“I love your strength.”
Raine’s voice whispered in my head, tightening my resolve as I held on. Bits of rock slammed into me as snow covered me, and the pressure increased again. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t breathe. There was no way to hold on. I wasn’t strong enough.
I lost my grip. As least for now, I was heading down the mountain the hard way.
I rolled completely out of control. All I could manage to do was to tuck my head down and wrap my arms around myself to keep from slamming into the rocks with a vital part of my body. My vision was obscured by the snow, and the only perceivable change was seeing everything go from all white, to slightly blue, to white again, and then to black.
I kept falling. The back of my head hit something hard, and white flashes invaded my eyes, joining the darkened snow as my goggles first filled with snow and then flew off. I tumbled, tried to turn and straighten myself as the powdered snow deepened, and again I couldn’t breathe. Remembering everything Landon had ever told me about avalanches, I started moving my arms and legs as much as I could in a classic Australian crawl stroke—trying to swim up and out of the snow before I lost all my breath.
The movement worked, and grey snow turned back to white. For a moment, my head was out from under the snow, and I could take a deep breath. It didn’t last long, and I was buried again quickly. I kept swimming down the slope, gasping for air every chance I got.
The rumbling and shaking finally slowed and then ended completely as I came to a sudden stop when my lower body hit something hard. I couldn’t see a damn thing, and I realized I was totally buried in the snow. My head pounded, and I wasn’t even sure which way was up.
I couldn’t feel my legs at all.
First things first. I need to breathe.
I moved my head from side to side and then forward, making a small pocket of air around my face. It wouldn’t last long, though—maybe a minute or two—so I needed to get unburied as quickly as possible. To do that, I needed to know which way to dig. With my head still dizzy from the tumble, I had no idea.
Gathering saliva in my mouth, I looked down into my ripped up mask and let the spit escape from my lips. Following gravity, it dribbled straight down my chin, which meant my body was angled vertically. A damn good sign if I ever saw one.
I wriggled my arm up my body until my hand reached my face. I made a bigger air pocket before I continued to use my fingers to dig upward. The ice and snow weren’t too packed, and it only took a minute before my hand popped through the surface. I was under about a foot and a half of snow, but at least I could see out and, more importantly, breathe.
I took a deep breath of chilled, fresh air. I still couldn’t feel my legs, but at least I had oxygen. Step one accomplished.
I closed my eyes for a minute and tried to recall anything and everything I knew about avalanches. Everything I recalled just told me I was fucked. Normally in this kind of situation—not that being caught in an avalanche was normal—someone would be nearby, looking to help. In my case, I already knew there was only one person still out there looking for me, and I hoped to God Evan Arden was under ten tons of snow and ice right now. It wasn’t the way I wanted to kill him, but it would still do the trick.
Arden’s being dead didn’t help me get myself out of where I was though, and I couldn’t win if I couldn’t escape. The loss of my goggles in the avalanche also meant the loss of the camera and GPS locator attached to them. None of the investors back at Franks’ camp would be able to see what I could see. If Arden was completely buried, they wouldn’t have any way of finding him either.
With images of Raine and Alex in my head, I started fighting through the snow.
Moving my arms around in the hole I had made near my head, I widened the pocket around me as well as the hole a few inches above my head. Part of the snowpack around me fell, dusting me with powder but also clearing the space in front of me. The hole let in more fresh air and gave me the ability to observe a little around me. There wasn’t much more than sky to see, but it was a hell of a lot better than snow. What worried me the most was the view in front of me.
I was on my back at about a fifteen-degree angle with snow and ice all around me, but as the snow in front of my face fell away, I found myself looking out over a ravine. I was perched about a third of the way up the side of the mountain. Right below me was a wide rock ledge jutting out from the nearest mountain ridge. If I did manage to dig my way out, I was going to have to scale all the way down the cliff in front of me.
Thinking about scaling the cliffs also made me think about my legs. I was starting to be able to feel them again, and what I felt wasn’t good at all. The left one was starting to throb like a bitch, and I was pretty sure it was either broken or at least badly cut from striking a rock. I wouldn’t know for sure until I dug myself out, so I started scooping out the snow around my chest and stomach. It was slow going, and I couldn’t turn my head to look around or anything, so I just focused on the ice and snow in front of me.
It felt like I was at it for hours though it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. The chill in my body had seeped into my core, and I was shivering, making it difficult to push the snow out of the way. There was a decent opening in front of me now, and I could see out a lot better. I shoved more of the snow behind me and away from my face, ending up with an icy pillow at the back of my head and added maneuverability for my neck.
Just as I thought I might get my shoulders free, I saw the slightest movement out of the corner of my eye. Near my right ear, I felt cold pressure pressed against my temple, followed by an audible click.
No.
Oh fuck no.
I couldn’t move enough to turn around and even see him, let alone try to fight him off. I could at least hope that the sound of the firing gun would be enough to trigger another avalanche and end his sorry ass as I died in the snow, but there was nothing I could do to stop him.
Evan Arden had a gun at my head, and I couldn’t do anything about it. My already cold body turned even colder.
Raine.
Fucking failed her.
