“What about your ankle?” Nancy asked.
“It’ll hold me. If you’re going, I’m going.”
“Okay. Bess and Gunther, you stay here,” Nancy said. The last thing she needed was Gunther out at Lookout Ledge with Luke in the darkness. “Liz,” she continued, “we’ll need directions to the ledge.”
“No problem,” Liz said.
A few minutes later, Ned and Nancy were pulling on their heavy outdoor clothing. Once outside, they stepped into cross-country skis. Nancy stood for a moment, looking out into the dark forest. How still the night seemed. Every sound was strangely muffled by the falling snow.
Nancy shuddered. Somewhere in the silent night a killer lurked.
Ned reached out and squeezed Nancy’s hand.
“I’m so glad you came!” she whispered.
“I would never have let you go out on this one alone,” Ned said. He kissed her softly, and they started off toward the ledge, searching the hillsides for some sign of George or Luke.
But when Nancy and Ned reached the ledge, there was no sign of them. “Where are they?” Nancy asked anxiously. She glanced at her watch. “It’s ten after nine.”
“Maybe they’ve already met and have gone off together,” suggested Ned.
“Could be,” Nancy replied. “With this snow coming down, there’s no way to tell whether there were tracks here ten minutes ago. Or else—” Nancy’s words were cut off by a scream. “It’s George!” she cried.
Nancy and Ned stood silently, listening. It was hard to tell which direction the scream had come from. The snow muffled and distorted all sounds.
Ned gripped Nancy’s arm. “I could swear it came from right over there, through that clump of trees,” he whispered.
Then it came again, a loud, desperate scream, and the sounds of a struggle.
Nancy pushed off, skiing with all her strength and speed. Ned was right behind her. They burst into a clearing and jerked to a stop, horror-struck.
On a narrow ledge, two figures were locked in a death struggle. George had been forced into a kneeling position on the cliff edge. Her back was arched and her hands scrabbled desperately to pull a masked figure’s hands from around her throat. But that blue-and-white ski mask was distinctive—it was Luke Ericsen’s!
Chapter
Fifteen
GEORGE STRUGGLED WITH all her might, but the attacker—Luke?—was too strong. Luckily, at that moment, Ned shot forward. He grabbed Luke’s arms from behind, wrestling him backward. At the same time, Nancy flung herself across George’s legs and hung on. They were so near the edge of the cliff that one false move could send them over.
In the split second that Luke was thrown off-guard, George’s hands grabbed his wrists and jerked them up and out. His hold broke and George fell backward, saved from the cliff edge only by Nancy’s grip.
Ned battled Luke, throwing a punch into his masked face that rocked him back on his skis. Luke snatched up his ski pole and sent it whistling toward Ned’s head, but Ned blocked it, moving in for another punch. Suddenly, Luke kicked out viciously, his ski slamming into Ned’s injured ankle. As Ned fell, he tried to tackle Luke.
Nancy looked up just in time to see Luke deftly sidestep Ned, then sweep up his other ski pole. Pushing off with his right leg, then his left, he vanished from sight around a curve in the path.
For a moment everyone remained frozen with shock. Then Ned scrambled to his feet and started after Luke.
“Not now!” Nancy shouted. “We can get him later!” George needed them more. She was gasping for breath and sobbing as Nancy held her in a warm hug. There were bruises across her throat, and her hat and scarf were gone, pulled off in the struggle. And Luke never even lost his ski mask, Nancy thought with anger.
“Don’t try to talk,” she murmured as George struggled to make herself understood. “Does anything feel as if it’s been torn or broken?” George shook her head. Clearly she was hurt, but it didn’t seem as if anything serious was wrong.
“What happened?” Ned asked.
“I don’t know,” George whispered.
Nancy and Ned exchanged glances. They had never seen George so shaken before. It was going to be a while before she could begin to explain anything. “It’s all right . . . it’s all right,” Nancy soothed her. “You’re safe now.” She only hoped she sounded more convinced of that than she felt. They had scared Luke off, but there was no knowing what he would do next.
