The Stranger (35 page)

“So you liked Seth way back when?”

“What was there not to like?” Alex squirmed next to me. “We had fun together. We even talked about going to MIT together. He got in on his first try. Me? I barely managed to get into a third-rate college and only because my father made a sizable donation.”

“Please don’t tell me you hate Seth because he got into MIT and you didn’t.”

“Nah.”

“What changed?”

“Life changed,” Alex said. “Did Seth ever tell you the story of AEE?”

“No,” I said, blowing into my cupped hands to warm my nose. “What does it stand for?”

“Alex Erickson’s Enterprises,” he said, voice shivering. “A few years ago, I started my own business. I modeled it after E&E’s business plan. I wanted to give Seth a run for his money and show everybody else that I could do better than Seth at the helm of my own company.”

“What happened?”

“I went broke, of course.” A note of inevitability dulled Alex’s voice. “I was up to my eyeballs in debt. Do you know what the SOB did to me?”

“What?”

“He went behind my back and paid all my debts out of his own pocket before the bankruptcy became public knowledge. He didn’t tell anyone, not even Grandma. Then he offered me my old position back at E&E.”

Yep, just like Seth.

“Some people would’ve been deliriously happy with an outcome like that.”

Alex scoffed. “It was humiliating. But then I saw my chance when Seth had to go to Afghanistan. I ran the company for almost a year. Sure, he supervised my decisions remotely, but I did fine. Just when I was getting the hang of things, the guy comes back, physically destroyed, but mentally? He was all there. It stunk. I had all this power and authority. As soon as Seth was back on his feet, it was all gone.”

It was just like Alex to blame Seth for a harrowing recovery. Something was broken inside of Alex, his ability to measure reality, his capability to empathize with others, his compassion meter. What could cause someone to ignore the pain of others and focus only on themselves?

“Seth always comes up with the winning play,” Alex said. “He helped me so he could feel morally superior to me.”

God. If he kept talking like this, I might just take my chances with the storm and hike out of the Range just to get away from the weasel.

“I think Seth tried to help you because you’re his family and he cares.” I refused to give Alex a pass. “Which is why I find it so strange that, instead of being grateful, you take every opportunity to harm him. You even tried to frame him for the spill at Star Lake.”

“Ah, that.” Alex snickered. “Almost got him. It was well done, don’t you think? I might have succeeded outright if it wasn’t for the Golov woman and you.”

“You sound so proud of yourself.”

“I was going to win in the end,” Alex said. “I was all set to end Seth’s tenure.”

“I doubt that.”

The skepticism in my voice did the job, needling Alex’s ego.

“This time, it was going to happen,” he said with audible glee. “I would’ve loved to live long enough to see Seth’s face at the board meeting when he realizes that he’s still caught in my web. Do you think Grandma will postpone the board meeting until after the mourning period is over?”

Alex just couldn’t stop thinking about himself. Right now, he was taking perverse pleasure in imagining his family grieving his death. I suppressed the sudden image that flashed in my mind of Louise and Tammy crying over my grave. No self-pity allowed. Instead, my ears perked up. I concentrated on something Alex had just said. We might be stranded, freezing and in mortal danger, but if there was a chance for me to identify the trap that Alex had laid for Seth, then I was going to try.

“What do you mean with that bit about Seth still being caught in your web?”

“I suppose there’s no harm in telling you now,” Alex said. “You and I, we’re history. Seth thinks he has proof against me for bribing the lumber mill’s supervisor and purchasing the poison. But by the time the Feds finish their investigation, they’ll be able to trace the money, not to my accounts, as Seth expects, but to his own accounts. Wait until everybody gets a load that dear awesome Seth is stealing from the company. Seth doesn’t know it, but he’s a dead man walking.”

Had I really stayed behind with this poor excuse of a human being?

“You are a piece of work,” I muttered. “I hate you right now.”

I closed my eyes, wrung my hands and wished I had a way to warn Seth of the next trap awaiting him. I wished I had the strength to pummel Alex to oblivion. But my limbs were weak and my core temperature matched that of a freezer’s. My head hurt and a heavy haze settled over my senses, until all I wanted to do was go to sleep.

