Chapter 5

Finn

“What makes you think my name is Elspeth?” she whispered.

“Your necklace—it spells it out.”

I could feel the slight movement of her arm—an involuntary reaction to feel around her neck. There wasn’t enough room for more body shifting.

“It’s there. I saw it,” I assured her.

“Your name is Finn.”

I nodded, but felt like I should whisper, too. There was something about being cocooned in this white world without heat that made you want to fill it with breath.

“Finn, where are we?” Her voice was so soft; it was almost childlike and yet there was nothing but pure woman lying against me.

“I pulled you out of that shack—you were on the floor, passed out. It’s on fire.”

“Why was I in a shack? Is that where I live?”

“You don’t know?”

I felt her head shake. “No.”

I was perplexed. “What do you remember?”

She didn’t answer. I could almost hear her thinking—whether it was formulating an excuse or taking inventory, I wasn’t sure.

“We happen to have some time on our hands at the moment. Why not pass the time by telling me what you do know?” I settled down as much as I could with her naked body layered against mine and waited.

“You go first—maybe it will trigger something in me. Do you know me?” She was reaching, but I wasn’t sure what for.

“Fair enough. Finn Tremaine, businessman, Chicago, unmarried, up here on a dare from a few buddies and no, I’d never seen you before the moment I found you in that burning shack. Do anything for you?”

She was thoughtful. “Not especially.” She shook her head. “What kind of business?”

“Look, Elspeth, assuming that’s who you are. I just saved your life and you’re worried about the details of my business plan?” I felt I had to set some boundaries on this game she was playing, or was she?

“I’m not trying to aggravate you, Finn. I swear to Jesus, all I know for sure is that you and I just made love. You can see why I might have come to the conclusion that we were already acquainted?” She sounded like a Southern belle whose virginity was being questioned by a possible suitor.

She was a little late in trying to reclaim her dignity, but I felt for her. I hadn’t meant to rape her; it had become… I searched for the right words… a fucking of dire need, like administering CPR. Sure! That was the best way of looking at it.

“All right, I’ll give you that. Are you okay with, well, with what happened?”

“I wish I knew what it meant,” she said.

“Women! You’re always needing to know what everything means. Look, we were both wet, we needed our body heat, and the confines of this damned car put us in an intimate situation—with an unavoidable, but healthy, outcome. Right?”

She nodded. “If you say so.”

I could tell this conversation needed an upturn or we’d be bickering and naked against each other for the foreseeable future. Not that it would be so terribly unpleasant, but that’s generally how relationships went south in a hurry. That’s when I realized, she wasn’t arguing—she just wasn’t filling in her side of the conversation. Can she really be that good of an actress? Is it possible she isn’t acting?

She burrowed more closely against me and I felt the urge rising again. It wasn’t that I was fighting the idea, but whatever shreds of gentlemanly behavior I had left were screaming that I needed to find a way to prevent our impending death before I began cavorting again. That said, I could think of less pleasant ways to die.

“Okay, here’s my plan,” I started to explain. “I’m going to start the car long enough to hold our clothes over the heat vents and at least get something dry enough for warmth. I want you to stay wrapped in this stadium blanket while I man the vents up front and you hold your clothes against the vents back here. We’ll do that at a few intervals and eventually our clothing will dry enough to warm us up. In the meantime, someone might come by. If not, then I’ll come up with plan B.”

Elspeth nodded and I braced myself for the cold air as I vaulted into the front seat. I could feel her eyes on me and I had to admit, it wasn’t an altogether unpleasant experience. I would have rather watched her go over the seat but this was survival, or so I told myself. I cranked up the car and tossed her the shirt and panties she’d been wearing. We each held our things to the warm air, turning them from side to side to spread the warmth. I realized I couldn’t let the intervals go too long between heat-ups because it took the car too long to warm up again.

We finally managed to dress ourselves, and I had Elspeth climb into the front seat with me. I shut off the back vents and hung the stadium blanket like a curtain by shoving it into the clothes hooks. I calculated it was worth it since the front heated more quickly with the reduction in space.

My next strategy was to jam my silk boxers under the windshield wiper—my version of a “Help” flag. Elspeth said nothing during this process, but watched. I was rubbing my arms to increase the friction heat when she finally spoke up. “Do you have jumper cables?”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course, but that’s not going to do us any good. Our battery is fine; it’s gasoline we’re running low on. We’re exposed as hell sitting here in a white-out, and in a white car, I might add.”

“I know,” she replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “I thought maybe a fire would be helpful.”

“A fire.” I was missing her point.

“We can build a signal fire and keep warm by it. It will also warn people we’re stuck here.”

“How are we going to do that? Do you have a lighter or matches? No, you barely have clothes. I sure don’t, either.”

“Go and find some dead leaves and twigs over there.” She pointed across the roadway. “Small wood for now.”

“Then what?” My instincts were telling me to hear her out.

“Then get me your jumper cables, and I’ll show you.”

I had no better plan and shrugged. Bracing for the cold again, I left the car and brought back what she’d asked for. I found them beneath the heavy boughs of a pine and once I rolled over a log, what lay beneath was relatively dry.