What mattered was getting George back to the lodge. “Can you walk?” Ned asked.
George nodded and started to pull herself to a standing position. Then her eyes, staring past the others, grew wide with fear. Nancy and Ned turned in the direction of her gaze.
A figure on skis had come soundlessly around the curve—a figure in a too familiar red-and-blue ski jacket and a ski mask rolled up into a cap. Luke had come back. He stopped short, looking at them blankly.
“What’s going on?” Luke’s face changed as George turned away from him, and he caught sight of her bruised neck. “George, are you hurt?” He started forward. George shrank away with a cry and Ned shot forward to fend Luke off.
“That’s a strange question,” Nancy said, just barely controlling her fury.
Luke’s eyes snapped from one figure to another. “What’s happened? George, why didn’t you show up at the hotel?”
Nancy stared at Luke, “What do you mean, at the hotel? You told her to meet you at Lookout Ledge. We all heard you!”
“Yes, but when I was at the h-hotel t-trying to borrow a shortwave radio,” Luke stammered, “the clerk said she had a message for me. She said George Fayne had called to say I should meet her at the hotel.”
He turned to George. “I waited and waited. Finally I got worried and came looking for you. Now, will somebody please tell me what’s happened?”
“You creep!” Ned burst out. “You know what happened. You just tried to strangle George and throw her over the ledge!”
Luke’s jaw dropped. “How can you say that?” he cried. “I wasn’t here! It wasn’t me! And I swear, I’ll kill whoever tried to hurt you!”
He reached out and touched her gently. George jerked away, trembling violently.
Nancy studied Luke’s strained face. If Luke was acting, he was doing it very well. She turned to George. “Did you ever see your attacker’s face? Was he wearing the ski mask the whole time?”
George shivered. “I—can’t remember.”
“George, it wasn’t me!” Luke cried. He gave her an aching look. She didn’t answer, and he turned to Nancy. “Is she hurt? We’ve got to get her back to the lodge.”
“We’ll take care of that,” Ned said tightly. “You get lost.”
“Tell me one thing. The attacker—which way did he go?” Ned jerked his head down the trail. Luke gave George one last troubled glance and then, without a word, skied off in the direction Ned had indicated.
Nancy watched him, noticing again that he skied with most of his weight on his good left leg, dragging his right one a bit. Suddenly, it hit her. How could this be the same man who’d hurried away moments before? With his injured right leg, Luke would never have been able to push off the way the other had!
But who else could it have been? The mysterious man had worn the same mask and the same jacket as Luke. Nancy didn’t know the answer to her question, but she knew that she’d have to wait until later to figure it out. They had to get George back to the lodge.
“George, let’s go home,” Nancy said gently.
Back at the lodge, Nancy and Bess helped George into bed. Then Nancy locked the door and said, kindly but firmly, “Okay, George, now talk. You know you need to, and it’s important.”
“I . . . I just don’t know what to say!” Tears welled in George’s eyes. “I met Luke where we were supposed to. He didn’t say anything, just motioned for me to follow him. It was like . . . like he wanted to show me someplace really special. I was really happy, you know? And then—then we got to that ledge??
?” She broke off, sobbing.
“What did he do?” Nancy asked calmly.
“He just came after me, and grabbed me.”
“Like somebody straight out of one of those cheap horror movies!” Bess exclaimed. “Why on earth would Luke do that to George?”
“It wasn’t Luke. I could tell from the way he skied,” Nancy said abruptly, searching George’s face for a reaction. Even though she thought Luke had betrayed her, George was still holding back information.
Nancy took hold of George’s hands. “It wasn’t Luke,” she repeated more gently. “Or should I say, it wasn’t Jon Berntsen?”
George gasped. “How long have you known?”
“Just since this morning.”
George drew in a ragged breath. “And I thought I was being so smart, hiding the Sports Illustrated that told about the scandal. I guess Liz never read them, or she’d have known, too.”
Maybe she did read them, Nancy thought.
“Will somebody,” Bess asked plaintively, “please tell me what’s going on? Who’s Jon Berntsen?”