“Stay awake.” Alex shook me. “You won’t wake up if you fall asleep. Keep talking. It’ll help you stay alert.”

“You’re a snake,” I mumbled. “A freaking dirtbag. I still don’t understand why you hate Seth so much. All this talk, and not a clue.”

“Right.” Alex said. “Let’s see how you’d feel if your own father, in his last will and testament, chose your cousin over you to run his precious company.”

And there it was. The simple reason that fueled Alex’s primal hatred for Seth. Alex’s father had agreed that Seth was the better candidate to run E&E. It wasn’t something Alex could forget or forgive. And since Alex’s father was dead, Seth had to pay the price, because revenge was the only force powering Alex’s miserable life.

I mustered my strength to move my lips. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Alex said.

“For your grief,” I said. “I know you miss your father. But competing with Seth isn’t going to bring him back. Neither would it change the choice that your father made many years ago. All your efforts, all that scheming and plotting, they were for nothing.”

“There you go again.” Alex slurred his words. “Psychobabble.”

Things seemed crystal clear to my frozen mind.

“It’s too late for you to make your father proud,” I said. “But you could make your grandma proud, and your family too, your future wife, your kids. Hell, I bet you could make Seth proud of you if put your mind to it.”

He snorted. “Why would I want to make Seth proud?”

“Because deep down inside, you respect and admire him.”

Alex went silent. A long time passed. At least it seemed that way to me. God, it was cold! The wreckage trembled with wallops from the wind. The snow blew in horizontal layers outside. The slope was fat with accumulation, perfect for avalanching. I clutched my frozen hands and prayed that the storm passed quickly, because otherwise, we weren’t going to make it.

“It’s too late,” Alex murmured next to me.

“Too late for what?”

“To change anything,” he said. “Seth will fall into the trap. Without Seth and with me gone, the company will eventually fall into the hands of strangers. I won’t care. I’ll be dead.”

“Would you do anything differently if you survived?”

“Maybe,” he mumbled. “I don’t know.”

“Promise me,” I said. “Promise me that if you survive, you’ll make peace with Seth.”

He grunted. “Like you’d believe anything I’d say.”

“Blame the present circumstances for my ingenuity.”

Alex was quiet for a long time. I thought he’d gone to sleep. A mercy. I was shivering too hard to think. My limbs were numb. My eyelids grew heavy. My mind entered a wooly world where dreams offered a much better alternative to the present. At some point, Alex’s hand groped for mine. I woke up. He placed a hard object between my fingertips, the thumb drive that contained that awful picture.

“I mean to die better than I lived,” he mumbled, voice barely audible. “I swear,” he added, before he fell silent.

* * *

In my dream, Aurora Borealis illuminated the landscape with green and purple swipes of her long, shimmering mane. I stood at the top the Range beneath the glowing skies like a lonely figurine atop a magnificent tiered cake. The snow tasted sweet as icing between my lips. The wind was gone. The cold was but a distant memory.

I followed a fresh set of tracks on the snow, the prints of bare feet, which ended at the edge of a cliff. From those prints, my mother emerged, black hair garnished with a crown of icicles, eyes glimmering with the Northern Lights’ reflection.

“You found me,” she said. “After all this time, you’ve come to the end of the chase.”

My eyes met hers. “All this time I’ve been chasing after you?”

“You’ve been chasing me,” she said, “in order to get to the truth.”

“What truth?”

“Look inside.”

When I next knew, I stood at the Fountain Way apartment, a little girl hiding behind the door, listening to my mother as she pleaded for her life. I peeked out and saw her, standing against the far wall, facing a man who had his back to me. A third voice came from somewhere to my right, a deep baritone whose owner I couldn’t see from where I stood.

“You had to do it,” the man said. “You had to poke your damn nose in other people’s business and push the envelope. You leave me no choice.”

“Wait!” My mother’s lips made a sound I couldn’t hear. “Please, don’t do this.”

“Too late,” the man said, opening the front door. “Finish this,” he added as he left the room.

The scene rewound in my mind. It played in slow motion several times, until I could see and hear even the smallest details.

“Wait, Hector!” This time, my mother’s voice came through clearly. “Please, don’t do this.”

I caught a glimpse of Hector Carrera as he walked out of the apartment, leaving my mother to die in Peterson’s hands.

