Chapter 5 - The Storm on the North RidgeBy 9:00 P.M., the temperature dropped below freezing, turning the mountain roads into treacherous sheets of black ice.
Inside our warm living room, the wood stove crackled merrily, but my heart was sick with worry. Barnaby lay near the front door, letting out low, anxious whines while looking toward the dark woods.
Jonah hadn't returned from the north ridge.
I put on my heavy wool coat, waterproof boots, and lined gloves, grabbing a high-powered tactical flashlight from the kitchen counter.
"Stay here, Barnaby," I instructed softly, stepping out onto the front porch into the howling sleet.
The hike up the north ridge was a steep, rocky trail that wound through dense stands of hemlock and pine. The sleet stung my cheeks, and the freezing wind whistled through the high canopy like a wild beast.
"JONAH!" I called out, my flashlight beam cutting through the dark, swirling mist. "JONAH!"
Only the howling wind answered.
I pressed deeper into the woods, reaching the high clearing where Jonah kept his winter timber stores.
My flashlight beam swept across the clearing, and my breath caught sharply in my throat.
A massive, hundred-year-old sugar maple tree—its trunk rotting from an internal disease—had surrendered under the weight of the freezing sleet, crashing down across the timber shelter.
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Pinned beneath a massive, three-foot-thick branch of the fallen maple, his dark coat soaked with ice, was Miller Vance.
Twenty feet away, sitting on an overturned log, his knuckles bloody, his chest heaving with shallow, exhausted breaths, was Jonah.
