The saga of Ann Cleeves’ missing laptop has a happy ending—of sorts.

The British mystery writer, whose novels include Dead Water, The Moth Catcher, and The Rising Tide, appealed for help earlier this week after she lost her laptop in a blizzard in Shetland, the region of Scotland that was recently hit hard by wintry weather.

“[Shetland] tweeps I need your help! Lost my laptop in the blizzard y’day. I’d been to @ShetlandLibrary & @MareelShetland but no sign there. Scruffy HP. Could have fallen from bag. Half novel there. Reward offered!” she tweeted on Tuesday.

On Thursday, she took to Twitter again, this time with a semi-happy update.

“Here it is!” she wrote in a tweet, accompanied by a photo of a heavily damaged laptop. “Found in the snow not far from where I was staying by sharp-eyed Rachel as she got off the school bus. It’s been run over so not much use, but glad to know it’s safe.”

Cleeves had previously explained that the manuscript of the novel she is working on had been backed up, so she wasn’t worried about that. But she does hope she’ll be able to recover other data from the battered computer.

“Thanks to @CannyLtd Ken in @ourwhitleybay for sourcing a new laptop,” Cleeves tweeted, giving a shout-out to an IT service center. “(He’ll also give lessons in security and back-up)…And might be up for digging into the hard drive on the damaged machine.”

Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.