Hector Carrera. My heart hammered my chest. My father’s partner? My family’s benefactor? My mother had found out something that threatened Hector and because of it, Hector had had her killed. And now he wanted me dead too?

I couldn’t understand why he’d want me dead. I’d been good for his business. I’d worked hard. But whatever the reason, it had started a long time ago and it explained his behavior in the last few weeks. He’d been so mad when I left Miami. And after Peterson failed at Star Lake, he’d been so eager for me to go back. He’d come all the way to Alaska. My God. Had he come to kill me himself?

The truth. The memories in a dream. The reason why my mother had to die. That’s what I’d been chasing all this time.

“Wake up, Summer.” My mother’s face lit up the sky with a dazzling flash that awakened my senses, then disappeared with the Aurora.

The wind screeched in my ears and tore into me with arctic teeth. My feet ached. My hands did too. The cold. Oh, my God. It was back with a vengeance. I made a huge effort to lift my eyelids. The world exploded with white light. It hurt my eyes. Where was I?

I was no longer tucked inside the wreckage with Alex. I was out in the elements! Had I been sleepwalking?

The night spun around me in a white maelstrom. In a swirl of snow, a strange figure, the source of that bright light, stood before me. My brain couldn’t make a rational connection between the sight and my senses. It made a huge leap. The yeti maybe?

Dreaming, yes, I was dreaming. About the yeti? I giggled a little and tiny puffs of condensed breath steamed from the top of my scarf and brushed against my cold cheeks.

Growling. Pushing. I was too cold to be afraid, too woolly to make sense of anything. But the creature was bossy. It barked over the howl of the wind as it turned me around and shoved me forward.

I should’ve been afraid, only I wasn’t. I was beyond fear, beyond cold. I was totally numb, past reason and logic, past the grasp of terror, standing at the very edge of oblivion, where nothing mattered anymore and things just looked and sounded...funny?

In less than four steps, I stumbled through the tarp and into our precarious shelter. Relief. At least the wind wasn’t hitting me straight on. A beam illuminated the small space. Alex lay beneath the blankets, covered by a thin layer of frost. Slow breaths puffed out of his nose in tiny bursts of vapor. He was still alive.

I knuckled my eyes. Yes, I must have been walking in my sleep. But I remembered the dream. I usually didn’t remember anything when I sleepwalked. Maybe I’d been somewhere in between dream and reality, like when I’d been under the water at Star Lake, at the boundary between life and death where knowledge meets awareness.

I looked down at my gloved hands. No flashlight. Where was the light coming from? I whirled on my knees. There it was again. The yeti. Wearing a blinding headlamp. But mythological creatures didn’t wear sub-zero protective clothing, goggles, boots, the works. They didn’t carry a huge pack, or coils of ropes and carabiners strapped around their waists, or ice axes and flashlights.

The creature knelt before me and lifted the goggles from its face. From the slits of a black facemask, yellow eyes flecked with brown and gold pierced through me. I recognized those eyes.

He couldn’t be here. It was impossible. Was I still dreaming? I put my gloved hand over my mouth and giggled. Yes, dreaming. That had to be it. God knew, Seth made frequent guest appearances in my dreams.

“Keep it together.” Seth’s arms closed around me. He held me against his chest while I giggled hysterically. “It’s all right, Summer. It’s going to be all right.”

“Am I hallucinating?”

“I’m here,” Seth said, pulling up his facemask. “But we’ve got to move quickly. The lip above can cave anytime. Do you understand?”

I undid my scarf and pinched my frozen face. Perhaps I felt something beneath the numb skin. I was awake. Seth was here. My stomach lurched. Oh, no. No!

“Tell me you’re are not here,” I begged. “Tell me you are far away from here.”

“Sorry.”

“You are going to die!” I said. “Why would you do something so foolish as to try to rescue us?”

“Rescue you?” He gave me a skeptical look. “On a night like this? Are you crazy? Who said anything about a rescue?”

I frowned. “So you’re not here to rescue us?”

“No, ma’am,” he said. “I’m not so deranged as to think I could.”

“Then why on earth did you come?”

