Chapter Eleven
The swirling snow and fading light only added to the nightmarish quality of the afternoon.
Connor guided the snowmobile in and out among the aspen trunks, until he spotted the snowboard, a blue slash on the snow.
He looked around for whoever had called in the incident, but there was no one else in sight.
Dread taking root in his gut, he parked the machine and postholed through the deep snow to the snowboard. It looked like Jace’s board, but there must be others like it on the mountain.
Farley barked and began to dig at the snow. Connor pulled a shovel from his back and joined his dog. He wanted the scene to play out the way it had before—the snowboarder pulled free and revived to board again the next day, unharmed and with a story to tell.
But the stillness of the figure in the snow and the eerie silence all around added to his dread. He didn’t sense a happy ending today.
Nina and Anders arrived and began digging alongside him. “Who called this in?” Anders asked. They had unearthed the legs to the knees, and he unstrapped the snowboard and tossed it aside, then began tugging at the body.
“I don’t know,” Connor said. He moved in on the other side to try to dig away more snow. “There was no one here when I arrived.”
“Didn’t you have one of these a few days ago?” Anders asked.
Connor nodded. “I’m pretty sure this is the same guy,” he said. He paused to catch his breath and ease his aching back. Digging out the packed snow was like shoveling cement.
“He’s really stuck in here,” Nina said. “The snow compacted around him after he fell in.”
“That can happen if people thrash around,” Anders said. “That’s one of the things that makes these tree wells so dangerous.”
“You’d think one brush with death would have kept the guy out of here,” Nina said. She straightened. “Let’s try again to pull him out before we dig anymore.”
Connor grabbed hold of one of the man’s legs. Already it felt lifeless. Unresponsive. He felt under the pants cuff and pinched the ankle, hard, praying for some reaction, but there was none.
“On three.” Anders spoke from the other side of the man, arms wrapped firmly around the other leg. Nina bent awkwardly in front of them, holding onto the tail of a jacket. “One. Two. Three.”
They heaved, and the body shifted. “Again!” Connor shouted.
They heaved again, and again. After the third try, Nina knelt and scooped away loosened snow from around the man’s torso. Another heave, and they were able to free him.
The body emerged face down. They turned him over, and Connor stared into the blue complexion of Jace Dennison.
Jace looked surprised, Stacy thought as she stared into the face of the dead man. She had joined the trio around the tree well as they were working to pull the body free and said nothing until Jace lay on the ground. Only then did she remove her skis and make her way to Connor’s side.
“I saw him just a little while ago,” she said. “He was outside the ski patrol office, looking for you.”
“Why was he looking for me?” Connor asked.
“I don’t know. He said he needed to talk to you about something.” She looked away. “He asked me to tell you to come by the bagel place where he works, after four.”
“When did you see him, exactly?” Connor asked.
“Before the explosion,” she said. “Maybe forty minutes before?”
“Was anyone else with him?”
“No. I tried to get him to confide in me, but he said he had to leave.”
“Did he head to the lift? Or away from the mountain?”
“I didn’t see.”
Anders approached. “I called Doug, and he’ll notify the sheriff. We have to wait to transport him until a deputy arrives.”
Connor checked the time. “It’s after four,” he said. “You and Nina go on down and finish for the day. I’ll wait for the sheriff. And take Farley with you.”
“Come on, Farley,” Nina called.
The dog looked from Nina to Connor. “Go on,” he ordered. “Go with Nina.”
“Farley, come,” Anders said, in a fair imitation of Connor. The dog trotted after him, and Anders and Nina skied away.
“Are you okay?” Stacy asked when she and Connor were alone.
“I’m okay.” He took a few steps from the body and sat in the snow. He looked wrung out.
She sat next to him.
“Where’s your dad?” he asked.
“I sent him back to the condo.” She wanted to touch him—to somehow comfort him. But she was afraid he would pull away.
“What about you?” he asked after a moment. “Are you okay?”
She looked at the body, then away. “I’m a little shook up. That avalanche never should have happened. I should have—”
He squeezed her knee. “Don’t. There was nothing you could do.”
“That isn’t a good enough answer.” She knelt to face him. “I have to do something. This can’t happen again. Today it was just a broken leg, but next time someone could die.”
“Someone has already died.” He looked at Jace.
“You don’t think this was an accident? He was hurrying away, maybe from the avalanche, and got too close to the trees? Maybe the snow obscured his vision.”
“He wanted to talk to me about something. Minutes later someone sets off an avalanche. Next thing we know he’s dead. In the same area where he was trapped last week. That feels like too big a coincidence to be believable to me.”
She shuddered. Was Jace’s death her fault, too? She bit her lip, fighting tears. She was a federal agent. She wasn’t going to cry. Later, in the shower, when no one could see or hear her, she would give in to tears. But not now.
Connor sat up. “Someone’s coming.”
She stood, and together they watched the snowmobiles come through the trees. Doug and a man she didn’t recognize was on one, the sheriff on the second. They parked and tramped over to Connor and Stacy.
The sheriff stared down at the body. “Do we know his name?”
“Jason Dennison,” Connor said. “I pulled him out of a tree well last week. Alive that time.”
The second man—middle-aged with thinning blond hair and pale blue eyes—knelt beside the body.
“This is Dr. Monroe,” the sheriff said.
