Read Glare Ice for Free Online Page A

to catch her breath, mouth open, stars in her eyes.
    Stephanie walked into the bar and saw that Lee was in her favorite booth. She waved and walked over.
    “What happened to you?” Lee asked, looking at her face.
    “Oh, nothing. Just fell down. Slippery ice.”
    “Man, you must have fell right on your face. Yow.”
    “I’m pretty clumsy.” Stephanie looked around the bar. “Have you seen Buck?”
    “He was in earlier, but then he left. Haven’t seen him since. You supposed to meet him?”
    Then Stephanie saw the little dog sitting at the end of the bar. “Nothing definite. What’s Snooper doing here?”
    “Huh. Now that’s odd. Buck takes him everyplace. Wonder if he just forgot him. Maybe that means he’ll be back.
    “He’d never leave Snooper.”
    Stephanie walked over and picked up the dog, who immediately washed her face with its soft tongue. She had never had a dog in her life, and they usually scared her, but Snooper was different. He seemed to understand what you said to him as he stared up with his deep brown eyes.
    “Where’s Buck?” she asked him, and he stopped licking when he heard the name and looked at her.
    “Buck?” she repeated.
    The dog squirmed in her arms. When she set him down, he ran to the door of the bar, so she followed him. He scratched at the door, and she let him out, but once out in the parking lot, he ran around and then peed on a rock at the edge of the parking lot.
    She said, “Buck,” again, and he sat down and stared at her.
    Stephanie reached down and picked the little dog up again, rocking him in her arms. “I don’t have a good feeling.”
    The pager went off just as he was standing on top of his barn, trying to do a pirouette. Clay Burnes slapped his hand down hard on the bedside table, hoping to find the pager before it sang again. On his second thwap, he found it, as his wife turned over and groaned.
    “Don’t wake up,” he mumbled to her. “It’s for me.”
    She pulled the covers over her head, knowing what would come next.
    Clay launched himself out of bed to make the call. He went into his office and hit the button set to dial the sheriff’s department.
    “Yeah, Burnes here.”
    He was told he was the third EMT to call in, and when he heard where the ambulance was going, he told Lorraine he would meet it at the scene. He only lived a mile from the lake.
    Clay wanted a cup of coffee bad, but knew he had no time to do anything but throw on clothes and go. He tried to be out the door within minutes of receiving a call. His best time was under a minute. He looked at his watch: 12:15. He had been asleep for less than two hours.
    He pulled on the jeans and sweatshirt that he kept at the ready in a pile next to his bed. He patted the top of his wife’s head. She didn’t even stir.
    In his kitchen, he grabbed a Coke out of the fridge. Car keys in hand, he went out the back door and climbed into his Ford pickup.
    He was on the road before he thought about peeing. Damn. It would have to wait. All the dispatcher had told him was the place and that a car had gone through the ice, possibility of someone inside.
    There wasn’t a vehicle on the road as he wended his way down off the bluff. Good thing he could drive these roads in his sleep.
    As he came down Highway 35, he could see the lights of the fire engine and various sheriff’s department cars lined up at the lakeshore. He was glad to see that the fire chief was there already. They were the ones with the ice rescue training; they had done a course out on the Chippewa River a year ago. EMTs were always told to stay on shore, to stay out of the burning house. They were never to put their lives in danger, because then they wouldn’t be there to aid the survivors.
    The ambulance pulled in right behind him. Ladders were being laid down out onto the ice as Clay walked down to the shore. Deputy Steve Murphy was talking to the fire chief, and Clay heard him say that Watkins was the incident commander. The woman