Zero-Degree Murder (A Search and Rescue Mystery) (23 page)

CHAPTER

T
HE
glowing dial of Gracie’s watch told her it was 5:23
A
.
M
.

In the darkness, she could hear Rob breathing softly, rhythmically in sleep.

In spite of the specter of fear hovering just beneath the surface, she felt curiously light, as if her body could float on a puff of air.

At first, her and Rob’s lovemaking had been ferocious, their thirst for each other insatiable. Gracie forgot all else in total immersion of the moment. Rob’s touch was an unself-conscious exploration, testing, teasing, then generous, awakening in her the desire to discover and give selflessly in return. Closure was dizzying, fast, mutually satisfying.

The second time was a slow, delicious feast for the senses. A murmur. A laugh. A gasp. A groan of pleasure. Rob’s silken fingers gliding beneath her clothes, searching, cajoling. Down Gracie’s back, her arms, over her hips. The earthy perfume of his skin. The sweet taste of his lips, his tongue, the whiskered skin of his jaw and neck, the mat of chest hair running in a dark line to his navel. And the perfect warmth of his mouth on hers.

Gracie reached back and above her head and turned on the little lantern.

Rob didn’t stir.

She studied his face, serene with sleep. The long dark eyelashes, shining hair tousled and curling. He was without a doubt the most physically beautiful person she had ever seen. But it was his mind, his gentleness, his sanity, his surprising normality to which she was drawn.

Too good to be true, Gracie told herself with an internal sigh. She had found out the hard way that someone that good looking was most likely a super-sized prick. Time no doubt would reveal Rob’s dark side, an underbelly. He probably drank too much. Or was into heavy drugs. Or gambled too much. Or was abusive—verbally, emotionally, physically. Or he possessed a secret, dark and terrible, like Mr. Rochester in
Jane Eyre
, although she doubted he harbored a mad wife in his New York attic.

Still, she thought with a smile, I have no regrets.

Ralph’s blue-gray eyes appearing in her mind’s eye submersed her in a wave of remorse and jarred her fully awake. She deliberately pushed the thought aside, knowing she would have to deal with that—with Ralph—later, if . . . when she and Rob made it out of there.

She studied Rob’s face again, cementing every line, every aspect to memory, savoring every second, knowing it would inevitably end.

Sadness rose to choke her throat. She reached out and touched his hair with her fingertips.

Rob’s eyes opened and looked into hers.

She pulled her hand back. “Sorry,” she whispered.

He drew her to him, brushing his lips across hers. “I’m not.”

CHAPTER

G
RACIE
stood outside the snow cave, thigh-deep in pristine powder snow. Her breath wafted around her in diaphanous clouds of vapor. Overhead the predawn sky was clear, cloudless, the stars retreating. A blush of pink in the east heralded the new day.

All around, trees and boulders were heavily laden with snow, as if they had been dipped in white frosting. Far above her head, skyscraper peaks, white and perfect, rose up and up, reclaiming their dominance against the flawless sky. The silence was absolute.

Along with the clearing weather had come the cold. The air, free of scent, prickled the inside of Gracie’s nose and cut into her lungs with every breath.

She tipped her head back and stared up into the alabaster sky.

It was over. She had done it. She had kept them alive.

With the thought came no elation, no relief, no sense of a job well done. Only the knowledge that the nightmare was ending along with an all-encompassing exhaustion of body and mind and an overwhelming loneliness.

She heard Rob crawl out of the cave behind her and scrunch through the snow to stand so closely behind her that wisps of his breath floated over her shoulder.

“Incredible,” he breathed.

Gracie smiled back up at him. His eyes were dark and bright and alive.

“The best thing about a winter storm is what comes after,” she whispered back. “This—all of this—is what I live for.”

“This is what we all should live for,” he said.

CHAPTER

G
RACIE
drove the ice axe into the snow with both hands and dropped to her knees. She covered her mouth and nose with her mittens and breathed in the warmed air. Her eyes roamed the surrounding landscape, the incline above, the canyon below, the rocks, boulders, bushes, trees. No movement caught her eye. No unnatural splash of color drew her attention. No sign of Joseph made her heart stop. All was silent and still.

With the clearing skies, Sixty King, the Sheriff Department’s helicopter, would fly at first light to look for them. Believing as Gracie did that Cashman had never reached the Command Post to relay their location, logic told her that the helicopter’s initial route would be to follow the Aspen Springs Trail in from the trailhead parking lot.

But unless Gracie could somehow draw the flight crew’s attention, they might very well miss the ant wearing an orange Search and Rescue parka among the thousands of trees.

Gracie and Rob had argued in heated whispers about the risk of her climbing up to the trail alone with Joseph possibly having survived the storm and out looking for them. Gracie had finally pulled rank and ordered him to stay behind to pack up the rest of the gear. Now she was slogging her way up to the trail for what she hoped was the last time in her life. Once she was out in the open, she would wave her arms, blow her whistle or, when the sun crested the eastern ridge, signal with her mirror, whatever it took to make herself noticeable.

The climb grew into endless torture; a marathon of willpower. Gracie’s nearly empty reserve of energy quickly dwindled to nothing as she plowed through the snow calf-deep in places, waist-high in others. She propelled herself upward with her arms like a swimmer in high surf. She was an automaton, her body moving of its own volition. She plunged in her ice axe, stabbing the hillside with her crampons to seek purchase in the snow. Stumbling, falling, pushing herself back to her feet, she clawed her way up out of the canyon.