“I’m the coroner.” The doctor was already putting on latex gloves.
Stacy turned away. Doug moved in beside her. “Was that avalanche caused by one of the stolen cast boosters?” he asked.
“I can’t say for certain, but it seems likely,” she said.
“Do we have any idea who did it?”
“No.” She steeled herself against his protests that she wasn’t doing enough. “I’m going to call my superiors and ask for more agents to be put on this case,” she said. “It needs to be a priority.”
“We don’t want to frighten the public with an army of law enforcement officers,” Doug said.
“We know how to be discreet.” Though Nina had recognized her as law enforcement, and her father, too. What had tipped her off?
The coroner stood and stripped off his gloves. “You can transport the body now.”
“What can you tell us about how he died?” Connor asked.
“Obviously, he suffocated in the tree well,” Doug said.
“I won’t know the answer to that until after the autopsy,” Dr. Monroe said. “But I can tell you he also has a fractured skull.”
“Did he hit his head on a rock or something when he fell?” Doug asked.
Connor moved over to the tree. “We didn’t find any rocks when we were digging.”
The doctor followed Connor to the tree well. “What was his position when you found him?”
“Pretty much vertical at the base of the tree.”
“He was hit on the back of the head.” The doctor put a hand to the base of his own skull.
“So maybe he was hit before he ended up in this hole,” Connor said.
“The blow to the head might have killed him fairly quickly, or he might have fallen because of it and suffocated,” the doctor said. “We’ll know more after the autopsy.”
“Who hit him?” Connor asked. “The man who found him didn’t mention anyone else here.”
“He probably fell and hit his own head,” Doug said.
“You’ll need to close this run until we’ve determined cause of death,” the sheriff said.
Doug groaned. “I’m sure it was an accident.”
“We still have to investigate,” the sheriff said. He returned to his snowmobile and retrieved a roll of crime scene tape. Connor helped him string it up while Doug transported the doctor to the base area.
“We know Jace was one of the protesters,” Connor told the sheriff.
“He said he was just collecting signatures for petitions and attending rallies, but maybe he found out about other plans and threatened to tell. Apparently, he was looking for me this afternoon. He said he needed to tell me something.”
“He trusted you enough to tell you a secret?” the sheriff asked.
“I saved his life. Maybe that was enough for him.”
“Let me know if you find out anything else.” The sheriff glanced at Stacy. “Anything you’d like to update me on?”
“Not yet,” she said. “Soon.” She mentally crossed her fingers.
The sheriff rode away.
“Come on,” Connor said to Stacy. “I’ll give you a lift.”
She stowed her skis alongside his on the snowmobile and climbed on behind him.
She wanted to wrap her arms around him and lean against his back but resisted the urge.
Instead, she stared out at the empty runs as they made their way back to the base area, fighting images of what this serene area might look like if terrorists unleashed a rain of bombs.
At the ski patrol shack, Connor parked the snowmobile. “How did you get here this afternoon?” he asked.
“I walked over from the condo.” At the time, it had been an enjoyable walk through the swirling snow. Now it was dark, she was chilled through, and the thought of trudging the mile back to where her father waited made her shudder.
“Wait here, and I’ll give you a ride,” he said. He went into the shack and returned moments later with Farley, then led the way through an alley to a small lot where his truck was parked.
She climbed in and fastened her seat belt, then lay her head back and closed her eyes. “I really don’t want to go back to the condo,” she said. “Dad is going to ask a hundred questions, then give me a hundred suggestions for how I could be doing things better.”
“Is he that bad, really?” Connor asked.
“Maybe not.” She looked across at him. They were parked beneath a security light, which bleached his skin of all color and cast deeper circles beneath his eyes.
She imagined she looked just as frightful.
Farley lay sprawled on the back seat, watching them with alert eyes.
“I just don’t want to talk about what I haven’t done enough of or need to do more of,” she said.
“I’ve already got that conversation going on in my head without adding to it. ”
“Then where would you like to go?” he asked.
She sighed. “Anywhere but to my condo.”
“We could go to my place.”
Just like that, she was where she had been last night, bathed in hot embarrassment, unable to look at him. “I wasn’t hinting at that, I promise. I just…”
“It’s okay,” he said.
“It’s not okay.” She made herself face him, to look into his eyes, though she couldn’t read the expression there. “I’m sorry I put you in that position last night,” she said. “I realize you don’t want me that way. It was very unprofessional of me.”
He leaned across the seat and took her hand. “You’re wrong,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “I was wrong to, um, proposition you that way.” She needed to change the subject. She couldn’t talk about this anymore.
“You’re wrong when you say I don’t want you.” He slid one finger along her jaw and urged her to lift her chin and look at him again. “The problem is I want you so much, it scares me.”
She opened her mouth, but all that came out was a soft, “Oh,” before his lips covered hers.
His lips were warm and supple, firing every nerve in her body. She gripped his forearms, fingers digging in, as he moved his mouth against hers, deepening the kiss, inviting her tongue to tangle with his. Heat spread through her, banishing her previous chill.
He pulled away, just enough to study her. “You okay?”
She nodded, incapable of speech.
He looked down at her fingers, still gripping his jacket. “Want to go to my place now? We can talk, if that’s all you want,” he said.
“That’s not all I want,” she managed to croak. She cleared her throat. “But talking is a good start.”