He could only pray she was alive when they finally found her.
Meg’s left leg went suddenly numb and buckled, throwing her full-length into the snow. The fall wasn’t bad — at this point, the forest floor was covered with an eighteen-inch cushion of powder. But the true meaning of what was happening to her could not be denied.
My body is shutting down, she thought clinically, as if she were talking about a patient in the hospital. It was happening part by part, system by system, as cold and fatigue whittled away at her. Her fingers were like icicles. Her ears hurt. Even the shivering itself was exhausting. It made her breathing shallow and irregular. Most alarming of all, there were times where it felt like she was asleep on her feet.
Tiger was right, she reflected grudgingly. I’ll never survive out here on my own.
She could picture it: A spill just like this one, and she might be too bone-weary to get up. In these conditions, nothing could be more lethal than relaxing. Movement was the only thing providing what little warmth she had.
She scrambled upright and stood for a moment, trying to massage some life into her left leg. Scariest of all was how easy it would have been to fall asleep down there. At the rate it was snowing, she would have been buried in an hour.
She limped along, held together by sheer stubbornness. She was moving, but toward what? She had long since given up on the idea of getting anywhere in this weather.
She shook herself like a wet dog in an attempt to clear her foggy thoughts. She was walking to stay alive, and staying alive to keep walking. That didn’t make sense, did it?
Confusion — she had read somewhere that it was one of the signs of hypothermia. She was in real trouble here. Stopping was not an option. But in a corner of her mind, she understood that she couldn’t keep going forever.
It might have been the zero visibility, or maybe the fact that her eyes were partly shut. Whatever the reason, she never saw the low rock ledge until her jaw banged into it. She wasn’t going very fast, but in her depleted state, the blow was like being hit in the face with a cannonball. She dropped where she stood and lay there in a heap, knowing that something major had changed.
I can’t get up!
She could not seem to pull herself to one knee. Her mind was issuing the right commands, but her body wasn’t responding.
Her first instinct was anger. This was a faulty equipment problem.
Give it a minute. Shut down. Reboot …
She waited, counting off thirty seconds. Any longer than that would have put her life in danger. Then she managed to get to all fours but could not progress further.
Unbelievable! She had survived a kidnapping — only to freeze to death on the side of a mountain!
Somehow, admitting this to herself — that this was very likely the end — brought out the iron will that was at the core of her character. She began to crawl, her knees plowing through deep snow, moving by inches, but moving. It was the ultimate meaningless gesture — a snail trying to cross a vast continent. There was no hope left, only effort. She struggled purely out of a mule-headed refusal to give up, even though the final result was no longer in doubt.
Her feelings were jumbled but centered on a single theme: She would never see her family again. Mom and Dad suffering in prison had turned out to be merely a warm-up for greater sorrows to come. The Falconers had fought hard to be together, but no amount of fighting could overcome death.
Suddenly, she stopped crawling, vaguely aware that something was different. Wrong.
It’s not snowing anymore!
Had the storm ended? In the utter blackness, she probed around with her hands. The amazing thing was not what she found, but what she didn’t.
Where’s the snow? A blizzard can stop, but a foot and a half of powder doesn’t disappear in the blink of an eye.
She reached up to feel for falling snow and hit solid rock. The ledge! The one she’d stumbled into and knocked herself silly. Somehow, she must have clambered under it! The storm was still howling, but she was sheltered.
She crept forward, exploring with her fingers. Dead leaves crackled.
They’re dry! Cold but dry!
Had she blundered into a cave? She bumped up against a barrier. No, it seemed to be a natural stone alcove, protected by an overhanging roof. And because of the direction of the wind, the storm wasn’t blowing in.
She slithered to the deepest corner of the niche and backed herself against the frigid rock. She began to gather armloads of the dry leaves, hoping to cover herself for warmth. The leaves and twigs were so frigid that they merely added to her miseries. Still, her spot was a whole lot more comfortable than battling the weather in the open.
She came to a decision. She would wait out the blizzard in here, massaging herself to keep warm. If she could stay awake, stay active, she had a chance.
Her jeans were frozen solid. With her fingernails, she tried to break off some of the ice to soften the fabric. That was when she found the nail file in her pocket, which aided in her self-defrosting.
The idea came from there. She could use the file to write with, to scratch a few words into the stone. If she didn’t make it, at least Mom and Dad and Aiden would know she’d been thinking about them.
The message would have to be short. She wasn’t going to compose The Lord of the Rings with a nail file on a rock in the dark. She finally decided on: mom, dad, aiden—LOVE YOU ALWAYS, MEG.
She reached up to scrape the first letter into the alcove — M for MOM. The stroke almost paralyzed her with shock.
The friction of file against stone produced a shower of sparks.
It had been so many hours since she’d been exposed to light that the orange glow from the sparks was almost blinding.
She tried again, rubbing the flat of the file against the wall. More sparks, brighter this time.
Her mind made the leap. Sparks meant fire; fire meant heat; heat meant survival.
But what can I use for fuel? There’s no dry wood around here!
She shifted, and her knee crunched in the bed of leaves. Of course! The leaves! They wouldn’t burn for long, but they’d definitely burn. Any fire was better than no fire at all.