Nancy explained the scandal to her. Bess’s eyes grew very dark. “Then Luke is a killer!”
“No, he’s not!” George cried passionately. She gripped Nancy’s hands. “Luke didn’t kill Dieter Mueller! I know he didn’t! No one has treated him fairly.”
“George, has Luke admitted to you that he’s Berntsen?” Nancy asked.
George nodded. “But I’d already guessed. His face was familiar—and then when I saw his skiing style, I knew for sure.”
“Does he say he was responsible for Dieter Mueller’s death?” Nancy probed.
“He’s sure he wasn’t. At least, he says he’s sure. But he can’t remember anything that happened right before and right after the race.”
Nancy could see the pain and exhaustion in George’s eyes. “Don’t think about it now. Things will look better in the morning,” she said soothingly.
She sat holding her friend’s hand until George fell asleep. When her breathing had settled into a steady rhythm, Nancy slipped away from the bed.
All she wanted was a nice, long shower to wash the day’s terrible events away.
But Bess had other things on her mind. “Nancy, I’ve got to talk to you,” she whispered urgently.
Nancy realized that Bess had looked troubled ever since she and Ned had brought George back.
“It’s about Gunther,” Bess said shakily. “I—I don’t know how to say this, and I didn’t want to say anything in front of George because she’s so upset, but . . . well, it’s just that as soon as you and Ned went out to find George, Gunther left, too. He didn’t say where he was going, but I saw him putting on his cross-country skis.”
Nancy gasped. “If he skied really fast—and we know he can—then he could have gotten to George before we did and . . .”
Bess let out a little cry. “Nancy, what are we going to do?”
Nancy wrapped her arms around Bess. “We can’t let on that we know,” she told her, “not until we have proof that we can take to the police—and until we’re no longer stranded with him!”
“I don’t think I can do that,” Bess said in a small voice.
“You have to,” Nancy told her earnestly, “no matter what it takes. Now I’m going to tell Liz and Ned what we know about Luke. Then I hope we can sleep. We’re going to need a lot of rest if we’re going to make it through tomorrow alive!”
By morning, conditions at the lodge had worsened. The girls awoke to bitter cold. When they entered the lounge, they found Ned and Gunther helping Liz cook breakfast in the fireplace.
“Bad news,” she announced. “The generator’s failed—and it looks like someone may have tampered with it. We’ve got no lights, no stove, no heat, and no running water. Luke’s already skiing to the Overlook to get help.”
Suddenly there was a startlingly loud pounding at the door. “That can’t be Luke back already,” Liz said as she went to open it.
Michael stamped in, bundled up against the storm. “I skied over from my hotel to see how you’re doing. When I saw that there weren’t any lights on, I got worried!”
“Somebody sabotaged the generator,” Ned said grimly.
Michael stared at him. “You’re kidding!” Then he added, “You realize it must have been Luke who did it.”
Suddenly Nancy had an idea. “You should see the stories I found at the library about the last Winter Olympics trials!” she said. “They were all about Jon Berntsen and Dieter Mueller.”
“Dieter Mueller!” Gunther exclaimed. “What does he have to do with all this?”
“Did you know him?” Nancy demanded.
Gunther nodded. “We were on the same junior racing team when we were quite young. What happened to him was tragic—but, of course, he shouldn’t have taken a wild dare like that in the first place. I don’t know Jon Berntsen, though.”
“Do you know either of them?” Nancy continued, turning to Michael.
Michael’s eyes were guarded and he looked at Nancy strangely. “You know . . .”
Then George exploded into a torrent of words. “Oh, we know all right! You know who he is! You’ve been baiting him, poisoning people’s minds, implying horrible things. . . . Luke wouldn’t be in the mess he’s in right now if it weren’t for you!”
But Liz cut her off. She was listening to something outside the window. “That’s funny,” she said, “I hear thunder on the mountain. That usually doesn’t happen during a snowstorm.”
A moment later, the sound came again. The lodge shook with vibrations, and coffee cup fell off the table. “That’s not thunder!” Liz exclaimed.