“Oh, that.” He smiled. “I’ve got an idea.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I took stock of Summer first, then Alex. Summer was banged up and extremely cold, but she was alive, alert, and mobile. Consistent with Joe Pilot’s report, Alex couldn’t walk and nothing I could do would change that. I eyed the slope shifting in the wind, gathering more snow as the storm continued, and looked at my high-tech mountaineering watch. Time to get moving.

I opened my pack and systematically laid out the highly specialized gear I’d selected and hauled up the mountain.

“Put that on.” I handed Summer an arctic-rated overcoat, sub-zero-tested gloves, a pair of high-performance hiking boots, a facemask, goggles, a helmet with a headlamp, and a set of crampons. “Don’t leave any part of your skin exposed. Understand?”

“But...”

“Summer?” I unpacked more gear. “Hustle. No time for explanations.”

“What about Alex?” Summer said, donning the gear.

I grumbled. “Wouldn’t mind leaving him behind.”

“Seth!”

“But I won’t.” I crouched next to Alex and shook him gently.

Alex came out of hibernation groggily.

“You’re here?” His eyes focused on my face. “But...how?”

“Questions later.” I gave him a shot of morphine and, careful not to jostle his leg, fitted him into an arctic-rated sleeping bag. I tightened the hood around his face. “Hike time.”

“But I can’t...”

“I know.” I unpacked the extra-light rescue sled I’d attached to my pack and folded it out. “We’re doing this the old-fashioned way.”

“Oh, fuck.” Alex grimaced.

I worked quickly. With Summer’s help, I strapped Alex into the sled, bundled him up and secured the pulling ropes in place. Next, I put Summer into a harness and clipped it through a length of rope to my belt. She wasn’t going anywhere without me.

I did a last systems check and shouldered my pack. “Here we go.”

“Are you sure?” Summer said, lowering her goggles over her eyes.

“Affirmative,” I grabbed the lines of Alex’s sled. “The slope is unstable. The worst of the storm is yet to come. According to the radar, there will be a slight break in the weather in...” I checked my watch. “Three minutes. It’s now or never.”

“And if we get down?” she asked.

“
When
we get down,” I said, “we’ll tackle the next set of challenges. For now, I need you to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other and following my instructions. Got it?”

Her throat swallowed, but to her credit, she nodded, pulled up her neck guard, and followed me out of the wreckage. I lowered my goggles, covered my face, and pulled the sled to the nearby outcrop. I’d taken the time to set up the ropes during my ascent. It had been a grueling, time-consuming process, but in the darkness, without the ropes, the descent could not be managed.

Once at the outcrop, I secured the sled in place and hooked Summer to the vertical rope system. The wind had died down some, but it was hard to relay proper instructions.

“You go first,” I shouted.

“I want to go with you,” she shouted back, voice muffled by her facemask.

“Need you down there,” I shouted. “To receive Alex.”

It was about the only way she’d agree to go first.

I belayed Summer down the slope as fast as I dared. My heart beat in my throat every time I lost sight of the light of her headlamp. She did well. By the time she signaled that she had reached the bottom with a flare, we’d made good time.

“Your turn,” I said, rigging the sled into the vertical rope system.

Alex’s goggles cased the darkness below with obvious fear. “What if I fall?”

“I won’t let you fall.”

Belaying the sled proved to be a lot more challenging than belaying Summer. The sled got stuck in the snow a couple of times. The second time, I had to belay myself down half the slope and re-rig the sled. I relied on my technical skills to bridge the transition. My own body challenged the process. The cold took a huge toll on my strength. My biceps ached, my back strained and my thighs burned like hell.

The temperature had dropped tremendously by the time the sled finally arrived at the bottom. I climbed down the last of the slope. The wind clobbered me as if I were a punching bag. It almost knocked me off the slope a couple of times. My crampons found level ground at about the time that the storm regained full strength. Alex had passed out and Summer was on her knees. Time for a quick gear change.

I unstrapped the snowshoes from my pack, helped Summer put on the smaller pair and then secured the larger pair to my feet. I detached the four collapsible poles I’d hooked to my pack, lengthened them and handed Summer her pair. I worked fast. Every minute that passed counted against our lives. But without the equipment, we had no prayer to make it across the valley. Finally, I slipped on the sled’s pulling harness over my shoulders.

