Chapter Seventeen #2
They climbed a ridge, then descended into a shallow valley.
He slowed the snowmobile to a crawl. What she at first mistook for snow-shrouded boulders came into sharper focus as they neared, and turned out to be the ruins of mining machinery and a few log cabins.
Several of the cabins were roofless shells, a rusting boiler on its side in front of one, a set of iron bedsprings visible through the open door of another.
They bounced along past concrete pillars and coils of rusting cable.
These must have once been part of a tram used to transport ore down to lower elevations.
The mountains around here were pocked with such settlements, some restored as historical parks and tourist attractions, others, like this one, left to gradually melt into the earth.
Nicholson pulled up to a mostly-intact cabin and cut the snowmobile’s engine.
Silence closed around them like the shutting of a door.
Though they were no longer moving, it seemed even colder, every breath like inhaling ice.
She hugged her arms around her body and shook.
Maybe she would perish of hypothermia before Nicholson had time to kill her.
Nicholson climbed off the snowmobile. He prodded her. “Come on. Get up.”
“Where are we?” she asked, not moving.
“I found this place weeks ago,” he said. “When I first came to SkyCrest. As soon as I saw it on a map, I knew it would be perfect. I figured it had to be fate when you ended up trying to hide so close to here. You made things even easier for me.”
Nina didn’t see anything perfect about it. One corner of the rusting metal roof of this cabin peeled up, and the single window to the left of the door was devoid of glass.
“Can you guess the name of this place?” he asked. “Maybe you’ve heard of it.”
She shook her head. “No.” Old mines didn’t really interest her.
“The mine is the Nina Marie. The man who founded it named it after his wife. See what I mean about perfect?”
“My name isn’t Nina Marie,” she said.
“It’s what I’m going to call you. Come on. Let’s go inside.” He tugged her off the snowmobile. She was so stiff from the cold she couldn’t stand and collapsed in the snow.
“Get up.” He kicked at her.
On her hands and knees, she looked up at him. “How are you not frozen?”
He patted his stomach. “Heated vest. You should definitely get one of these babies.” He bent and offered his hand. “Come on, I’ll help you up.”
If she had been a heroine in a movie, she would have taken his hand, pulled him off his feet, kicked his head in and stolen his knife and his heated vest. And the snowmobile.
But she could hardly move, her brain fuzzy from what her training told her was the beginnings of hypothermia.
She could only let him pull her to her feet and help her into the cabin.
The dirt-floored space smelled of mice and old wood. White lines etched the floor where snow had drifted through the gaps between the logs. “You sit there.” Nicholson pointed to a stump. “I’ll get a fire going.” He knelt in front of a brick-lined hearth, already laid with kindling.
She watched dully as he added more kindling and struck a lighter. Move! her brain told her. Fight! But her body refused to obey.
Nicholson turned from the fire. “Are you hungry?” He didn’t wait for an answer but pulled a metal trunk from a corner and lifted the lid. “I have beef jerky, ramen, cheese sticks, nuts. Oh, and hot chocolate. Would you like some hot chocolate?” He held up a packet.
Anything hot to drink would be good. “Yes,” she said.
He flapped the packet at her. “You forgot to say please.”
“Yes…please.”
“That’s my girl.” He took a kettle from the trunk. “I’ll get some snow to melt and be right back.”
Her gaze darted to the door. Could she get to the snowmobile and take off before he returned?
“I almost forgot.” He moved to her and fastened something around her wrist. She looked down at the chain.
It was old and rusty, but the manacle at the end was new, as was the ring that fastened the chain to the log wall.
“I don’t want you wandering out there in the cold and getting lost,” he said, and patted her cheek.
She stared after him, paralyzed not only by the cold, but by a sense of hopelessness she had never experienced before.
* * *
Liam followed the snowmobile tracks. They were easy to see in the moonlight, the marks from the treads crunching beneath his skis.
He set a brisk pace, as much to keep warm as to try to catch up with Nina as quickly as possible.
He made himself stop to drink water to stay hydrated and to flap his arms at regular intervals to keep the blood flowing, but even so, it was bitterly cold.
Almost as bad as the cold was the sensation of being utterly alone in a vast wilderness, with no way to summon help, no matter what happened when he reached the end of this track.
Where was Nicholson headed? He obviously had a destination in mind, traveling in an almost straight line in a gradual uphill course.
Was he going to another hut? Liam tried to picture the map of the hut system in his mind but could come up with nothing.
He was sure most of the land up here was owned by the Forest Service, open to the public, but maybe there were small holdings, remnants of the old gold claims that had apparently pockmarked this land at the turn of the twentieth century.
He lost track of how much time had passed, but his aching legs told him he must have skied miles—not that difficult on a good day on flat ground, but after spending several hours skiing to the cabin, then traveling through subzero temperatures in deep snow, not to mention being almost strangled to death in between, he was running out of reserves.
Weariness dragged at him, and he began talking to himself to keep awake.
He started by reciting the names of every country he had visited, followed by every publication his work had appeared in.
But he fumbled the words and lost his place and had to start over again and again.
He worried that was a sign of hypothermia.
The idea enraged him—that he would go to all this trouble only to freeze to death before he found Nina.