Chapter 33
Zach plunged into powder, a gray rock face rushing toward him.
His arm shot up reflexively to protect his face, and his elbow and helmet struck the boulder as he landed.
He righted himself. Tentatively stretched his arm.
It seemed okay. He took in his surroundings.
The powder came almost to his waist; had compacted around him when he landed.
He removed his helmet. A new divot. Not bad.
But his helmet was bright green—too obvious.
He partially unzipped his jacket, clutched the helmet to his chest, and zipped his coat over it, then shook his hood free of snow and put it over his head.
At least his coat and pants were black, a kind of camouflage against the rocks and dark trees.
Zach looked up. He’d dropped about four feet onto a small lift of ground that leveled briefly before plunging lower.
Lucky. So lucky he closed his eyes in a kind of silent prayer of thanks to the mountain.
His eyes were at trail height. He saw with pride that he hadn’t made any other marks in the snow as he’d jumped.
A voice echoed through the trees, and Zach crouched, powder sifting onto and around him as he hugged himself tight and tiny.
The boulder blocked any uphill view, but when he looked downhill among the weave of aspens and pines he saw snatches of his tracks where they curved around one slope and reappeared at the next, stopping alongside the meadow he’d failed to cross.
If whoever it was passed by him, continued down the trail, he’d be easy to see if they happened to look back.
Startling, he unzipped his coat. Turned off his beacon. Just in case the men had thought to set their own to search in hopes it helped them find him.
A swishing sound and Zach balled tighter and closed his eyes.
It was awful to try to still his shaking and fail. It was awful not to look; not to check the progress of what pursued him. To hear the thunderous beat of his blood and fear others could, too. The voices shifted close, behind him, far away, indistinct and windblown.
Then the men were above him on the trail.
“You don’t know, you don’t know what he’s up to, why the hell would he come out here alone? You said we’d wake up before—”
“Shut up.” Bram’s voice sounded forced through gritted teeth.
“Don’t tell me what to do, you don’t tell me—”
Then the voices went vague, muted by the men turning a corner on the trail.
Zach risked opening his eyes. He tentatively raised himself until he could see the trail. Pike and his father had gone out of sight.
Zach made his way through the snow around the boulder, hoping to hide behind it from any chance Bram and Pike might see him if they looked uphill from where the trail curved below. But the far side of the rock was buttressed tight with dirt and snow.
He couldn’t get out of sight, the slope he stood on easily visible from the open, dangerous meadow where Zach’s tracks ended and Pike and Bram would inevitably stop.
Zach flailed to the divots that indicated where his possessions had landed in the snow. His backpack was simple to find, the other items more challenging, and as he searched for a ski the men came into view. He froze, averting his eyes so as not to make their necks creep.
One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand.
When Zach finally snuck a look they’d gone around another turn in the trail. One ski out, two, a pole. He almost gave up on finding the avalanche probe but at last wrapped a mitten around its thin frame.
He propped his things against the rock. What to do?
The snow was falling lighter now, the spot below where the trail met the meadow growing more visible and making him easier to spot, too.
How far away was it? Five hundred feet popped into his mind, but he didn’t know what that meant, not really, and distances were so difficult for him to gauge looking downhill, around curves of trail and boulders.
But it had taken him perhaps fifteen minutes to climb from the meadow to the spot he now stood.
That meant that in a few minutes the men would arrive there, see his tracks end, realize he must have somehow evaded them, and look uphill to see if they could spot where he’d gone.
The implications dizzied him. They were too close. He’d never make it back onto the trail and all the way to the hut before they caught up with him.
Maybe he could talk to them? Reassure them.
They didn’t know he’d recorded their conversation.
He could insist he’d only left the hut to go for help.
That he was trying to be the hero. He could say he’d figured it all out, and it had all been Shane, and Shane was dead.
Which meant nature had taken care of justice, and there was no need to tell the police at all.
Because that would only cause Ginny’s family pain, Shane’s family pain.
You know how it is. How simple it is. The first time you think it, picture it? In a way—it’s already done.
