Chilled by Death (30 page)

He turned his attention back to Stacy, her bowl now on the coffee table beside his. She was curled into a ball beside him. He wondered if he should go alone.

“I’m going to power nap for twenty minutes, then we’ll go.”

He glanced at his watch and considered that. It was just after one thirty, so there was lots of daylight yet and they’d be out in the better part of the afternoon. So that worked. While she slept, he got up and cleaned away the lunch mess. They still had lots of food, particularly if they were cutting the trip short. There was talk of one or two people staying behind if the others left early, but no decisions had been made and the further away they were from the incidents, the more people were inclined to stay for the rest of the week. For all the sadness and difficulties these last few days, he couldn’t regret coming. And if he had to leave early, at least he knew he’d be leaving with Stacy. He could always come back another week.

When he was finished, he went up to the loft and removed his heavy sweater. He wouldn’t need it this afternoon.

When he came down, Stacy was already sitting up and rubbing the sleep out from her eyes.

“Hey, how was your nap?” he asked, sitting down beside her and tugging her into his arms. He kissed her gently, wishing they hadn’t seen the man earlier. He wouldn’t be going anywhere but to bed right now otherwise. And that’s so where he wanted to be.

She gave him a bright-eyed smile. “It was good. I’m ready to go.” She motioned to the coffeepot on the stove. “Any left? We could take a thermos up with us.”

“I’ll get it,” he volunteered, hopping to his feet. She was right. A thermos of coffee up there would be good. “Are you going to take your camera?” he called back to her.

“Absolutely, the view of the cabin and the whole valley is spectacular from there.”

“Too bad we don’t have a snowmobile. It would make this trip a piece of cake.”

“What’s the matter, tired?” she teased from the doorway, a bright smile on her face.

“Ha. Tired of the problems, yes. Physically tired, no.” And he waggled his eyebrows.

“Down boy,” she laughed. “Let’s go. The others could come in at any time.”

He stopped and considered her words. “That’s actually a good idea. Then we’d have backup.”

“No, we won’t have enough time if they don’t get here soon,” she said. “We’ll text them all and leave a note behind.”

She turned around and headed to the living room, calling back, “George left his scratch pad here. I’ll write him one on that.”

He took the thermos out to the boot room where he started getting dressed to go outside again. Stacy joined him and within minutes, they were dressed and back out in the winter wonderland.

S
tacy led the
way back to the frozen waterfall. With the sun melting the top layer, there was still an icy layer underneath to contend with, but in her winter hikers, she had good traction. She wasn’t as tired as she expected to be right now, and it was too beautiful out to be anything but amazed at Mother Nature’s artwork.

With the bright sun twinkling off the white canvas and the ice reflecting and refracting at will, the colors of the cold air could be glimpsed in some unexpected spots. It was amazing. She stopped to take several photographs as they walked.

Royce stood at her side. He never asked her to speed it up or what she was looking at, seemingly content to let her take her time.

Something she appreciated.

“That’s probably good for here.” She took several steps forward and exclaimed over a large snowflake pattern frozen into the top of a melted then frozen surface. “I can’t resist.” Click. Click. She sighed happily and turned to look at how far they’d come. As she studied the distance, something caught her attention from the corner of her eyes. Stevie and Kevin were walking down the slope toward the cabin.

“Stevie!”

Sure enough, he turned, saw her, waved, and veered toward them.

“Where are you two heading at this hour?” he asked. He was covered in snow as if he’d tumbled through a few snow banks, but he wore a big smile.

“We’re going back up to where I fell in,” Stacy said, holding up her camera. “I want to take a few shots.”

Stevie rolled his eyes and grinned. “Figures. Please don’t fall in again.”

Royce shook the coil of rope he carried over one shoulder. “Just in case. She does seem to get into trouble a lot.”

“Hey, that’s not fair,” she protested. “It’s not my fault.”

“It isn’t, but it is,” Royce said by way of cryptic answer.

“Like that makes any sense,” she scoffed.

She turned back to the cabin and motioned at it to Stevie. “Are you cutting the day short? That’s not like you.”

“Yeah, I argued with a tree back there.” He gave her a sheepish, lopsided grin. “Figured it might be a good time to call it quits for the day. I’ve been going strong since early morning. Besides,” he patted his stomach, “I’m starving.”

“Me too,” Kevin said, nudging Stevie down the hill. “I am not used to days like these. I didn’t prepare enough.”

“Prepare?” Royce asked, eyeing Kevin’s big grin. “Prepare how?”

“I woke up and realized everyone had left, so I ran out the door without eating breakfast,” he said, laughing. “Time to fix that.”

With that comment, the two took off down the mountain, creating a new path in the snow. Stacy couldn’t resist. She pulled her camera out and took several shots of the two friends sauntering down to the cabin. She could just imagine all kinds of captions for these photos.

Still grinning, she turned back to find that Royce had started to climb the slope slashing across the hillside. “We’re almost there,” he called back.

“I’m coming.”

The rest of the climb was harder work, but she made it to the top without too much effort. After a moment of trying to catch her breath, she took off her jacket and cooled down. Royce watched her. “Just be sure you don’t catch a chill.”

