Chapter 6
Tom Garner felt the cell phone in the pocket of his ski jacket vibrate, and he ground his teeth in annoyance.
He’d meant to turn the damn thing off, not just silence it, before he got onto the ski lift.
Now he’d have to feel it vibrate until whoever was calling him gave up because there was no way he could get to that cell phone with ski mittens on, and if he took them off, he’d likely drop them.
The seventy-two-year-old owner of the Vanguard Construction Company shook his head.
That’s why his grandchildren refused to wear mittens, would willingly risk getting frostbite, all because they couldn’t operate their cell phones even with gloves on.
He’d run a business for thirty-five years without the benefit of computers and software and electronics, thank you very much.
He had only been ushered into the technological age after he had had a heart attack ten years ago.
Off work for six months, he came back and his son proudly displayed how he had brought the company into the twenty-first century, how he had installed a computer network and how the software was keeping track of sales and supplies and invoices and everything the company did in less than half the time and energy it had taken to do it the old way.
Tom was a practical man. If it worked better, it was stupid not to use it.
But in his heart of hearts, he hated everything technological, up to and including the stupid cell phone that kept vibrating in his pocket.
He had built half the cabins in the Laurel Highlands and never needed a machine to tell him who owed him money, which competitors he needed to squeeze until they cried, “uncle,” or what employees had been bad hires and needed to be shown the door. His “computer” was between his ears.
Oh, Tom knew he was considered a “tough old bird,” maybe a little rigid, a little harsh.
He’d stood up to unions before that was even a thing.
As a young man, he’d kept a baseball bat under his desk.
Hadn’t ever had to use it, but he absolutely would have “busted some heads” if he’d needed to.
That’s what he liked about working with Amish carpenters.
They were all business, did their jobs, collected their pay—in cash—and went home …
in the van he provided to transport them. He called it his Yoder Toter.
Tom had been skiing since his family moved to the Laurel Highlands when he was ten years old and had skied every slope at every resort in Pennsylvania dozens of times.
His family vacationed in Aspen and Vail, and when the kids had been teenagers, he’d taken the whole family on a ski trip to Zermatt, Switzerland, famous for the iconic Matterhorn Mountain and its extensive ski area. They’d skied all the way into Italy!
Tom’s phone began to vibrate again in his pocket.
Dammit! He was tempted to rip off his ski mittens, grab the thing, and throw it away into the snow.
He smiled when he thought about how horrified his grandchildren would be at such a thing.
His smile broadened. Maybe he ought to do that.
Maybe he ought to throw his phone away in some dramatic fashion at a family gathering and watch their faces.
At the very least, the act would force a conversation about dependence on phones, about—oh, the horror!
—living a fulfilling life without one. He actually chuckled.
Maybe he owed it to them to be that voice crying in the wilderness.
He’d never shied away from being the bad guy, refused to indulge in unproductive sentimentality in business.
Might be he should exercise some of that hard-ass strength at home. What if?—
Crack!
Tom looked up at the sound and looked around.
The blizzard-like conditions created by the snowmaking machinery were coupled with gusts of actual snow that ebbed and flowed.
When the real snow let up, the slopes were only obscured by the spray from the snow machines.
But when the snow falling from the sky was thick, it was impossible to see much farther than the lift seat in front of him.
It was thick now, and he thought he saw …
a shadow of movement in a seat farther up.
Did something … someone fall out of the seat?
He squinted into the swirling whiteness.
In all his years riding in ski lifts, he’d never seen anybody fall out of one.
The roar of the snow machine masked all sounds, but he was sure he’d heard something, a sound like a pop, a firecracker, a car backfiring or … a gunshot.
Gunshot?
Couldn’t have been?—
A bullet ripped into Tom Garner’s left shoulder, tore through his chest and blasted a hole in his rib cage on its way out. In his last moment or two of consciousness, he felt his cell phone begin to vibrate again in the pocket of his crimson jacket.