The wipers slashed back and forth against the windshield, fighting a losing battle against the thickening white curtain.
Sierra Langford gripped the leather steering wheel of her Range Rover until her knuckles turned as white as the snow piling up on the asphalt. The heating vents blasted warm air, but a chill had settled deep in her bones—a cold that had nothing to do with the temperature outside and everything to do with the empty apartment she had left behind in Manhattan.
This trip to the Catskills was supposed to be her escape. No board meetings. No shareholders screaming about quarterly margins. No ex-fiancé packing his bags while she was on a conference call. Just her, a bottle of vintage Cabernet, and a fireplace in a cabin that cost more per night than most people made in a month.
She checked the dashboard clock. 4:45 PM.
It was already pitch black. The winding mountain road was treacherous, a ribbon of ice coiling through the ancient pines.
“Just two more miles, Sierra,” she muttered to herself, her eyes straining against the hypnotic swirl of snowflakes in her high beams. “Just get to the cabin, pour the wine, and forget the world exists.”
She took the curve a little too fast. The heavy SUV drifted, tires losing their bite on the black ice. Sierra gasped, correcting the wheel with the reflex of someone used to controlling chaos. The car steadied.
She exhaled a shaky breath. “Okay. Slow down. You’re not in the boardroom anymore. You can’t negotiate with gravity.”
She rounded the next bend, her foot hovering over the brake.
Then, out of nowhere—a flash of red.
It wasn’t a deer. It wasn’t a fox. It was small. It was upright. And it was right in the middle of her lane.
SCREECH!
Sierra slammed the brake pedal to the floor. The ABS system shuddered violently. The heavy vehicle slid, fishtailing sideways, the headlights sweeping across the trees like frantic searchlights. Snow sprayed up in a blinding wall.
The SUV came to a halt inches—literally inches—from the small figure.
For a heartbeat, there was only the sound of the engine idling and the wind howling against the glass. Sierra sat frozen, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. Did I hit them? Oh my God, did I hit them?
She threw the door open, ignoring the biting wind that instantly whipped her blonde hair across her face. She stumbled out onto the icy road, her designer boots slipping on the slush.
“Hey!” she shouted, her voice cracking. “Are you okay? I didn’t see you!”
In the glare of the headlights, the figure turned.
Sierra stopped dead in her tracks.
It was a little girl. She couldn’t have been more than five years old.
She was standing alone in the middle of a blizzard, wearing a tattered red dress that looked like it belonged in a summer thrift store, covered only by a thin, moth-eaten knit cardigan. Her legs were bare, her skin marbelized by the freezing cold. One of her boots was missing.
“Sweetheart?” Sierra’s corporate shark voice was gone, replaced by pure, instinctive horror. She rushed forward, dropping to her knees on the ice, uncaring of her cream wool trousers. “What are you doing out here? Where are your parents?”
The girl was shaking so hard her teeth were audibly chattering. Her lips were a terrifying shade of pale blue. She looked at Sierra with eyes so wide and terrified they seemed to swallow her whole face.
“Ma’am…” the girl whimpered, a cloud of steam escaping her lips.
Sierra stripped off her heavy faux-fur coat instantly, wrapping it around the tiny, shivering frame. The coat alone cost three thousand dollars; right now, its only value was thermal insulation. “It’s okay, I’ve got you. You’re freezing. Come on, let’s get you in the car.”
The girl didn’t move. She planted her feet, staring back toward the dark, dense tree line where the forest swallowed the light.
“I can’t go,” the girl sobbed, the tears freezing on her cheeks.
“You have to,” Sierra urged, panic rising in her chest. “You’ll die out here, honey. What’s your name?”
“Maisie,” she hiccuped.
“Okay, Maisie. I’m Sierra. We need to get warm.”
Maisie shook her head violently, pointing a trembling, frost-bitten finger toward the woods.
“Ma’am, I can’t find my daddy,” she cried out, her voice breaking into a high-pitched wail that cut through the wind. “He went in there to get wood. He said he’d be right back. But the snow got heavy… and he stopped answering me.”
Sierra looked into the woods. It was an abyss. A wall of black pine and swirling white death.
“He stopped answering?” Sierra asked, a pit forming in her stomach.
“I heard a noise,” Maisie whispered, gripping Sierra’s silk blouse beneath the coat. “Like a tree breaking. And then… nothing. Please, ma’am. You have to help him. He’s all I have.”
Sierra looked at the warm, safe interior of her Range Rover. The heated seats. The GPS that promised a safe route to luxury. Then she looked at the terrified child, and finally, at the unforgiving forest.