She nodded. “I won’t. But walking into the sun was harder than I expected today.”

“We’ve also put in a good day’s work already. You should be tired.” He walked a couple of steps toward the crevasse, stopping a safe distance away. “Good. No one is here. Take your look, snap a few photos, then let’s head back.”

It was a good idea. Now that they were here, it was hard to see anything menacing in the area – except for the pit itself. As there was no one lying unconscious or injured below, the man they’d seen had to have left safely. He probably worked for the resort. There were snowmobile tracks around, but it was hard to tell how old they were. She took several pictures, careful to stand back. If she were higher looking down, she’d be able to take better shots, but there wasn’t much option to do that. She gave it a wide berth as she walked around. “Do you see tracks from whomever we saw earlier?” she asked.

“There were lots of people here yesterday,” Royce said, looking at the trampled snow. “Who can tell?”

She walked further out, looking for any sign that someone had approached from a different direction. The two snowmobiles had raced over the top of some tracks, almost obliterating them.

“True enough. It’s hard to see anything anymore.”

“Not to mention the temperatures today were much warmer with some melting going on.”

She nodded. Still, she couldn’t help take a few photographs of the snowmobiles and the trampled ground around the hole.

“It’s deeper than I remember.”

“No wonder. You fell in and didn’t really get a good look at it afterwards. You were hustled down to the cabin to warm up.”

She stared down the crevasse and wondered why it bothered her so badly. She glanced up at the frozen waterfall then back down at the deep slice in the snow pack. She’d come here to solve one problem and instead she’d opened up another. Loathe to leave just yet, but knowing Royce was starting to get impatient, she walked for a last time to the far side.

And that’s when she saw the blackness behind the fallen snow. She’d had to see it just right. The stack of snow hid the shadow. Even if they didn’t explore what was behind it, that snow should be collapsed so that someone else didn’t fall in.

“Royce, we need to do something about this.”

He walked over to stand at her side. She studied his face to see if he saw what she saw and caught the narrowed gaze as he caught sight of the blackness. A long tree branch she dimly remembered seeing someone using to test the edges of the fault line lay to the side. Royce picked it up and knocked down the tower of fallen snow protecting the space behind. He frowned. He tried knocking more snow off the top so the space would open up, but instead his branch hit something hard. They rushed over and approached from the side, his stick carefully brushing the snow of the side. It was an overhang made of rock. But what was under it?

“I want to see what’s down there.”

Royce glanced over at her. “It’s likely nothing.”

“Likely, yes,” she admitted. “That, however, isn’t the same thing as knowing for sure. We saw someone jump down here. There’s no sign of anyone. Where did he go?”

They both studied the darkness. “He probably used a rope and climbed back out. I’ll go,” Royce said. “I’ll set up the ropes first then I can climb back out if need be.”

He attached the one end to the big tree standing guard for so many years then threw the rest over the edge. That’s when she realized he’d actually brought a rope ladder.

She hadn’t seen one in ages. “I didn’t realize that’s what you were carrying.”

“I figured it was the easiest way to get out when the sides keep crumbling in on us here.”

“Good thinking,” she said. And it was. It was actually brilliant. Then Royce thrived on this kind of thing. He was a definite Boy Scout and followed the
be prepared for anything
motto very well. She’d always been amazed at the things he’d pulled off with her brother. Some were stupid and some were damn good. Now he carefully skittered down the slope into the narrow ravine and called back. “I’m down.”

“Test your ladder first,” she said.

“A little late to test if I’m already here.” He grinned. “But I will if it makes you feel better.”

Under her watchful gaze, he climbed up several rungs easily. “See.”

“Good. Then I’ll come down too.”

“There’s no need. You stay up and keep watch. I’ll check out this cave and then we can leave.”

“I want to see too,” she complained.

“You do realize that you could be making a big deal out of nothing. Like I’m going to see a rock wall and turn around and come right back up there.” He glared at her. “Stay where you are and I’ll check. If there’s anything to find, you’ll see it when I knock the snow back.”

He turned his back on her and started knocking down the snow. It was evident very quickly that he was going to need a couple of minutes to clear a path. She watched and waited from up above. Every once in a while she turned around to find the pristine countryside, empty and untouched. There was no one out here but the two of them. It should have made her feel better, but instead it was too empty. There wasn’t a bird flying past, no songs or warbles in the air. It was still, watchful. Waiting.

She hated that her imagination was on overdrive, but it didn’t seem fanciful that Royce just might be finding something that the birds already knew about.

*

Royce worked steadily
to drop the snow to a reasonable-sized pile that he could get around and see what was behind the mess. He’d seen many different footprints, which made no sense. After all, there wasn’t – or shouldn’t have been – anyone down here. Except for the man they’d seen.

Maybe it was just curiosity, but…

Stacy didn’t believe it, and her nervousness made him double question his own assumptions. The footprints added to his concern.

After a moment, he peered in. All he could see was black. He pulled his flashlight out and turned it on. The light shone deep into the cavern. And showed that it was huge. And there were footprints.

Damn.

He puzzled over it.

It wasn’t criminal to have come in here. It wasn’t even abnormal. This was a hugely popular resort for skiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling, and climbers of all kinds every month of the year.