Everyone threw on ski jackets and hurried outside. About a mile down the road, a cascade of snow was tumbling down the mountainside, gathering a frightening amount of force with each second.
George gasped, ashen-faced. “An avalanche! And it’s right on the trail Luke’s taken!”
Chapter
Sixteen
SNOW ROLLED DOWN the mountain as the lodge shook from the rumbling of the avalanche. The whole world appeared to be tumbling down the slope.
George grabbed frantically for her jacket and cross-country skis, and Nancy, Ned, Liz, and Gunther did likewise. “If Luke’s trapped, we have to get to him as fast as we can,” Liz said. “You can breathe for only so long under six feet of snow.”
She looked at Bess. “You don’t ski well enough, so just take care of things back here.” Her face was serious. “We’d better be careful. There’s no way of knowing how much more snow will fall. We could get trapped ourselves.”
“That’s one risk we’ll just have to take!” George said fiercely.
Then Michael spoke up quietly. “Maybe we shouldn’t rush out there like this.” He looked around at the others’ stunned faces. “Are you sure you want to risk your lives to save a murderer who’s already done his best to kill again?”
“I’m sure!” George cried. “And he’s not a killer!”
“Whether he is or not, we can’t abandon him under an avalanche. Now, let’s get going!” Nancy said, and grabbed her ski poles and started after Liz.
“Be careful!” Bess called.
Nancy, Ned, Liz, Michael, and Gunther fought their way forward, the snow stinging their faces. “Are you sure Luke would have gone this way?” Nancy shouted to Liz.
“Absolutely! It’s the fastest trail.”
They searched for some sign of Luke, but the snow had already covered any tracks. Tears were freezing on George’s face. Ned forged doggedly along beside Nancy. If his ankle hurt, he was not letting it hold him back.
Just when it seemed as if they were going to fight through the storm forever, Liz skied around a curve, and Nancy heard her cry out.
They shot ahead to find her staring at an immense pile of snow—the avalanche. “Spread out!” Liz ordered, “and keep your eyes peeled!”
Silently, they obeyed, although the sky was almost as dark as it was at twilight. Michael, i
gnoring Liz’s instructions, skied ahead and then doubled back.
“I’ve been all the way to the other side of the avalanche, and I didn’t see a thing. We might as well give up. I think I heard more rumbling.”
But at that moment, George let out a yelp. She tore past Michael and fell to the ground, clawing frantically at the snow. As Nancy rushed to join her, she saw the tip of a ski protruding from the snow. “That must be him!” she cried, dropping down at George’s side.
Feverishly, they all dug around the ski until Luke’s leg appeared, then his torso, and then his whole body. He was icy cold, and a dark trickle of frozen blood came from his nose. George ripped Luke’s ski jacket open and pressed her ear against his chest. “He’s breathing. Barely,” she said hoarsely. “We have to get him back to the lodge, and fast!”
The trip back was ominously slow as they took turns supporting Luke’s limp weight on a makeshift stretcher made of coats and ski poles. With what felt like a hundred stops and starts, they reached Webb Cove Lodge.
Bess had the fire roaring. They carried Luke in and laid him on a couch in front of it. George stayed by his side, chafing his hands. “All we can do is keep him warm,” she finally said, a tremor in her voice. She swallowed hard and hid her face in her hands.
The others had seen Luke’s twisted leg and the blood on his face, and knew what she wasn’t saying. He could have broken bones, or worse.
“We can’t just sit here and wait!” Nancy said fiercely. She jumped up. “I’m going for help.”
“Not alone!” Ned said immediately.
“Two people should go,” Michael suggested. “George should stay here with Luke. So how about you and me, Nancy?”
“Wait,” Ned and Gunther both said at once. “I should go, too,” Ned insisted.
“Not with your ankle,” Nancy told him.
“What about me?” Gunther said.
Nancy thought for a moment. On the one hand, it might be better to get Gunther as far away from Luke as possible. On the other hand, Gunther didn’t know the area as well as Michael. If he got them lost, Luke was as good as dead.