I was amazed as I watched her. She pulled a carpet mat from the back seat and began pulling fibers from its top side. When she had a nice handful, she took the cables and asked me to pop the hood. She connected one end of the jumper cable to the battery and scooped out a bowl-shaped indentation in the snow in front of the car. She put the fibers at its bottom. Taking the other end of the cable, she touched the positive and negative clamps to one another while nesting it in the fibers. This generated a spark and the fibers caught fire. She quickly added a handful of leaves and eventually the smaller twigs. As I put the cable away, she was feeding the fire gradually until it was a healthy blaze.

I felt like the Boy Scout who wasn’t going to get his merit badge. “I could have gotten some burning timber from the shack,” I bragged in a defensive voice.

“Yes, but then you’d be soaked again. To tell you the truth, as nice as it was to lay with you, I’d rather stay dry and warm,” she commented in that voice that sounded like bells ringing on Sunday morning. “If you have any tubes or hoses in that kit, you could add some gasoline from the car, but I wouldn’t take them from the engine. That might not be the kind of fire you want.”

She sent me off to bring more dry wood and she built a second fire at the opposite end of the car. “Okay, when this gets going really good, we can get a log burning and maybe melt off some of the snow that’s gotten the wheel stuck. If you want, you could even throw on your spare tire, but that will be awfully smoky. It’s up to you. I don’t know if you can get through on the road, but it would be worth a try.”

I was completely stymied by her knowhow.

“Where did you learn to do all this?” I demanded, feeling a touch of anger. After all, I was the guy and supposed to come up with this shit.

She just shrugged and said nothing, looking completely calm. If what she claimed was true, her amnesia seemed to be selective at worst and spotty at best. I thought it best to let things float for a while before I formed an opinion.

Sure enough, it wasn’t long before we transitioned from being a frozen target to looking like we were hosting a Southern barbecue. I pulled out the Scotch from the back and took a healthy sip before offering it to Elspeth.

She shook her head. I was about to pour it on the fire when she grabbed my arm and pulled it back. “You can drink the Scotch; you can’t drink the gasoline,” she pointed out, and I screwed the lid back on and put it away.

We were an odd scene, to be sure; two stranded people—one of whom definitely was a city boy—roasting car tires at the side of the road. All my money and there was no way I could buy my way out of this.

That was when help finally arrived. An SUV clearly marked as a Michigan State Trooper approached. He looked at us and pulled ahead and off to the side. He climbed out of his vehicle, a poncho over his shoulders and his hat wrapped in plastic. “You two mind telling me what the hell is going on here?” he began, eyeing the burning tire.

“Glad you’re here! I didn’t think the smoke from the tire would get high enough above the storm to be seen,” I uttered with relief.

“Didn’t.” He pointed over my shoulder. “Mel Thompson’s deer shack did.”

I looked around and realized that as creative as I thought we’d been, we hadn’t generated a puff compared to the fire behind us.

“Don’t worry,” the trooper consoled me, “it’ll burn out quick.”

“We’re stuck, and I’ve lost my phone. Can you help us out?” I asked.

“Need to see some identification, sir… That is, if you’re the driver?”

I reached for my pocket and pulled out my wallet, handing him my license.

“And you, Miss?” he asked Elspeth.

She got a panicked look in her eyes, and I realized immediately that I should tell the trooper what had happened and put her in his care. Something wouldn’t let me do that.

“I’m Elspeth,” she said quietly and then came that dreaded pause where she offered no last name or plausible reason for being with me.

“She’s my date,” I threw in quickly and looked to Elspeth for confirmation. Not having anything better to say, she nodded. I could have hugged her right then and there.

The trooper took my license and went back to his cruiser. I knew he was running it through the computer. It wasn’t long before he was back. “This your car, Mr. Tremaine?”

“Yes, sir, it’s brand new.”

“You’re a long way from Chicago.” He poked me a bit more.

“Yes, sir. Visited friends in Traverse City and they bet me my fancy car, as they call it, couldn’t make it to Superior and back in the blizzard.”

“Looks like they were right,” he responded, and I choked back my defense.

“And you, Miss? You have any identification?”

Elspeth’s eyes widened, and I quickly jumped in. “She was at the party with me in Traverse; had a little too much to drink and forgot her purse.”

He looked me straight in the eye and then must have decided that what I said checked out with the computer because he nodded and went to the back end of his vehicle and removed a tow strap.

“If you’ll put out those fires, let’s see if we can’t get you back onto the road,” he said. “Any idea how the shack caught fire?”

I shook my head. “I saw the flames as we passed by and stopped to make sure no one was inside. That’s how I got stuck and my clothes got wet. Really glad you came along,” I said quickly. I couldn’t believe my own words. I was an upstanding member of the Chicago business community and here I stood, lying to the law. Most of all, I had no idea why.

He considered my words and shined his light on the snow looking for tracks. I held my breath as I knew there were two widespread sets leading to the cabin, and two sets, sometimes combined into one, coming back toward the road. To my immense relief, the wind and the snow had done its part to cover my lie.

I got busy kicking out the fires and told Elspeth to get into the car and buckle up. I wanted to make the urgency of getting me off the side of the road trump the mystery of the burning cabin. It worked.

A hearty pull and a minimum of spinning tires later, Elspeth and I were on the road and headed south. I lowered my window and waved at the trooper in gratitude as I focused on keeping to the road. I hoped I’d make it to the next gas station.