Again.
Tensing my body in preparation for what was to come, I closed my eyes and tried to keep her face in my mind, but the business end of Arden’s Beretta was too much to ignore.
Fucker.
“Aren’t you supposed to give me some kind of ‘ha-ha-I-knew-I-was-going-to-win-the whole-time’ kind of speech first?” I asked with a snarl.
I heard him snort a little laugh behind me.
“Not really my style,” he said.
The barrel of the Beretta pressed a little harder against my skull, and without another word, Evan Arden pulled back on the trigger.
There was a click—louder than the one from the hammer—but that was it.
No gunshot. No continued avalanche. No bullet in my brain.
“Fuck,” Arden muttered.
I relaxed my muscles.
“Run out of ammo?” I asked. I chuckled softly because the fucking irony was perfect and because I figured it would piss him off.
“No,” he said in a deadpan voice. “Jammed. Probably from the ice or a rock or something.”
I felt my insides churn. Arden was way too good to be stopped by a jammed gun. He would have it working again in a few seconds, which wasn’t nearly enough time for me to get myself dug out enough to turn around, take the gun, and beat him to death with the blunt end. It was only a delay of the inevitable.
Raine.
I closed my eyes again and tried to be grateful that I had a little time to picture her face, think about the way she smelled, and remember how her skin felt in my hands. I hoped and prayed that Landon would just let her and Alex go, now that he had no use for them.
I took a long, shuddering breath and waited for the inevitable.
But it didn’t come.
“Motherfucker,” Arden mumbled, and I realized I’d been thinking about Raine for quite some time now, and I still wasn
’t dead.
“Having a problem?” I hoped my smirk was evident in my voice.
“A bit,” he said bluntly but didn’t elaborate.
I had the feeling talking wasn’t one of Evan Arden’s strong points.
“Something I can help you with?”
Arden took a deep breath, and when he exhaled, the water vapor wafted over me. I heard and felt him shift in the snow, and I realized just how close to me he was. We had both been stopped by the rock ledge directly below us. If I could get myself turned around enough to reach back behind me, I might be able to snap his neck.
Why isn’t he just beating me to death?
Before I could act on one thought or consider the other, he bashed me in the side of the head with the blunt end of his weapon.
“Ow! Motherfucker!”
The angle was bad, or he would have knocked me unconscious. He smacked me again, but I managed to move my head a bit to the side at the last moment. Gritting my teeth, I listened to the scraping sound as he moved his arm. Concentrating, I waited for the sound of the crunching snow to enter my ears, reached up behind my head, and grabbed for his wrist.
I ended up with two fingers and part of the gun, which I twisted backwards in an effort to break his fingers. My wrist scratched against a rock, but my thick clothing preventing it from scraping off my skin. He tightened up, prepared for the move, and I waited for him to grab me with his other hand, but he didn’t. He tried to pull away, but I wasn’t having any of that. As painful as it was, I held onto his fingers and slammed my hand at an awkward, backward angle against the rock behind my head.
Arden grunted, our hands parted, and the gun fell from his grip, cascading down the cliff and bouncing high in the air as it hit a rock. Spinning silently, it dropped out of sight, no longer a part of Arden’s arsenal.
“Fuck,” he muttered, completely monotone.
“Why didn’t you just fucking shoot me?” I snapped.
“Still jammed,” he replied.
“I thought you were a fucking gun expert,” I challenged. “You telling me you can’t unjam a gun?”
“Not with one hand,” he replied in the same tone.
One hand…did he lose a fucking arm in the avalanche? It was possible, and I hoped it was true. In this cold, bleeding to death would take quite some time, but having him end that way sounded pretty good to me.
I shifted my shoulders against the snow behind me, trying to create a little wiggle room. I was only mildly successful, but it gave me just enough space to be able to turn and see him.
Evan Arden was lying on his side, facing me, with one arm not just below him but completely buried under rocks and snow. Unlike my icy tomb, Arden’s was made of more rocks than ice, and he was definitely pinned down. He had one leg trapped as well.
I let out a short laugh.
“Well, you’re fucked,” I said simply. I went back to digging at the snow around my lower half. If I could get out, I could finish him off without a lot of resistance.
A half hour later, I was panting, sweating, freezing, and still completely unable to dig myself out. I dropped my head back into the snow behind me and watched my breath rise in puffs around my mask and over my head.
I turned my head to see Arden’s stoic face as he laid his head against a rock and stared out over the cliff. There were a lot of marks in the snow where he had obviously tried to free his arm, but the rocks and ice were too thick there. He’d need a fucking bulldozer or at least some help, which I wasn’t about to offer.
His gaze shifted to me.
“This is supposed to be my fucking retirement,” Arden mumbled.
“Ha!” I snorted. “Mine, too.”
“Oh yeah?” He shifted his head lower to rest it on the snow and sighed again. “What are you doing here, then?”
“Killing your ass is the plan,” I answered simply.
“I’ve heard that before,” he replied. “Everyone who ever said it is floating in the Chicago river.”
“Everyone I’ve ever said it to is six feet under.”
He moved his eyes to me and gave me a slight nod.
