Suspicious (On the Run) (18 page)

The ski area was above the tree line and above the thick layer of fog enveloping the lower portion of the mountain. Even high up on the mountain it was still gray and overcast, but the clouds were high enough that Zoe could see the craggy dark mountains stretching out in all directions, each one coated with a thick layer of snow. Closer, the gondola and lift cables crisscrossed the area in a crazy patchwork of cables. In the distance, Zoe could see workers operating a scissor lift, attaching signs about the ski tournament to an inflatable archway. It looked like it was the starting point of the tournament. Zoe looked for Jack or McKinley, but didn’t see them.

Despite the overcast day, Zoe found herself squinting at the vibrant whiteness of the snow. Away from the main ski runs, outcroppings of dark rock thrust through the snow, their sharp edges looking dangerous. In other places, whole ridges of the unforgiving rock pushed through banks of snow.

Zoe didn’t see Harrington’s dark overcoat and assumed he’d already moved into the large multi-terraced building that contained a restaurant and a ski shop where the meeting was set to take place. Amy headed for one of the smaller lifts. Zoe clicked into her skis and pushed off to follow. After a wobbly start, she found her balance and managed to glide into the line for the lift a few people behind Amy.

Zoe had been skiing—once. When she was about fourteen, one of her mom’s boyfriends had taken them to Vail for a weekend. Donna had been extremely put out when she discovered that her boyfriend’s idea of a weekend in the mountains involved actual skiing, not shopping in the boutiques and sipping hot toddies in front of the fire. Zoe took lessons the first day and had loved the sensation of speeding across the snow. She hadn’t left the bunny slope, but she’d loved it all the same.

After that disaster of a weekend, as Donna termed it, she broke it off with her boyfriend. Zoe had never put on skis again until this morning. As the lift, this one an open-air seat with a bar across it, lofted her over the busy slopes, she felt a second of misgiving as she studied the snowy expanse through a veil of tiny flakes that sprinkled down. This was no bunny slope. Could she keep up with Amy? She shook her head, causing the passenger with her on the lift to shift farther away from her. She
had
to keep up with Amy. She couldn’t let her out of her sight.

Zoe exited the lift with more of a lurch than a glide, but she made it without falling and kept her gaze fixed on the lime green jacket, which was already drifting down the wide open run in a slow serpentine. Zoe swallowed. This run was a lot steeper and longer than anything she’d ever done before. She pulled her ski goggles into place.

The patch of lime green was getting smaller, and more snowflakes were swirling down, blurring her vision. Zoe dug her poles into the ground and pushed onto the run, a queasy feeling in her stomach. It was icy at the top, and her left foot vibrated then skittered away. She hunkered down and pulled her leg back in, then realized the edge of the run was approaching way too fast. She shifted her weight and swept in a curve away from the edge back toward the center of the run. Keeping sight of Amy, she executed another turn and began to relax and enjoy the wind whipping against her cheeks and the swish of her blades across the snow. Too quickly, they arrived at the bottom of the run, which emptied out to the wide area in front of the restaurant.

Amy eased to a stop, removed her skis, and propped them on a set of angled metal bars along with several other sets of skis. Sets of the metal bars were positioned across the front of the restaurant in front of rows of wooden picnic tables. Unlike the leisurely pace she’d taken down the mountain, Amy was now hoofing it across the snow toward the entrance to the restaurant.

Zoe’s attention was on Amy, and she didn’t see the three pint-sized kids on skis. They swirled around her, expertly swishing across her path. Zoe instinctively drew back, which threw her off balance. Instead of gliding to a stop with a shift of her skis and a plume of snow dust, she wiped out, landing hard on her backside. She scrambled up, extracted herself from her twisted skis, dropped them on the storage rack and hurried after Amy.

Sliding glass doors swished open to a lobby area with an entrance to the ski shop on one side, a childcare area on the other, and a set of stairs and elevator directly in front of her that led to the restrooms and lockers below ground or the upper level and the restaurant. Brightly jacketed people in ski clothes moved through the lobby and to the stairs, but Zoe didn’t see a lime green jacket anywhere.

“Oh God, not again,” Zoe muttered under her breath. Following people was hard. She definitely needed Jack to give her some lessons on it. She was already moving toward the stairs, clip clopping as fast as she could in the ski boots. She hit the stairs and went up.

One look around the restaurant sent her spirits plunging. The place was huge. Inside, nooks and crannies of booths and tables surrounded a central buffet-style area made up of several counters serving different types of foods. Through the windows, she could see rows and rows of picnic tables lining the terrace. It was the height of the lunch rush, and every table, indoors and out, seemed to be filled.

Amy had told McKinley to meet her on the terrace, so Zoe headed that direction as she checked her watch. It was five minutes until noon, the meeting time. Snow came down hard and fast now, and a red and white awning had been extended over the picnic tables. As Zoe paused on the threshold, scanning the packed tables where row upon row of people were crammed elbow to elbow over their trays of food, a figure in lime green swept by her without a look.