“Get up,” I shouted. “Come on, on your feet, I need you to walk with me.”

“I’m too cold.” Summer shivered on her knees. “I can’t.”

“You’re made of better stuff than that,” I said. “Get up. Your father didn’t cling to a raft for three days in the Florida Straits for you to die here.”

Her head snapped up. Her lamp lit me up. She hesitated for a moment, then clung to her poles and pulled herself up. She planted a foot, then a pole, then the other foot. I had to admire her grit. We made slow but steady progress. The wind pummeled us from behind. At times, it almost flattened us to the ground. Despite the snowshoes, the snow caved beneath our steps. Summer tripped and fell several times as we crossed the flat, and yet every time, she got up again.

The pulling strained my heart. It was hard, much harder than I remembered from my arctic training. My pack weighed a hell of a lot less without all the equipment I’d doled out, but the sled slowed me down, much heavier than the pack had ever been.

I kept looking over my shoulder, anticipating the avalanche that could bury us alive, but under whiteout conditions, visibility sucked. Every so often, when the wind eased, I caught a glimpse of the emergency strobe light on the high ridge.

The grueling trek required every ounce of energy I could muster. I’d expected it to be so, anticipated the conditions and planned for them, but expecting, anticipating, and planning were not the same thing as bearing the brunt of nature’s worst. My heart ached from the effort. My lungs cramped. My strength ebbed. Failure wasn’t in the range of my options, so I huffed and puffed as we mounted the hill at the end of the valley.

We were roughly halfway up the hill when a fearsome sound overtook the sounds of the storm.
Crack
. It sounded like a strike of lightning and then a roar. The earth shook. In the darkness, the strobe light that had once flashed atop the wreckage plummeted from the mountainside and disappeared. A few seconds later, a wave of snow flowed by our feet, hissing like a giant snake.

I grabbed Summer’s arm and, dragging both Summer and the sled, rushed farther up the hill. It wasn’t until we crested the knoll that I slowed down to catch my breath. In between furious swirls of snow, I spotted the tip of a wing, sticking out of the ground, flapping in the wind as if it was built out of rubber. I gave myself a mental high five. I’d read the area’s topography correctly and chosen the only geographical feature that offered some protection from the massive avalanche that had just buried the wreckage.

Summer leaned on her poles and, puffing bursts of vapors through her facemask, shouted. “Avalanche?”

“Affirmative,” I shouted back. “Keep going.”

She peered into the blowing snow, where she caught a glimpse of the spectral shadow looming there. “What’s that?”

“A few more steps,” I shouted. “Almost there.”

“Helicopter?” Her goggles aimed at the sight ahead. “Seth, is that your Firehawk?”

My Firehawk, yes. No time to explain. No energy either. I motioned Summer on and together we trudged through the last few steps, dodging the steel cables that fastened the helo to the frozen ground.

A good three feet of snow had already piled around the helicopter. No wonder. It had taken me hours to secure the Firehawk, make my way across the hanging valley, set up the rope system, climb up to the wreckage, and reverse my steps with Summer and Alex. I’d had to sacrifice time in exchange for safety, but it had been the only plausible way.

I slid open the Firehawk’s side door and manhandled the sled into the helicopter. Summer tried to help, but she was pretty much done. I was done too, but I managed to boost Summer into the cabin, where she sprawled on the floor next to the rescue sled, heaving and shivering at the same time. I climbed behind her and, fighting for breath, slammed the door shut. I went to my knees. Somehow, I switched on the battery-operated space heater. Then I collapsed. I lay on the deck, with my heart pounding in my ears, unable to move, waiting for the heart attack to kill me.

* * *

“Seth?” Summer’s plea radioed over from a different dimension. “Please, Seth, wake up!”

I opened my eyes and waited for my senses to pull together the sights floating above me, the headlight, shining on my face, the glimmering green eyes, the stubborn jaw, the lips, cracked and dry and yet somehow still appealing to my senses. A tentative, crooked smile welcomed me back to the world of the living.

“Thank God!” Summer took off my hat, goggles, and facemask and, holding my face between her hands, examined me closely. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I rasped. “You?”

“Defrosting.”

