Page 35 of Protecting the White Bear

“No, no, we’re good. You can see how hard it was to get into the car the way it had plowed into the snowbank and was half buried in snow.”

“Right.” Monica still felt they had taken way more time to get their bags out. They didn’t look like bags filled with clothes and personal items someone would take on a trip.

“We can follow behind you.” The man readjusted the one bag on his shoulder.

“No. You’ll go in the middle. We don’t want the wrecked vehicles following in the rear of the caravan if either of them should have car trouble,” Andy said. “We wouldn’t want to leave you behind by mistake.”

The two men exchanged glances. Why would they want to drive behind the caravan unless they planned to take off in the other direction, which was probably the way their car was going from the track their car was pointed in?

“Where were you going?” Monica tried to decipher what was going on with these two.

“Just west of here to see some friends of ours. They’ll be worried that we never showed up.”

“Well, when we get somewhere that we have reception, you can call them and tell them where you are and that you’ll be a little late.” Monica sure hoped they would get reception too.

“Yeah, all right, but the first place we come to, we’re getting some other form of transportation. You can have someone else take the car to White Bear because we were going the other way,” the one man said.

“Sure. That will work.” Monica was even warier of their intentions now. “Andy, we need to move the kids’ car seats to the Yukon.”

“On it.”

The two of them went down the embankment, retrieved the car seats from the car, and carried them to the Yukon. The mom secured one of them while Andy got the other. Monica checked on Harvey. He looked like he was barely staying awake, no longer combative, which worried her.

“We need to get him some medical attention soon,” Monica said to Andy.

“Absolutely. We're leaving as soon as we get the kids buckled in.”

The brothers got into the drunk woman’s car and turned on the ignition.

Monica told Andy, “The bags the brothers were carrying didn’t look like luggage.”

“No.”

“I didn’t smell drugs on them,” she added.

He shook his head. “I didn’t either. We really can’t detain them without more to go on, though. Besides, we don’t have any more handcuffs.”

“Maybe we’ll get some reception and learn something more before they ditch the car.”

“All right. Let’s get moving before these cars conk out on us or run out of gas.”

Monica climbed into the Yukon’s driver’s seat. Andy returned to the older couple’s vehicle. They drove off, with the brothers in the middle of the caravan and Monica in the rear.

“How do you feel?” Monica asked the man with the fur hat.

“I’m good. Once I was out of the car. I had ahorriblecase of claustrophobia.”

“I don’t blame you. I would have too. How are you doing back there?” Monica asked the mom and kids.

“We’re good. I’m so glad you came along to help us. No one else showed up,” the woman said.

“In these conditions, it’s understandable. Especially since none of us have cell reception to call out for help.”

“We might not have had the accident if those two men hadn’t been trying to pass me at such a high rate of speed,” the woman said. “They even knocked Mr. Holmes’s car off the road.”

“The two men who were helping us?” Monica was surprised, despite feeling something was off about them. Was it because they had caused the accident and thought they would get fined?

“Yeah. I was so angry when their car spun around after hitting Mr. Holmes’s car and hit mine. I lost control of my car and went off the shoulder and down the embankment,” the woman said.

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