She was a CEO. She solved problems. She mitigated risks. And the risk assessment here said: Don’t go into the woods.
But looking at Maisie’s desperate eyes, Sierra Langford realized for the first time in years, she wasn’t the one in control. And she couldn’t walk away.
“Get in the car, Maisie,” Sierra commanded softly but firmly. “Warm up. Lock the doors.”
“But Daddy—”
“I know,” Sierra said, reaching into her glove box and pulling out a heavy-duty tactical flashlight she kept for emergencies she never thought she’d face. She turned to the darkness, her breath hitching. “I’m going to get him.”
Sierra stepped away from the asphalt and sank calf-deep into the snow. The wind screamed in her ears, sharper than any shareholder criticism she’d ever faced. She swept the beam of light back and forth.
“Hello!” she screamed. “Is anyone out there?”
Nothing but the howl of the gale.
She pushed forward. Her boots, designed for Manhattan sidewalks, offered zero traction. She slipped, her knee slamming into a hidden rock, tearing her trousers and bruising bone. She gritted her teeth, ignoring the pain.
Keep moving. Follow the tracks.
She saw them—faint depressions in the snow, rapidly filling up. A man’s boot prints.
She followed them for ten minutes, the cold biting through her silk blouse. Her fingers were going numb around the flashlight. Just as she was about to turn back, convinced she was walking to her own death, the beam of light hit something unnatural.
A dark shape at the bottom of a steep ravine.
“Hello!” she yelled, sliding down the embankment, clawing at roots to slow her descent.
The man was lying face down, half-buried in snow. A massive pine branch, heavy with ice, had snapped and pinned his leg.
Sierra scrambled over to him. He was unconscious. His face was gray.
“Wake up,” she slapped his cheek, hard. “You have to wake up. Maisie is waiting.”
At the mention of the name, the man’s eyelids fluttered. He groaned, a sound of pure agony. “Mai… Maisie?”
“She’s safe. She’s in my car,” Sierra said, her adrenaline spiking. “I need to get you out.”
She looked at the branch. It was thick, heavy, and frozen solid. Sierra was fit—she did Pilates three times a week—but she wasn’t a lumberjack.
“I… I can’t feel my leg,” the man rasped.
“We’re going to fix that,” Sierra said. She wedged herself under the thickest part of the branch. She dug her boots into the mud and snow. She thought about every person who told her she was too soft for business, too emotional for the boardroom. She channeled every ounce of rage and determination she had.
“On three,” she grunted. “One. Two. THREE!”
She screamed as she lifted. The wood groaned. Her back felt like it was snapping. The man dragged himself backward, inch by agonizing inch, until he was clear.
Sierra dropped the branch, collapsing into the snow, gasping for air.
“Thank you,” the man whispered, tears freezing in his beard. “I thought I was dead.”
“Not today,” Sierra said, forcing herself up. She pulled his arm over her shoulder. “Lean on me. We have to move. Now.”
The climb back up the ravine was hell. Every step was a battle. Sierra slipped, fell, got back up. Her immaculate hair was a matted mess of ice. Her hands were bleeding. But she didn’t stop.
When they finally broke through the tree line and saw the headlights of the Range Rover, Sierra felt a relief so profound it nearly brought her to her knees.
She opened the back door. Maisie screamed, “Daddy!”
Sierra helped the man inside, cranking the heat to the max. She fumbled for her phone, her fingers stiff and blue, and dialed 911.
“I have a male, mid-30s, hypothermia and a crushed leg,” she told the operator, her voice shaking but authoritative. “I’m driving to the nearest E.R. Have a team ready.”
Three hours later, Sierra sat in the waiting room of the county hospital. She was wrapped in a cheap hospital blanket. Her makeup was ruined. Her $800 trousers were destroyed.
A doctor stepped out. “He’s going to keep the leg. He’s lucky. Another thirty minutes out there, and he wouldn’t have made it.”
Sierra nodded, tears finally spilling over.
Maisie ran out from the room, still wearing Sierra’s oversized faux-fur coat. She didn’t say a word. She just buried her face in Sierra’s stomach and hugged her tight.
Sierra hugged her back, burying her face in the girl’s hair.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was her assistant. A text: The board is asking if you can dial in tomorrow at 9 AM?
Sierra looked at the text. Then she looked at the little girl clinging to her, and the father waving gratefully from the hospital bed.
She typed back: Tell them I’m unavailable. Indefinitely.
She turned her phone off. For the first time in her life, Sierra Langford realized that net worth had nothing to do with money. She had saved a life tonight. And in the process, she had finally saved her own.
