Half-buried under a fresh blanket of snow, the dark metallic glint of a stalled station wagon came into view. The windows were entirely frosted over.

Thomas cut his engine, the sudden silence of the woods deafening. He lunged off his bike, his heavy boots sinking deep into the snow as he threw himself against the driver's side door of the car, praying he wasn't too late.

Thomas threw his weight against the frozen driver’s side door. With a sharp, metallic crack, the ice sealing the frame broke, and the door groaned open. The air inside the station wagon was deathly still, colder than a tomb. Thomas thrust his tactical flashlight into the cabin.

The car was completely empty.

"She's not here!" Thomas shouted over the howling wind, his voice swallowed by the storm.

Jackson stepped up beside him, sweeping his high-powered flashlight beam across the pristine, shifting snowdrifts surrounding the vehicle. "Look there!" Jackson yelled, pointing toward the edge of the dense pine forest.

Faint, shallow depressions in the snow were barely visible, rapidly being erased by the fresh whiteout. They were the stumbling, uneven footprints of someone losing their battle with hypothermia. She hadn't walked toward the highway; in her disorientation, she had wandered deeper into the woods.

"Spread out!" Thomas ordered the crew. "Check the treeline! She can't have gone far!"

Sixteen men plunged into the knee-deep snow, their heavy boots crunching rhythmically against the frozen ground as their flashlights cut frantic arcs through the dark forest. The cold was brutal, biting through their leather vests, but no one complained. Every man was thinking of the little girl waiting on a vinyl stool at the diner.

Thomas tracked the fading footprints for fifty yards until they vanished completely beneath a massive fallen cedar tree. His heart sank. He began kicking violently at the fresh snow accumulated around the trunk, his breath coming in ragged, white plumes.

"Over here!" a biker named Big Mike shouted from a clearing twenty yards to the left.

Thomas sprinted through the drifts, his branches tearing at his jacket. He burst into the clearing to find Mike kneeling beside a hollow oak tree. Slouched inside the natural wooden shelter, half-buried under a blanket of white, was a woman.

Her eyes were closed, her face a terrifying shade of porcelain blue. She was shivering no longer—the final, fatal sign of severe hypothermia. She had curled into a fetal position, her hands tucked deep into her pockets, completely unconscious.

Thomas dropped to his knees beside her. He checked her neck for a pulse. It was faint, agonizingly slow, but it was there.

"She's alive!" Thomas roared. "Get the thermal blankets and the emergency heat packs, now!"

Jackson arrived within seconds, ripping open a heavy-duty canvas survival pack. Together, they wrapped her frozen body in reflective space blankets, tucking chemical heat packs beneath her arms and against her chest. Thomas gently lifted her limp frame into his arms, cradling her against his chest to share his own body heat.

As he pulled her close, a small object slipped from her frozen coat pocket and fell into the snow. It was a small, plastic keychain—a faded blue unicorn.