Chapter Ten
Connor looked for Stacy all Tuesday morning at the resort. The last thing he had wanted last night was to upset her. If he could only make her understand…
Understand what? He didn’t understand himself.
This was why he was so bad at relationships.
Instead of trying to placate a woman who already thought the worst of him, he would be much better off focusing on work and his dog.
He never had to second-guess his words or his feelings with those two parts of his life.
What had started as heavy fog turned into real snow by the time the lifts started running at nine.
Big, fat flakes transformed the resort into a movie scene, covering the corduroy laid down by the overnight groomers with several inches of fresh snow before noon.
Fair-weather skiers deserted the slopes in favor of shopping or staying warm by the fire, but the die-hards reveled in the great conditions, whooping with delight as they plowed through the powder.
Ski patrol answered call after call that morning, from skiers injured maneuvering in heavy powder to a young woman overcome with vertigo near the top of the mountain. By noon the patrollers were cold and ravenous, grateful to take a break in a side room of the base area grill.
They pulled sandwiches from packs and pockets. Connor bit into his ham and cheese, then took a swig of water. Across from him, Chase unwrapped his lunch. A strong, vaguely familiar, meaty odor filled the air.
“What are you eating?” Anders asked. “A roadkill sandwich?”
“It’s roast beef,” Chase said. He eyed the sandwich skeptically. “I didn’t think it had been in the refrigerator that long.” He sniffed. “It doesn’t smell bad. Just a little strong.”
“Smells okay to me.” Brian crunched a potato chip. “It’s familiar somehow.”
Chase took a bite. The others watched as he chewed, his expression puzzled, then horrified. He dropped the sandwich and stood, wiping at his mouth. “Cerise!” he shouted.
All heads turned. “Cerise isn’t here,” someone called.
Chase gulped water. “When I find that woman…”
“Why are you blaming Cerise?” Lily asked.
“She told me she was going to get back at me for filling her chair in the lift shack with snow. This is how she did it. She made me a dog-food sandwich.” He removed the top slice of bread from his sandwich, and the others leaned in for a look.
“Looks like chunky beef stew,” Brian said. “Daisy really likes that one.”
“How did Cerise get into your lunch?” Lily asked.
“I stash my pack in her lift shack whenever I set gates for race training. It’s easier to haul the drill and all the stakes without the pack. I do that every week, and she never minds.”
“Except she wanted to get back at you, so she came prepared.” Lily giggled. “It’s pretty funny, when you think about it.”
“It might be funny if it happened to someone else.” Chase scowled down at his sandwich. “Now I don’t have a lunch.” He rewrapped the whole mess. “Guess I’ll get something from the grill.”
“What are you going to do with that sandwich?” Brian asked.
“I’m going to throw it away.”
Brian held out his hand. “I’ll take it.”
“Are you feeling hungry?” Connor asked.
Brian tucked the wrapped sandwich into his jacket. “Daisy can have an extra treat. No sense letting this go to waste.”
Shortly after 1:00 p.m., Doug radioed Connor. “How’s it looking out there?” he asked.
“Great snow conditions,” Connor said. “You should come do a few runs.”
“No time today. I’m buried under risk assessment studies.”
“Better you than me,” Connor said.
“Have you talked to Stacy lately?” Doug asked.
“No. Have you?”
“I managed to pin her down for a few minutes yesterday, but all she would say is that she is continuing her investigation, following up on some leads, and I shouldn’t worry. Why don’t you see if you can find her and get more information?”
“What makes you think she would tell me any more than she told you?” he asked.
“I got the impression she was pretty taken with you,” Doug said.
“I don’t think so.”
“I thought I definitely saw interest there. If you run into her, see if you can find out when she expects to wrap up her investigation. I’d really like to be able to tell my bosses that there’s no problem.”
“Missing explosives are a real problem, Doug. You can’t pretend they’re not.”
“If she finds them and we get them back, there won’t be a problem,” he said. “Just talk to her. See if you can get some bit of good news I can pass on to the people breathing down my neck.”
“I can’t promise anything, Doug.”
“Just try.” Doug didn’t wait for an answer but ended the call.
Connor turned toward patrol headquarters. Time to take Farley for a run.
Freed from his kennel, Farley raced in circles, biting at snowflakes, then rolling in the snow. Then he leaped into Connor’s arms, and Connor heard the click of camera shutters all around as he skied toward the lift, his arms full of snow-covered dog.