Now she rested on her knees, allowing the pain in her chest to diminish. She sat back on her heels and looked up. High above, the trail—invisible through the trees—wound along the mountainside, unattainable as perfection. Higher still, snow-covered mountain peaks glowed pink with the first rays of the morning sun.

Move
, Gracie told herself.
With the sun comes Sixty King. Get out from under the trees and into the open.

Her body refused.

She tipped her head back and prayed.
Please, God, give me strength. Help me get up to the trail
.

But when she opened her eyes to the mountains rising up before her, she knew she couldn’t go another step. She was played out.

• • •

SHE FELT IT
first as a shimmer in the air, an indistinct pulse barely distinguishable from the beating of her own heart, growing until finally she heard it: an unmistakable
whumping
—the staccato rhythm of an approaching helicopter.

Sixty King.

She would be invisible under the cover of the trees. “Oh, God!”

The throbbing grew louder. Gracie blew long, hard blasts on her whistle until black spots kaleidoscoped before her eyes. She waved her arms until Sixty King roared overhead like a giant prehistoric beast, its wake whipping the snow into whirling dervishes of white.

The helicopter disappeared over the tops of the trees. The
thump
of the rotor blades faded to a throb, then silence.

They hadn’t seen her.

“They’ll come back!” Gracie croaked. “They’ll circle around and do another sweep.”

A final burst of adrenaline pushed her up the mountain. She climbed, fell headlong in the snow, forced herself to her feet. With muscles straining, arms flailing, grabbing, hauling, she drove herself up to the trail.

With a grunt, Gracie fell full length into the deep snow on the trail.

She allowed herself no time to recover her breath. Instead she pushed herself to her feet and waded up the trail in the direction the helicopter had flown. But she had taken only a few steps before she stumbled to a stop, unable to see. Weaving on her feet, she sucked air into her lungs until her vision cleared.

Dread wrapped cold arms around her. She lifted her eyes. On a ridge high above her head, a cornice of snow curled elegantly against the cerulean sky. Turning around slowly, she looked down to where below her a vast white scar slashed the canyon wall.

She stood dead center of an avalanche trough, its concave chute lying in wait for her to brush its hair trigger and release the slide.

Gracie forced her fast, shallow breathing to slow and deepen until she could listen, ears attuned to any sound signaling an instability of the death trap on which she stood, a collapsing of the layers that preceded the violent onslaught.

Dread crystallized to horror as only a hundred yards below, Rob waded out from among the trees and onto the snow field. He had followed her up the mountain after all. Drawn out by the sound of the helicopter, he stopped and looked up.

Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Gracie swung her arm wide. “Move back!” she yelled. “Go back!”

Rob cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled something indecipherable back.

Gracie crept on eggshells to the edge of the chute, into the safety of the trees, praying all the while that Rob would recognize the danger and do the same.

An agitated Steller’s jay, blue feathers brilliant against the snow, hopped from limb to limb in a nearby pine, jarring the quiet with its loud squawking.

Had Rob understood her frantic gestures? Gracie craned her neck, trying to see if he had backed away from the chute. But trees now blocked her line of sight. She stood on tiptoe, not quite able to see—

A scrunching of snow snapped her eyes back down the trail.

Joseph.

Twenty feet away. Limping toward her. Fast. The curved knife in his fist, blade out for the stab and slice.

Time slowed to a crawl.

Gracie’s heart thudded in her chest. Every aspect of the man’s face appeared in crystal-clear high definition. Eyes shadowed in their sockets. Lips—dried to white, cracked, bloodied—pulled back into a ghoulish grimace of yellowed teeth. Pale, frostbitten splotches on nose and cheekbones.

The curving silver knife blade.

He was ten feet away.

Eight.

Six.

Gracie planted her feet, blew out a long breath, and watched him come.

His arm swung back for the strike.

Gracie swung her ice axe like a scythe and planted the sharp pick deep into the soft flesh of Joseph’s cheek.

Bones and teeth crunched.

Joseph slid to his knees at Gracie’s feet, slapping both hands to the wound and spattering bright blood in an arc around them. The knife shot out of his hands and disappeared into the snow.

Gracie turned to run.

Joseph lunged up, grabbed her around the waist from behind, and heaved her over the side of the cliff.

CHAPTER

G
RACIE
fell, arms and legs and mind whirling.

She hit a rock. Bounced off. Tumbled down.

Stop yourself before it’s too late!

She heaved herself over onto her stomach and jammed her ice axe into the snow. The pick bounced off and slammed the adze back into the padding of her chest pack.

She stabbed the pick in again with all her weight behind it. It buried and caught.

Her body’s momentum pulled the handle out of her hands. The strap on her wrist yanked her up short. Her shoulder wrenched. Pain exploded through her upper body.

The axe pulled loose.

She slid down on her side. Hit another rock. Her parka’s slippery shell propelled her like a rocket. She picked up speed.

This is really it. I’m going to die.

She smashed through the top branches of a bush sticking out of the snow, ricocheted off to the side, and spun around like a top.

The slope leveled off a fraction and Gracie felt her body break through a thin crust of snow beneath the powder. She punched through the crust with both elbows. She stopped spinning and slowed down.

Not slow enough.

A granite boulder jutting up from the snow field rushed up to meet her.

Gracie planted her crampons.

She catapulted head over heels and slammed to a stop.