Free Stranded: A Christmas Story by Fiona Wilde Page B

having no other choice.
    “Is there a problem, officer?” she asked, rolling down her window.
    He pointed at the sky, “Yeah there is. That.” He glanced in her car. “Would you mind turning down you radio, ma’am?”
    Lydia complied.
    “You should be listening to the weather instead of music,” he scolded. “There’s a fast-moving storm coming into the pass. Record snowfall is predicted. This is a large system. We’re closing the pass.”
    “Can’t you just let me through before you close it?” she asked, affecting the pretty pout that had gotten her everything from preferential seating at restaurants to forgiven traffic tickets. But the cop just shook his head.
    “I’m sorry, ma’am. It’s not safe.”
    “Officer, you don’t understand. I’m heading to the airport.”
    He nodded. “You and about probably about a hundred other folks, but I don’t control the weather. I do control the entrance into this pass, and no one’s getting through. Now go home, call the airline and arrange for a later flight. I’m sure they’ll understand.”
    Lydia felt herself getting angry. She opened her mouth to speak but as she did she caught a sudden blur of motion in her rear-view mirror. A car was coming up on her - fast. She heard the brakes jam and then watched as it barely miss the back of her vehicle and careened sideways into the ditch. The officer who had been speaking to her rushed over to where the car now lay wedged in the ditch, partially on its side. The other officer was heading in that direction, too.
    Lydia saw her window of opportunity and took it. Wheeling around the barriers, she shot into the pass. She glanced warily at her rearview mirror as she drove as quickly as she dared through the winding roads. With each passing moment she expected to see the blue lights of a patrol vehicle on her tail, but as the minutes passed with no signs of a pursuit Lydia decided that the diversion of the wrecked car had provided such a distraction that by the time the cops looked up they figured she’d just turned around and headed home. Either way, it was an incredible stroke of luck - for her.
    But the weather in the pass was getting worse by the second. Flurries had turned into heavy snowfall that became thicker with each passing mile. There was already a couple of inches on the ground from a weak system that had passed through the week before, but it was getting deeper now. In fact, she’d never seen snow accumulate so quickly.
    When her back wheels began to slide, she considered turning around. But the drops were steep in this part of the pass and she couldn’t risk attempting a three-point turn in such conditions.
    “You can do this,” she told herself, and gave the Commander a tap on the accelerator as it climbed higher up the steep roadway. The chains sought for traction and caught as Lydia leaned forwards, peering through the low beams in an attempt to determine where the parameters of the roadway obscured now by snow.
    The wind howled. She’d turned the radio on after realizing she wasn’t being followed, but switched it off now so she could concentrate. How many miles had she traveled? It felt like a lot, but she knew it had not been more than ten now, if even that. Two huge clumps of snow followed by a fir branch it her windshield as another gust rocked her car. Lydia felt real fear now, despite her continued attempts to pep talk herself through the drive, despite the positive visualization techniques she’d employed, in which she saw herself arriving at the airport and boarding the plane home.
    She’d cleared the first rise and now was descending. Lydia’s heart was pounding. She’d not even reached Fletcher’s Meadow yet, named for the site of one of the most photographed spots along the past. In the spring, tourists lined the overlook to take pictures of an expanse of native wildflowers juxtaposed against the craggy peaks that surrounded it. But the road right before the overlook was