,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m way too cold as it is. Did you fix it?”

I shake my head and walk back over to the generator. “Looks like the fuel line froze and cracked overnight. But the backup’s running.”

“That’s good. So we can get heat?”

“We should have already,” I say, shrugging. “I’m not sure what’s wrong with that. I’ll have to check.”

She bites her lip. “What happens if we can’t get heat?”

She looks nervous, which just makes me smile. I’m not nervous, not at all. I step up toward her. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to keep you warm.”

“How are you going to do that?” she asks, eyes wide and innocent.

“Light a fire. Give you some whisky.” I step up close to her, lips grazing her ear. “Maybe slide my thick cock between your legs until you’re nice and hot.”

She pushes me away, smiling, and I grin at her.

“Don’t be a pig,” she says.

“Guess I can’t help myself around you.”

“Oh, right. It’s all my fault that you’re a raging animal.”

“Pretty much.” I sigh, kicking the broken generator. “This fucking thing. You know, I got the expensive ones to make sure they don’t break, right? And this shed is specially built to keep them safe.”

“Good thing you have a backup for your backup.”

“Yeah, well, if one more goes down, we’re toast.”

“Not toast,” she corrects. “We’ll be ice.”

I grin. “Good point. Come on, little ice. Let’s get back in the warmth. I’ll get the heat back on.”

“Sounds good to me. This place sucks.” She scampers out the door and I laugh. I follow her out, Jones hot on her heels, but I pause in the snow.

There are tracks in the snow, leading up to the shed’s door. Two sets lead from the house, which were made by me and Mia, but the third set heads off into the woods. They don’t look fresh though, they look like they were made hours ago.

I frown, staring at them, until Jones barks again. “Come on!” Mia calls out, disappearing back inside.

I sigh, shaking my head. I’m probably just seeing things. I’m not even sure that they’re tracks. Still, I can’t shake the feeling as I head back inside. I take off my snowy boots and jacket, hanging it up in the garage as Jones shakes himself off. We head back into the house, and I find Mia curled up on the couch, blankets wrapped around her.

I head into the kitchen and I find the heat panel. Sure enough, the heat was simply turned off on the main panel. I switch it back on, and the house immediately starts heating itself again, hot air coming in through the vents and heat coming up through the floor.

I don’t know how the hell it got turned off. I screw up my face, trying to remember how this happened. I must have turned it off by accident last night.

“Hey, Mia?” I call out. “Did you touch this thing?”

She looks up at me. “What thing?”

“Little panel over here on the wall.”

She shakes her head. “Nope.”

“Huh. Okay. Well, the heat’s back on.”

“Awesome!” She kicks her feet into the air and I smile again, but something’s bugging me.

The heat was turned off by someone. The tracks in the snow suggest that someone entered the shed and went back out, away from the woods, although there was only one set of tracks from the woods and into the shed. Maybe whoever made them came from the house, and then headed out into the woods.

But who the hell did that?

Maybe the same person that turned off the heat.

I shudder, shaking my head. This is crazy. Nobody broke in last night just to turn off the heat. Why the hell would someone do that? It seems crazy. If someone wanted to break in and hurt us, they easily could have. We were fast asleep, and obviously Jones is useless upstairs in his room. Still, tonight I’m going to set the house alarm, just in case. I’ll have to remember to warn Mia later.

“Want some breakfast?” I ask her.

“Yes, please,” she says.

“Coffee?”

She hesitates. “Just a little bit.”

“Sure.” I go ahead and start cooking, but I can’t stop thinking about those tracks in the snow. It keeps bugging me, although I don’t know why. We’re out in the middle of nowhere, and nobody was out in that storm, it would be crazy.

I just need to distract myself. Nothing’s wrong. I’m just getting a little cabin fever, and there’s nothing like coffee to help clear the mind.