Zach’s hope chilled. Because although Bram berated Zach, Bonnie, and their mother if they didn’t complete a task promptly, precisely, fully, he regularly preached that in the real world everyone took shortcuts, everyone cheated, that anyone who didn’t understand perception was reality, didn’t know how to bend the rules, was, at the end of the day, a sucker.
Bram prided himself on being able to draw the start of the high wire and its end together without ever having to traverse the perilous middle—the place where the actual work was done.
This time, Pike would do that work. This time, Pike was the shortcut. And it would be Pike Bram blamed as he walked away with what he wanted.
No, Zach couldn’t stay here. He had nothing to offer up as a substitute for those dull words—trust, inheritance, insurance—that all meant “money.” He gritted his teeth in frustration with his ungovernable heart, which even now beat longingly with the hope that Zach was wrong about everything.
But the truth was that what mattered most to his father wasn’t him, Bonnie, their mother. It was the admiration of other men. And to Bram, nothing gained the admiration of other men as effectively, as irrevocably, as money.
One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand.
How to scramble back up? He took his helmet out of his coat, clipped it to his backpack, then lifted his pack over his head.
Zach nearly fell backward as he pushed the pack onto the flat of the trail.
He threw his skis and poles up beside it.
Experimentally, he kicked the hard toe of his ski boot into the snowy slope to try for a foothold, but the loose powder gave no purchase.
He swiped at the snow clinging to the drop and quickly brought it to dirt and roots.
Jammed shallow into the frozen earth, the plastic toes of his ski boots gave him just enough leverage to climb.
He clutched roots to use as handholds until he threw himself onto the trail, panting.
Powder tumbled down his neck, onto the exposed skin of his ankles and wrists.
He sat up. Movement caught his eye.
Bram and Pike had reached the clearing, their backs to him.
Zach plunged to his stomach and wiggled down into the snow the way he’d seen fish do in ocean sand in nature videos. He waited. Carefully lifted his eyes.
His father was staring back up the trail, pointing uphill with a ski pole.
Zach flattened, feeling as though his ribs vibrated with the speed of his breath and blood.
Bram was probably saying, “He must have turned around.” He was probably saying, “He must’ve retraced his steps.”
Or maybe he was saying, “I saw him! He’s right there.”
Unable to resist the urge to know, to see, Zach tentatively lifted his head.
His father and Pike hadn’t moved. They stared across the field, then looked back at the trail, gesturing this way and that.
They must not have spotted him. Though they were out of earshot, it was clear they were trying to decide what to do.
While Zach’s face was somewhat protected by his neck gaiter and hood, the surrounding snow still siphoned the warmth from him, the sweat that slicked down the channel of his spine going cold. He couldn’t stay hidden this way for long.
But where could he go? Because if—when—they turned around to find him, he knew they’d overtake him quickly.
They were bigger, stronger. There was no conceivable way he could make it back to the hut before them.
Again his mind leapt through his Gray Rabbit strategies: hide tracks in other tracks.
Backtrack and jump. Walk up a stream. Hide.
Zach recalled the tree he’d paused to eat under on the way down the trail. When he’d scrambled out of its protective branches he’d noticed how low they hung over the trail. Best of all, the tree was uphill, away from Bram and Pike and closer to the hut.
He was already partway there.
Again Zach risked looking in the men’s direction. They stood maybe the length of the soccer field at school away, still facing the clearing.
Zach stood, body hunched as if his muscles thought that might better disguise him.
He had to clear ice from his bindings with the tip of a pole before he was able to click his boots into his skis, but as soon as he felt them attach he put on his pack and skied up the trail, forcing himself not to look back.
Yet as he reached the curve that would take him out of sight of his father and Pike, he felt the hot breath of a pursuer on his neck; heard the snap of jaws. Awful anticipation drew his eyes irresistibly over his shoulder.
From this new vantage he could see them more clearly. Pike pointed at something downhill. The snow-covered avalanche debris? Bram leaned over to look with apparent interest, Pike behind him.
Then, with a rush of motion, Pike’s huge right arm circled to lock around Bram’s neck.