He rode the lift from the base, then headed up a second lift to Top of the Mark.
A sharp ridge loomed over the runs here, popular hike-to terrain.
As usual, as he rode the lift, Connor scanned the runs below for any sign of trouble.
In the thick snowfall, the skiers were blurs of color glimpsed behind a white curtain.
Two dark smudges cut across his field of vision. Snowboarders, in a hurry, moving against the flow of downhill traffic. Then they disappeared into a clump of trees.
Farley barked, and Connor looked down to see Lily and her dog, Shelby, racing down the slope. Connor held onto Farley’s harness. The dog had never jumped from the lift chair before, but no sense taking chances.
They exited the lift, Farley racing ahead. Connor stopped to slip his ski pole straps over his wrists. Suddenly a loud whump! shook the air.
“What was that?” the lift tech called out.
Connor’s heart hammered painfully, and he turned to look up the ridge as a curtain of snow broke away, a fifty-foot-wide white waterfall boiling down the slope. Snow flowed like water, a cascade of white silk. It would have been beautiful if it weren’t so deadly.
Connor’s radio crackled, snapping him from his trance. “What’s going on up on the ridge?” Anders shouted into the radio.
“Did you hear that sound?” Connor asked.
“An explosion,” Anders said.
The exact sound Connor had heard hundreds of times as the cast boosters they deployed for avalanche mitigation detonated. “Get everyone and all the dogs up here now!” Connor shouted. Then he whistled for Farley and started toward the snowfield where the avalanche had run out.
Half a dozen skiers descended on Connor. “What happened?”
“Was that an explosion?”
“Is anyone hurt?”
Connor ignored the questions and raised his voice to be heard over the clamor. “Did anyone see anyone in the avalanche?”
“I saw at least one guy,” a woman said. “Maybe two.”
“Farley, find,” Connor ordered. The dog set out.
Connor shucked off his pack, then pulled out and began assembling a collapsible avalanche probe.
By the time he stepped onto the field, three other patrollers and dogs were searching.
It was still snowing hard, and wind blew the snow around in a vertigo-inducing wall of white.
“I’ve got somebody!” Anders called from the edge of the field. He and another man dug at the snow with their hands. By the time Connor reached them, a man in a bright red ski helmet and a blue jacket was sitting up.
“I’m okay,” he said. Then he winced. “Except I think my leg might be broken.” He looked around. “What happened? One minute I was climbing up the ridge and the next…”
“You were caught in an avalanche,” Anders said.
“Was there anyone with you or near you when the slide happened?” Connor asked. “Anyone else we should be looking for?”
The man shook his head. “I was all by myself up there. I think I was the only one crazy enough to be out here in this weather.”
“We’ll have you out of here in just a minute,” Anders said. He raised his voice to shout, “Somebody get a toboggan over here! And a snowmobile!”
Farley and the other dogs continued to search, along with people with probes, but they turned up no one else.
Most of the slide had been confined to a narrow ridge that fell away into a steep valley—not terrain favored by even the most adventurous skiers.
The rest had quickly spent itself in a shallower area.
“I’ve talked to everybody I can find,” Raz reported when they had all gathered at the edge of the snowfield. “No one else reports anyone missing. And no one saw anyone else up here before the slide let loose.”
Connor stared out across the debris field. It was a relatively small area, and he was confident they had covered it all. And the sad truth was, anyone they hadn’t uncovered by now was most likely dead. “I’m calling the search,” he said.
Only ski patrol was left on this part of the mountain. The lift had closed as soon as the avalanche occurred and wouldn’t reopen until tomorrow. Overnight the grooming crew would clean up the inbounds area. By tomorrow no evidence would remain of the slide.
“That snow didn’t let loose like that by itself,” Brian said.
“I heard the explosion,” Nina said. “It sounded just like a cast booster.”
“It had to be one of the ones that was stolen,” Anders said.
“Did anyone see anyone up here acting suspiciously?” Brian asked.
Connor thought of the two snowboarders hurrying away from the area. But he had no idea who they were or if they had been doing anything other than rushing to meet friends.
“Was there just one explosion?” Lily asked.
“I only heard one,” Nina said, and the others nodded.
Connor studied the avalanche path. “Just one,” he said. “And whoever deployed it didn’t know what they were doing.”
“Good thing, too,” Anders said. “Someone with experience could have done a lot more harm. We’re lucky the damage was limited to one broken leg and a few hundred feet of snow fence.”