Amy had come up another set of stairs. Zoe breathed a sigh of relief that Amy hadn’t noticed her.

Amy moved quickly through the rows of tables toward the middle of the terrace where a group had stood to leave. She slipped into the vacated spot, her hand on a fanny pack that rested across her hips.

Zoe spotted Harrington’s dark figure seated at the far end near the tall glass walls that enclosed the terrace. Hemmed in on one side by teenage snowboarders and a family with tweens on the other, Harrington calmly sipped a coffee. When their eyes locked, he raised his cup in a small salute, and then his gaze shifted to a man bundled into an incredible number of layers topped with a fur-lined hat moving directly toward Harrington. He wasn’t in uniform, but as he passed, she recognized Alessi’s bushy eyebrows lowered into a scowl. He was the last person she wanted to make eye contact with, and she quickly looked away, focusing instead on the person who was moving in sync with him, a statuesque woman in a white ski jacket and pants with a determined gait.

Where were Jack and McKinley? Zoe tried to ignore the tide of panic that rose in her, tightening her chest. If they weren’t here, everything would fall apart. Were they late? Had McKinley realized he’d been followed?

No, Zoe pushed the thought away. Jack was good at what he did—careful and thorough. He would make sure McKinley had no idea someone was tracking him. She checked her phone, but there was no message or missed call from Jack.

Alessi was at the end of Harrington’s row. As he inched his way along the narrow opening of space between the tables, the tall woman in white circled around to the other end of the row, blocking in Harrington.

Zoe had to do something. They couldn’t be certain if Amy had the jewels with her. If Harrington fingered Amy as the thief, but she didn’t have the jewels…Harrington would have turned himself in and he would have no way to disprove the circumstantial evidence against him.

Zoe twisted around, looking along the walls for a fire alarm—it was the only thing that she could think of that would create enough confusion to give Harrington a chance to clear out. But she didn’t see any fire alarms. She scooted along the wall and ran into a solid chest. Arms steadied her, and she looked up into Jack’s face. “Where have you been? Is McKinley here? Why didn’t you call me?”

“No time,” Jack said. “Believe me, I would have knocked off a lot earlier if it had been up to me. I may not walk for days. McKinley is a skiing fiend. He just now came in.” Jack looked pointedly over her shoulder. Zoe swiveled and saw McKinley breezing toward Amy, a beer in hand. He wedged himself into the bench seat across the table from her.

“Harrington’s here?” Jack asked.

“Yes. Over there. Alessi is working his way through the crowd to him. There’s a woman, too, at the end of the row. Harrington is blocked in.”

“Only the two of them?” Jack asked.

“They came in together. There might be more police around, blending in with the crowd.”

“Maybe not,” Jack said. “It’s not like they are trying to take down a terrorist network, just a jewel thief. There may be only the two of them.”

Alessi reached Harrington, placed a hand on his shoulder, and leaned over to speak to him.

“Here we go,” Jack said.

Zoe gripped Jack’s arm as she looked back to Amy and McKinley. Amy removed the fanny pack, shoved it roughly across the table, and stood.

Zoe said, “It’s going too fast.”

“Maybe not,” Jack said.

Zoe’s gaze pinged back to Harrington, who spoke rapidly to Alessi while gesturing with his coffee toward Amy and McKinley. As Amy shuffled down the row between the tables, McKinley unzipped the fanny pack a few inches. Zoe couldn’t see what was in the bag, but a smile crossed McKinley’s face. Then he frowned, dug around in the bag, and stood abruptly, leaving his unfinished beer on the table. He spotted Amy disappearing down a set of stairs that curved down from the terrace to the open area in front of the building. He followed her.

Zoe’s gaze skittered back to Alessi, who had his hand clamped securely on Harrington’s shoulder.

“What is Alessi doing?” Zoe tightened her grip on Jack’s arm. “They’ll get away.”

“Give him a second,” Jack said. Alessi’s eyes narrowed as he watched McKinley move quickly through the crowd. Alessi nodded at the woman, and she set off across the terrace, but someone spilled a mug of cider and several people jumped up from a table into her path. One of them, a large man, bumped into her, throwing her backward against the glass enclosure.

Jack didn’t wait. He headed for the stairs. The woman regained her balance and pushed through the crowd, but instead of going after Jack and McKinley down the stairs, she headed directly for Zoe.

“Oh, good grief,” Zoe muttered as she spun and dived through the crowd to the curving stairs. What good did it do to bring in the police, if they weren’t going to listen? They should have gone the citizen’s arrest route. At least then they would have had McKinley, Amy, and the Flawless Set. Right now they had nothing.

These thoughts flashed through Zoe’s mind as she hobbled down the stairs as fast as she could in the restrictive ski boots. On ground level, she paused. The snow spun down, coating everything thickly in white.

It was more crowded than when they’d first arrived at the restaurant, and as Zoe surveyed the throngs of bundled figures zipping across the snow or flocking around outdoor tables, she felt as though she were in a busy airport the day before Thanksgiving. Then she spotted Jack running into the lift area to her right. She took off after him, her boots dragging her down and making loud thwacking sounds on the area cleared of snow around the building.