Operating by touch alone, she gathered together a pile of leaves at the base of the wall. Then she went to work with the file, raining down a cascade of sparks. All seemed to wink out before they found the kindling.
With a frown of exasperation, she began to scrape at a lower spot, closer to the pile. This area, however, must have been a different kind of rock. It produced only faint sparks, which did not catch.
At last, she returned to the original place on the wall. This time, though, she took a handful of the leaves and held them directly under the falling sparks. The glowing orange points landed delicately.
She wasn’t sure if it came from instinct or Mac Mulvey — she began to blow on the smoldering leaves, not from above, but from below, creating a draft. The points glowed brighter and turned into tiny flames, dancing in her palm and growing. When she dropped the burning kindling into the larger pile, it was a fire — a real one, sizzling a little in the cold and beginning to crackle.
The warmth of it on her hands, her entire body, created a woozy joy that was nothing short of heaven.
With the heat came light, and a real view of her surroundings. She was tucked under a stone ledge about four feet off the ground. Through the opening, she could see the storm still raging outside. In alarm, she noted how quickly the leaves were turning to ash. In no time, the fire would be out. Frantically, she scoured her alcove, feeding every leaf and twig into the blaze. Still, she could tell she’d only bought herself a few minutes.
Now that she had heat, the notion of losing it was unthinkable. She even considered burning some of her clothes — anything to keep herself bathed in this beautiful warmth.
Don’t be crazy! If you burn your clothes, you’ll just freeze twice as fast when the fire’s gone.
Her eyes scanned the pool of light outsid
e her shelter. Wood! Lots of it. Dead branches protruded from the drifting snow. They were wet, but the flames would dry them. Then they would burn for a long time.
Still crawling, she ventured to the edge of her niche and began to gather in the plentiful fuel supply. The thickest branches were the best because the wetness of the snow could not have penetrated down to the core.
She selected two and placed them carefully on the blazing leaves. The hiss frightened her. Thick dense smoke filled the alcove and poured out into the night. The flames died down to almost nothing.
“Don’t go out! Don’t go out!” she begged aloud. Flat on her stomach, she blew gently, praying that she had not extinguished her own fire. Slowly, the hissing died away and the smoke eased. Fingers of flame began to lick around the logs, engulfing them.
“Yes!” It was like one of her father’s fires those winter Sundays — a monumental hassle to build, yet a pleasure to enjoy.
Heat surrounded her, feeding strength into her weakened body. With the sense of well-being came an overpowering drowsiness. She tried to wrestle it away and went so far as to slap her own face. But even as she battled, she knew that nothing could have kept her awake at that moment.
… no sleep … too dangerous …
She could not complete the thought before slumber claimed her.
The faint tracks had long since disappeared, but Harris and Aiden forged on through the blizzard. They picked a squiggly course among the trees, following what they hoped was the line the footsteps had been taking. With a whiteout all around, their only navigation aid was the built-in compass on the snowmobile. That and their desire not to wrap their rented craft around an evergreen, or roll it down the mountain.
The cold was taking its toll on Aiden, but not half as much as the infernal vibration of the machine. There were people, he knew, who rode these things for fun. He couldn’t imagine it. And being hemmed in on all sides by an impenetrable curtain of gale-driven snow didn’t make the ride any more pleasant.
As bad as it was for Aiden, it had to be worse for Harris. He sat tall in the saddle, with the full force of the storm battering him head-on, frosting his goggles white. He was tough, this man from the FBI. Never once had he suggested that they turn back.
The thud jolted the Ski-Doo, tipping Aiden off into the snow. When he looked up, wood was flying in all directions, raining down on him. A piece struck his cheek, and he saw stars.
What happened? Did we hit a tree?
No. This was cut wood — firewood. He heard Harris curse, and then the motor went dead.
“Aiden, are you okay? Where are you?”
Aiden struggled to his feet. Although the agent was close by, the only thing visible was his bobbing flashlight beam.
“I think we hit a woodpile,” Aiden explained.
“You don’t chop wood without a fireplace to burn it in,” Harris agreed. “There must be a house here somewhere.”
A house! Did that mean Meg might be inside? Was the end of this nightmare just yards away?
They wandered for a few minutes before a dark A-frame structure loomed out of the white. A log cabin, banked in snow.
Harris pulled Aiden beside him and intoned, “You don’t go in there until I call you, got that?”
Aiden nodded silently.
From a zippered pocket, Harris took a small snub-nosed pistol. Holding it close to his chest, he reached forward and tried the door. It was unlocked. Silently, he swung it wide and stepped inside, ducking his head under the low frame.
Disobeying orders, Aiden followed a few steps behind him. If there was a chance Meg was in this house, he didn’t want to be one second late in setting her free.
The cabin was tiny, and cold enough that Aiden could see his breath. A single candle burned on a table by a sofa. Stretched out there, wrapped in many blankets, lay a young man, fast asleep.
Scowling at Aiden, Harris motioned for him to be silent and then did a quick check of the small kitchen and lone bedroom. Satisfied that the sleeper was the cabin’s sole occupant, he returned to the couch and snatched off the blankets.