She’d taken off her face’s protective gear. Under the light of my headlamp, her cheeks and the tip of her nose glared red, but I didn’t spot any obvious signs of frostbite. Talk about a miracle. She was whole and hale and for the first time in the last twelve hours, I could breathe without fighting the dread weighing me down.

“Are you sure you’re not hurt?” A tear escaped from her eye. “I came to, and I thought you were dead.”

“I’m alive.” I took stock of our situation from the comfort of her lap. “It’s just my lungs. And my heart. I left them out there somewhere. Alex?”

“Breathing,” Summer reported, before she lowered her face and kissed me.

The fear, the rough, dangerous flight, the cold, the arduous trek up and down the mountain, it was all worth it to feel the way I did right now, full, ecstatic, and exhilarated beyond relief. The best alpine gear in the world could only go so far in protecting human life from conditions like the one we’d experienced, but Summer’s kiss shoved my body firmly into thawing range.

The kiss ended all too quickly for my taste. But as long as she was willing to kiss me, I could fix the rest. That’s what I was. Right? An engineer by training, a problem solver by vocation. That’s why I’d come.

Summer caressed my face. “I sent you a message. I told Joe Pilot to tell you not to come.”

“He told me.” I kissed her hand, then planted elbows on the ground and sat up with a groan. “In fact, the man was very convincing.”

“So why didn’t you do what I said?”

I smirked. “So now you think you’re the boss of me?”

“What’s wrong with you?” She slapped me on the shoulder. “You should’ve listened!”

“Since when has either one of us been good at following directions?”

Now that she was with me, she could glower all she wanted. I took off my gloves. My hands ached. My fingers were stiff as hell and white or purple at the tips, but none of the ten looked like they were about to fall off just yet. I stumbled to my feet, rummaged through my supplies and found the camping lamp. I turned it on and hooked it up to the ceiling, before I switched off my headlamp and set it aside.

Next, I found the food stores and located the thermoses that Robert had prepared. Hands still shaking, I poured a cup of hot, high-protein broth for Summer, then put the thermos to my lips and guzzled the rest down, flooding my gullet with an awesome trail of heat.

Summer downed her drink, green eyes fixed on me. I set the thermos aside and, knees cracking, muscles still aching and quivering from the effort, knelt next to Alex and checked his pulse. Strong and even. Good.

“You ditched your Firehawk.” Summer switched off her headlamp and took off her helmet. “You crash-landed your precious helicopter in the middle of nowhere. Why?”

“I knew I had a good chance of getting in.”

She squeaked. “A good chance?”

“Forty-six percent probability to get into the Range to be exact.”

“Oh, God.” Her lips crumpled. “You also had to know that there was zero percent chance of flying out of this hellhole tonight.”

“Yeah.” I unpacked the medical supplies and unzipped Alex’s sleeping bag. “The probabilities for a survivable takeoff were not good.”

“So why on earth did you come?” She set her drink aside, took off her gloves, and handed me the scissors.

“Three reasons.” I cut open the layers of Alex’s sleeves. “One, I promised you that I wouldn’t let Alaska kill you. Two, I always keep my promises. Three, I knew I could make a difference.”

“For God’s sake.” Summer glared. “This has to be the most reckless rescue attempt in the history of aviation.”

“Correction.” I set the scissors aside. “It was never a rescue attempt. My goal was to provide suitable shelter against the elements.”

“By ditching your helicopter?” She ripped open a pack and handed me the alcohol swabs.

“Affirmative.” I palpated Alex’s arm, found a vein, and disinfected the spot. “Suitable shelter drastically increases the odds for survival.”

“You are crazy,” Summer muttered.

“Crazy people don’t spend time making careful and deliberate plans.”

She huffed her disagreement and handed me the IV, a combination of hydration, antibiotics, painkillers, and muscle relaxants that I’d had Stuart prepare based on Joe Pilot’s information to address Alex’s injury.

“You love your Firehawk,” she said. “You’ll never get it out of here in one piece.”

“Of course I will.” I paused to stick the needle in the vein. “Next May or June.”

“May or June?” She groaned. “I can’t believe your family allowed you to do this!”

“They don’t know I’m here.” I finished hooking the IV. “Well, Jer, Robert, and Stuart know, because I needed their help to expedite the preparations. I didn’t want to worry the rest.”