“So I’ve heard,” he said, “but you’ve been out of the games for a long time.”
I didn’t comment. My leg was starting to throb, and I was convinced it was broken. Conversation was distracting, pointless, and pissing me off. I needed to get myself out of this and kill the guy beside me. Even then, my chances of getting back down the mountainside with a busted up leg were growing slimmer by the minute.
I was cold. Really fucking cold.
I closed my eyes and tried to think of Raine, hoping thoughts of her waiting for me would give me a little more motivation and maybe even warm me a little. Thinking just made the back of my head throb, and I reached up to rub at it. There was a good knot back there, and touching it made me dizzy.
Fucking fabulous.
I set my head back against the snow bank to catch my breath. I needed energy, so I dug down a little by my side until I could reach the pocket with the tubes of nutritional goo. I sucked it down my throat and then ate a few nuts to get rid of the taste of the overly processed shit in a tube.
“Why did you agree to play?” Arden asked. “If you’re supposed to be retired, why come back now? This is all about the Chicago war, not Seattle.”
“It wasn’t exactly by choice,” I said with a sigh. I was too tired to yell at him, and wasting energy was a bad idea anyway. “Why are you here? You were never a tournament player before.”
“Nope, never was,” he confirmed.
“So, why?”
“Rinaldo asked me to do it,” he said simply.
“You always do what he asks?”
“Pretty much,” Arden confirmed.
“Why you?”
“I killed the guy who would have otherwise done it,” Arden replied as he stared up into the sky.
“You killed one of your boss’s men?”
He moved his eyes slowly to mine. He didn’t need to respond verbally.
“You got balls,” I muttered.
“He was an asshole,” Arden said.
“There are plenty of those around. You can’t kill them all.”
“Maybe.” He kept looking at me, and his cold eyes reminded me a bit of Landon’s. They were the wrong color—much too dark. In fact, they were pretty close to the shade of blue in my eyes. “So why are you here?”
I ignored him. The last thing I wanted to do was have him thinking that I had someone out there to make me vulnerable. Not that it mattered at this point—only one of us was going to get out of this alive.
If even that.
Closing my eyes, I tried to find my focus again. Getting free was paramount, but my body was exhausted and half frozen. I licked my lips, and it felt like the cold was freezing the saliva to my mouth. I needed more focus to stop myself from giving in to the temptation to just give up and lie back in the snow.
Incentive.
Struggling a little due to my mitten-covered hands, I reached under my parka and into my breast pocket to pull out the drawing Alex had made. I unfolded it carefully and stared at the figures in the picture. I traced the bottom of the picture where Alex had drawn his feet in blue tennis shoes and long, crazy laces and then brushed the edge of Raine’s face with my thumb.
When I glanced back over my shoulder, Arden was still looking at me. From his vantage point, he would have seen the picture clearly. For a moment, I felt a touch of panic because every one of the people watching over the closed circuit had just seen it, too.
But Arden’s head was free of his goggles as well. We had both lost the cameras used to broadcast back to Resolute. There was no beacon being transmitted from our location at all. They didn’t know where we were or what we were doing. Their last images would have been the avalanche taking us both down the side of the mountain.
We were fucked—completely and totally. It didn’t matter what he knew now.
“They got my girl,” I said quietly.
As the words came out of my mouth, something inside me flipped. It was over. There was no way I was going to be able to get out of this without help, and as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I was done. I couldn’t move. My leg was broken. This was going to be an all losers tournament.
Arden didn’t respond, and I looked over to him. He was staring blankly into the snow in front of his face with his jaw tight.
“You’re never going to see her again,” he said, “not the kid, either.”
My muscles tightened at his words. As much as I wanted to deny it, I knew he was right. I’d come to the exact same conclusion. I wasn’t about to admit it out loud, though.
“Fuck you,” I growled. “I’m getting out of this, fucking you over, and going home to them.”
“No, you aren’t,” Arden said. “You know it, too. You just figured it out.”
“How do you know that?” I snapped back at him.
He shrugged with his one free arm.
“Your posture just changed,” he said. “You slumped down, and your eyes dropped. There’s no way to dig yourself out, and we aren’t going to help each other, so there will be no winner for this tournament. You were looking at that crayon drawing when you realized you’d never see her or your kid again.”
I couldn’t hide the shock I felt.
“Wha…?”
He moved his shoulder up and down again.
“I’m pretty perceptive,” he said numbly.
I mentally gathered myself together.
“Well, it’s bullshit,” I said, trying to convince myself of the words. “I’m just giving myself a little break before I haul my ass out of this snow bank, beat you to death, and head back home. All I have to do is make it down that mountainside, and then I’m done for good.”
“You’ll fight again,” Arden said. “Well, you will if you ever get out of this, which you won’t. If you did, this still wouldn’t be your last tournament.”
“Fuck you,” I said with a snarl. “I don’t quit in the middle of a fight. This is my last tournament, and it ends in victory just like my first fight and every one of them in between.”
“It never ends,” Arden said. “Franks won’t let you go any more than Rinaldo will let me go. Once they got you, they got you. You never get away from them completely, even when they tell you that you can.”