As she rounded the corner, Jack hurdled the turnstile. Inside his glass cage, a man stood and shouted.

Jack raced onto the departing gondolas. It wasn’t as busy as it had been earlier at the foot of the mountain; there was no line to return to the village. The gondolas moved in their slow, continuous circuit, their doors snapping open and closed on empty gondola cars.

Zoe knew she’d never be able to hurdle the turnstile in the ski boots, so she hit the bar and pushed through as soon as the electronic chip in her lift ticket, which she’d tucked away in a pocket, activated the bar. By now the man was outside his glass cubicle, but his attention was focused on the end of the platform where Jack sprinted toward the single occupied gondola, which was slowly traveling toward the open air at the end of the platform.

There was a commotion inside the gondola. Zoe couldn’t make out much at first, just limbs flailing, which set the gondola bouncing and jerking against the cables.

As Zoe pounded closer, she could see Amy’s flyaway brown hair and a swath of lime green fabric pressed against the window. McKinley loomed over her, his arms extended, hands clasped at her neck. He was shouting at her, his face flushed and furious, but the glass muffled his voice, and Zoe couldn’t make out his words.

Jack reached the gondola and slipped inside before the doors closed. He fell on McKinley, brought his hands down on his shoulders, and yanked him backward off Amy. She slid down below the seat, out of view.

Zoe was only a few paces away from the gondola, but couldn’t close the distance. It cleared the end of the building and swung away, jouncing on the cable as McKinley lunged for Jack.

A hand locked onto Zoe’s shoulder and spun her back from the edge of the building where a net extended out a few feet beyond the platform, flickering in the light breeze.

“Oh, no you don’t,” the woman said.

“What are you doing?” Zoe tried to twist away, but the woman held firm. Zoe pointed to the gondola, now swaying in an alarming arc. The cables groaned. “
That’s
who you want—Christopher McKinley and Amy Beck.”

The woman ignored her, as well as the man from the glass cubicle, who was yelling in German and gesturing at them.

Rocking wildly, the gondola moved away from the building on the gentle rise of the cable as it tracked over a road to the next support tower. McKinley threw a punch, snapping Jack’s head back. He stumbled against one of the seats, and the gondola pitched like a rowboat thrown by a wave. The machinery over Zoe’s head screeched as Jack jumped up, and the gondola swung the other direction as he charged back toward McKinley.

The wild swings of the gondola caught the attention of the man from the cubicle, who fell silent, and the tall woman stopped trying to manhandle Zoe back against the wall.

As the gondola tilted back and forth on the cable, the double doors separated. Amy, her lime green coat standing out bright against the gray clouds and swirling snow, peered down as she clutched the side of one of the doors. By now, the gondola was several stories above the ground. Zoe tensed, a sick feeling twisting her insides.

The man from the cubicle muttered in German what was either a curse or a prayer and ran back to the front of the lift house.

Amy hesitated and seemed to decide it was too risky because she leaned back in, but the next moment her chest pushed forward and her arms flew back. A flash of a red ski boot showed as it connected with Amy’s back, propelling her out of the gondola.

It happened so quickly that she didn’t even scream, just plummeted down to a ridge of banked snow around the support pole. Zoe wanted to look away, but couldn’t.

Dimly, Zoe was aware of shouts, a warning bell clanging, and the machinery grinding to a halt, leaving the still rocking gondola suspended in the air above Amy, its doors now closed, a foot or two short of the support tower.

Zoe realized her hand was clamped across her mouth and that the tall woman beside her stood in a similar posture. Her grip on Zoe’s shoulder had loosened, and her gaze was locked on the imprint of sunken snow where Amy had landed.

A skier swished up to the rise of snow and shouted. A lime-colored arm shifted, setting off a cascade of snow. More skiers arrived and the cadence of the voices, excited and urgent, indicated it wasn’t a tragedy.

Above Amy, the arcs of the gondola were diminishing, like a pendulum on a clock that was winding down. The lack of movement sent Zoe’s pulse skittering. What was going on? It was too far away to see more than an outline of a figure moving in the gondola.

Only one figure.

The doors were shoved opened again. Zoe knew it was McKinley because of the red jacket and ski boots. He gripped the railing that ran along the roof of the gondola and began to pull himself up.

The tall woman muttered, “He’s not going to…”

Oh yes he was. He was going to try to get on the roof of the gondola, and use the cable to get to the support tower, which had a ladder running down the central pole. Zoe waited a second, hoping to see Jack emerge from the car as well. There was no way he’d stay inside and let McKinley scramble over to the support tower. He didn’t like heights, but Zoe knew he’d never cower in the gondola when he could prevent McKinley from getting away, especially after McKinley had shoved Amy out of the gondola. No, the only way Jack would let McKinley leave the gondola was if he couldn’t stop him.

Zoe turned and ran.