“Okay, pal, rise and shine.”
The young man was groggy. “Did you find her?” he mumbled. “Is she all right?”
There could be no doubt who he was talking about.
Harris grabbed the man by his collar and slammed him against the wall
“Where’s Meg Falconer?”
* * *
The kidnapper Meg called Mickey came to sudden and total awareness. One thing was obvious: The two ski-suited intruders were not his missing accomplices.
“Who are you?”
“FBI!” Harris barked, pressing him harder against the planks. “Now where’s the girl?”
The cornered kidnapper did the last thing Aiden expected. He burst into tears. “I — I helped her escape! I didn’t know there was going to be a storm!”
It confirmed Aiden’s worst fears. “I knew it! She’s out there! She’s lost in the blizzard!”
But the investigator in Harris was working full-tilt. “What do you mean you helped her escape?” As he spoke, he did a one-handed pat-down of his prisoner, coming up with a battered wallet. “What’s your part in this” — Reading from the driver’s license — “Sean Michael Antonino?”
Mickey — Sean — looked miserable. “I did it! I mean, I was with them when they grabbed her. But they lied! They said they were doing it for the money and they’d never hurt her — ”
Harris’s grip tightened convulsively. “What did they do to her?”
“Nothing!” Mickey said quickly. “But they were going to. That’s why I helped her get away.” In the flickering light of the candle, he recognized Harris’s teen companion. “You’re her brother — I’m sorry, man! It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way! I only wanted the money to get a lawyer for my kid brother.”
Harris shoved Mickey roughly onto the sofa. “Now you’re going to need two lawyers! You’d better tell me everything about this kidnapping and the people who are in it with you!”
Mickey shrugged unhappily. The truth was he knew next to nothing about Spidey and Tiger, his accomplices. “They call themselves Joe and Marcelle — I’m not sure if those are real names. That was the whole plan. Nobody has much information, so we can’t give the others up when it’s over.”
“That’s not good enough,” Harris snarled. “I want every detail from the beginning! I’ve had a rough night. And now’s your last chance to convince me that yours shouldn’t get even rougher!” He leaned in menacingly.
Aiden spoke up. “Agent Harris, cut it out! Can’t you see he’s the one who helped her?”
Harris scowled. “She wouldn’t have needed help if it wasn’t for him.”
“Yeah, then. But he’s on our side now.”
The agent was exasperated. “I’m so lucky to have you here to tell me how to do my job! Yeah, he’s on our side. They always switch sides when they’re getting arrested! Unless you can read his mind — ”
Aiden was adamant. “What was the first thing he said when he was still half asleep? ‘Is she all right?’ He cares about Meg.”
“Oh, that’s good enough for me!” Harris exclaimed sarcastically. But he backed off and returned the pistol to his zipper pocket. “All right, Sean. You said you let Meg escape because the other two were going to hurt her. What made you think that?”
“I looked on Joe’s laptop,” Mickey tried to explain. “He visits all those websites run by people who hate the Falconers — who think they’re guilty and should be executed. It’s really nasty stuff.”
Harris looked pained. “I’ve seen it.” He was the agent who had made the case against Aiden and Meg’s parents. The so-called Falconer-haters, who would not accept the couple’s innocence, were his fault. It was something he could never take back, the greatest mistake of his career.
Mickey went on. “And I thought, what if he’s planning to kill her in order to take revenge on her parents? I had to get her away from hi
m.” His face fell. “But then it started snowing.” He seemed about to cry again.
“And the others,” Harris prompted. “They’re out looking for her?”
The twenty-year-old nodded. “But that was hours ago. Anything could have happened in a storm like this. They could be dead, too!” His horrified eyes flew to Aiden. “Not that she’s dead — ”
Aiden clenched his teeth and tried to look stoic. The possibility of Meg dying of exposure had occurred to him long before the words had passed Mickey’s lips.
“Show me the computer,” ordered Harris.
“The computer?” Aiden echoed. “Meg’s out there in the storm! You’re not going to find her on MapQuest!”
“The ransom demands were sent to the Blog Hog website by e-mail,” the agent reasoned. “If this is the computer they came from, we need to check it out.”
“Marcelle knows a guy who’s an Internet expert,” Mickey supplied. “He can bounce a message all over the world, make it impossible to trace.”
“You can worry about that later!” Aiden insisted frantically. “The computer can wait; Meg can’t!”
“Listen to me,” Harris said earnestly. “I’m going to call the Forest Service to blanket these mountains with searchers. But in this weather, they’re not going to do anything until daylight.”
“But that could be hours!” Aiden protested.
“Just two. Look, I’m not trying to scare you, but there’s something we have to face up to. If your sister’s still alive, it’s because she found shelter out there. A couple of hours won’t make any difference if she’s out of the storm. If not — ”
There was no need for him to complete the sentence.
Daylight.
The sight of it was such a shock to Meg that she tried to scramble to her feet, only to whack her head on the low rock ceiling of the alcove.
“Ow!”
Reeling, she barely noticed the pain as the results of her self-inventory raced to her brain.