The Breaking Point Read Online Free Page A

envelope generated serious heat.
    Gabe had been the epitome of smugness as he took the packet from her and flipped it in the air. “One of these little babies will last as long as twenty hours.”
    Twenty hours. God willing, they wouldn’t need them for that long.
    Her numb fingers fumbled with the extra clothing as she pulled the snowpants and a long-sleeved fleece top over her clothes. That done, she stuffed a few of the heat packs into her pockets, placing the rest back in the bag. As cold as it was now, when night fell it would only get colder. Better to save the heat packs until they really needed them.
    Thankfully, warmth was coming back into her body. Remarkable what an extra layer of clothing could accomplish. With a fortifying breath, she reached under her seat for thesmall first-aid kit they stored there. Within minutes she had Gabe’s wound cleaned and dressed, careful not to move his head in case there was any kind of neck injury. Relief whispered through her when she saw the bleeding on his forehead had stopped. As carefully as she could, she eased a knit cap over his thick hair.
    Renee settled back in her seat, hugging herself. Now what? She glanced down at her purse and then, though she knew it was useless, reached down and pulled out her cell phone. Closing her eyes, she prayed for a miracle, then hit the power button. But when she opened her eyes what she saw on the LCD display was what she always saw on this section of road: No Service.
    Teeth clenched, Renee tossed the phone back in her purse. She’d always teased Gabe that if they had trouble, it would probably happen on this stretch, where not even the booster antenna brought in a signal for their phones. “Just wait and see,” she’d told him. “We’ll be stuck in the middle of nowhere and have to hoof it for help.”
    For once, she wasn’t the least bit happy about being right.
    A blast of cold air and spitting snow hit her, and she took a quick look at her window, then at Bo. “I’ve got to find a way to block that wind, boy.”
    The tip of Bo’s tail wagged. Obviously he agreed. Too bad he didn’t have any ideas to offer. She peered into the backseat, then grabbed a ragged towel and Gabe’s ever-present roll of gray tape.
    “Duct tape,”
she heard his long-suffering voice correct her in her mind. He hated it when she called it gray tape, though she’d explained time and again that that was what her dad called it, so it only made sense she called it that as well. After all, the stuff was gray …
    A scene flashed through her mind. She and Gabe couldn’t have been married more than a few weeks when she’d first called it gray tape. He looked at her, eyes wide, mouth open,as though she just spit in his mother’s soup or something equally unforgivable.
    “It’s called
duct
tape, Renee.”
    She wrinkled her nose, peering at the roll of tape in her hand. “Doesn’t look like a duck to me.”
    He stared at her, then a wry smile lifted his lips. “Duct tape, with a
t.”
    “Oh, of course, that makes so much more sense.”
    He had laughed then, and she joined him, throwing her arms around his waist and snuggling close. He looked down at her with such tenderness and ended the debate as he always did back then—back when things were so much simpler, so much easier to understand—by enfolding her in his arms and silencing her with a kiss.
    Renee bit her lip.
We used to have so much fun …
    Shaking off the melancholy creeping over her, she turned to the window and got to work. It took longer than she liked to get it covered, but the band of pain that had taken up residence around her midsection wouldn’t let her work more than a few seconds at a shot. When she finally finished, a thin sheen of perspiration was on her face. She was shaking again, and the thought she’d been avoiding forced its way into her mind.
    Shock … I could be going into shock …
    As though sensing her anxiety, Bo moved then, stretching out on top of the