Snow came sideways, needling the windshield like thrown salt. The highway was a white tunnel—lanes erased, shoulders guessed at, the world reduced to the cone of the headlights and the hiss of tires fighting for grip.
Red and blue lights bloomed in the rearview mirror.
The driver eased off the gas, heart ticking louder than the wipers. Somewhere under the ice and drifted powder, the car shuddered to a stop. The blizzard swallowed the engine’s last cough. Silence followed, thick and absolute, until the wind clawed it apart again.
The trooper approached on foot, a dark shape stitched together by reflective stripes. Each step looked deliberate, measured against the slick. Snow pasted itself to their hat brim, their collar, their boots. When they leaned down, the window creaked open an inch and the cold rushed in like an accusation.
“Evening,” the trooper said, voice steady, practiced calm in a storm that had no interest in calm. “You know why I stopped you?”
The driver shook their head. Breath fogged the glass between them. “I—I don’t think I was speeding.”
“No,” the trooper said, peering past the driver at the back seat, the trunk outline, the empty road beyond. “You weren’t. You were drifting. And your right taillight’s out.”
A pause. The wind roared, shook the car, tested it.
“License and registration,” the trooper continued, softer now. “And how far you headed?”
“Another twenty miles,” the driver said, fumbling, fingers numb. “Home.”
The trooper nodded once. Snow ticked against the cruiser behind them. “All right. Sit tight.”
As the trooper turned back, the driver noticed something human in the way they hunched into the gale, shoulders squared against it—not authority, not threat, just someone else trying to get through the night. The lights painted the storm in frantic color. The highway remained empty, waiting, patient and dangerous, as both of them stood briefly suspended in its frozen breath.
