Chapter 11 The Whiteout #2
“I mean it. Don’t shift your weight, don’t adjust your legs, don’t do anything.
” I pressed my hand flat against the snow beside us and felt the vibration of the settling snowpack travel through my palm.
The chute below us was loaded, and any disturbance on the slope could send the whole face sliding.
“We stay right here until the team gets to us.”
“How long?”
“However long it takes.”
We waited. Neil shivered beneath the blanket while I pressed against the rock and kept my hand on his chest so he’d know I was there.
The wind gusted in bursts that erased even the rock face beside us, and between gusts the snow fell straight and thick and silent.
I monitored his breathing, checked his pulse, and reinforced the dressing when blood seeped through the gauze.
The wait lasted long enough for my fingers to go numb and my toes to start aching inside my boots. Everett’s bond flickered faintly beneath my breastbone, carrying something I didn’t bother to identify.
“Liza!” A voice from above and to the right. Muffled by wind, but close.
“Here!” I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Follow my voice. You’re in the aspens. Come south along the contour. Stay in the trees until you’re even with the outcrop, then descend to me.”
Shapes materialized out of the white. Two patrollers moved carefully toward us, testing the snow as they came. I recognized Kristen’s height and the shorter build of Marco Tosi, one of the newer crew.
“Jesus, Liza.” Kristen dropped beside me and assessed Neil with quick, practiced hands. “You’ve been out here in this?”
“He’s stable. Suspected lower-leg fracture, splinted. Head lac is dressed and controlled. Pupils are equal. He’s shocky but oriented.”
“Nice work.” She looked at the slope below us, the white emptiness where the chute began. “You heard the settling?”
“A while ago. That’s why we stayed put.”
Marco unpacked additional blankets and a vacuum mattress while Kristen checked my splint work and nodded. The radio carried updates from the base as Zeller coordinated the route.
“Liza, you copy?” The voice belonged to one of the other patrollers on the afternoon rotation, someone I didn’t immediately recognize. “Good work up there. We’ve got a warming cabin at the traverse junction fired up for you.”
My first name, with none of the labels that had followed me across the river. Just Liza.
I keyed the radio. “Copy. Appreciate it.”
? ? ?
We were preparing Neil for transport when the second call came in.
“Zeller, this is Rick on the south river run.” Static chewed the transmission. “I’ve got tracks near the boundary fencing. Wolf tracks. Big ones. And the fencing’s torn up.”
I stopped moving.
“How many sets?” Zeller asked.
“Several. They came along the fencing from the south. The fencing’s pulled loose from the posts, and the middle of the section is torn. Snow’s fresh in the tracks, so this was recent.”
Zeller’s voice stayed level. “Any sign they crossed onto resort land?”
“Can’t tell from here. Snow’s filling them, and the damaged section wiped out the clean edge. But these aren’t any of ours.”
I knew the pattern. I’d grown up watching East enforcers run in a staggered line along the river, covering ground and making their presence at the boundary obvious. A pressure patrol. A message.
It looked as though Everett had tightened the line.
Cold settled in my gut. If this was his answer to last night, he’d sent wolves to the fence instead of speaking to me.
“Liza.” Dominic’s voice on the radio now, hard and clipped. He must have been monitoring from the north access. “Stay off the river runs until we know what this is.”
I looked at Kristen. She was watching me with concern.
I keyed the radio. “The river runs are my assigned terrain, Dom. Zeller put me on them.”
A pause. I heard his controlled frustration even through the static.
“I’m asking you to stay clear until I’ve talked to Zeller.”
“And I’m telling you I don’t abandon my patrol routes because someone left tracks in the snow.”
Another pause. Longer. Then, very quietly, “We’ll talk about it tonight.”
“Fine.”
I clipped the radio back to my chest and turned to help Kristen secure the vacuum mattress around Neil. My hands shook. The life I’d left behind had reached into the new one.
Fuck Everett. Fuck his wolves and his wounded pride and whatever story he’d told himself about why I left. Here, I had earned my runs and a place on the crew. Tracks along the fence changed none of that.
The growl of engines cut through the wind before I saw them. Two snowmobiles emerged from the tree line, headlights cutting pale tunnels through the falling snow. The lead machine towed the rescue sled. Shane pulled up near our shelter and killed the engine.
“Heard you found one.” His green eyes swept from Neil to me, and something in his expression shifted. “You look like hell.”
“Thanks.”
“How long have you been out here?”
“Long enough.” I pointed toward the loaded face below us. “The snowpack settled hard once. Keep the machine above the outcrop and bring the sled in along your own track. Slow. His leg is splinted, but he can’t take a hard jolt.”
The strain in my voice must have told him more than I wanted it to. He pulled a glove off and checked my cheek for frostbite with two bare fingers, the way any patroller would. His hand was warm. I noticed, and I stepped back before I could notice anything else.
“Got it,” he said. “Where do you need me?”
My legs felt heavy and unsteady, but I turned back to Neil and checked the dressing at his hairline. “Help us get him onto the sled. Then we take him down.”