The Eligible Suspect (5 page)

He looked for a way to escape. The trees where they had taken shelter weren’t thick. Just on the other side, another clearing offered a possibility. There were two drawbacks, however. One, the trees were spaced wide enough to offer little protection, and two, the clearing over there was an avalanche chute. But if they could reach it and ski away...

Spotting something that would serve as good cover, he looked toward Savanna and whispered harshly, “When I start shooting, ski for that boulder.”

She jerked her head, spotting the boulder, and then nodded at him.

Korbin stuck his poles into the snow and eased the pistol beside the trunk. Aiming in the direction where he’d seen the hat, he fired and then sprang into motion after Savanna started skiing. He skied hard to the next tree, where he fired again. His bullet hit a fallen tree trunk where the hat bobbed down and out of view. Korbin skied the rest of the way to the boulder, joining Savanna there. When Damen kept firing, Korbin fired back until the gun clicked. No more bullets.

As soon as he tossed the weapon aside, a distinct rumble began high up on the mountain.

“Avalanche,” Savanna murmured, fear giving her voice a tremor.

“Get away from the chute.” Korbin looked over the boulder. He didn’t see the hat anymore. Damen had gone to take cover, probably hoping they’d die in the avalanche. Which they very well could. The trees weren’t thick here. It was a small cluster that divided chute. They were right in the middle of the avalanche path.

“Get back into the trees!” he shouted. It was the best chance they had.

In an instant, the rumble was upon them. Korbin was flung forward and bashed into a tree. A white cloud engulfed him and he heard Savanna scream. He wrapped his arms around the trunk and held on. Snow ripped down the mountain, splintering trees and crashing with a deafening roar.

Seconds later it was over. The avalanche reached the valley and went silent. Korbin looked for Savanna...and didn’t see her.

Chapter 4

S
he screamed long and loudly. The snow engulfed her. She closed her eyes and mouth to keep it from packing there. Both her skis ripped off her feet, twisting one of her knees painfully. She tried to remember everything she learned about what to do if caught in an avalanche.

Keep her head in the uphill direction. Wait until the momentum slowed. Swim for the surface while the snow was still mobile. Create a breathing space.

Even if she were buried as little as one foot, her chances were slim for survival. If she were buried for more than thirty minutes her chances grew lethal. Only one in four people lived through an avalanche if they were buried in one at all. If the asphyxiation didn’t kill her, the cold would.

She wasn’t ready to die...

Each second felt like an eternity. The snow began to slow. She tried to swim upward. When the snow began to slow and stop, she moved her hand up to her mouth to create that life-saving breathing space. Her gloved hand touched her lower lip. She wiggled her fingers. Good. A small pocket of air. Now if Korbin could find her...

The snow hardened like cement around her body. She tried not to panic.

* * *

Korbin hissed a curse.

Moving swiftly, he threw off his backpack and retrieved a shovel and collapsible probe pole. With the side of his ski he kicked the backpack across the snow, careful not to let it slide downhill, wanting to mark the area where he’d last seen Savanna. It would provide a reference point if he needed it during his search. Immediately he turned his transceiver to receiving mode; it would be the only hope he had of saving Savanna’s life.

Something he couldn’t do for his wife. Something he couldn’t do for Collette. Dead women were stacking up in his life.

Well, he’d be damned if he’d let another one down.

The transceiver Savanna wore would still be set to send a signal and his would pick it up when he was close to her. He heard only static now, but he pushed himself into motion and skied down toward the toe of the avalanche. Once there, he removed his skis. Most of the time the bodies were found at the end of the slide. Korbin tried to control his morbid thoughts.

The bodies
.

Hearing a snowmobile, he spotted it emerging from the trees. He crouched behind a mound of clumpy snow until the sound grew fainter. Then he stood and resumed his task while he kept watch for the snowmobile. Had Damen seen Savanna being swept away?

Damen was determined to kill him, and now probably Savanna, too. And Korbin had a good idea why. He must have seen the email he’d left open for police at Collette’s home. Police hadn’t found it because Damen had gotten there first. He’d seen what Korbin had uncovered.

Seeing and hearing no sign of Damen, he put all of his attention into finding Savanna. Maybe Damen had assumed Korbin had suffered the same fate. Maybe he’d run out of ammunition.

Using a grid pattern, Korbin began to search for a signal from his transceiver. The avalanche was moderately sized, with the crown of the slide stretching across the topography at the base of the slope. In seconds he picked up a signal and stopped every few paces in order to determine from which orientation it was the strongest. When the signal faded, he knew he had passed her. He marked a line in the snow. Then he headed back in the same direction he’d come until the signal faded again. He marked another line in the snow.

Walking to the midpoint of his imaginary bracket, he oriented himself toward the strongest signal and adjusted the sensitivity of his receiver, turning it down to catch differences in strength more efficiently. He walked at a right angle to his original line until the signal began to grow weak, repeating the same method as before. When he was at the midpoint of his second imaginary bracket and found the strongest signal for the second time, he again walked at a right angle.

Finally, he pinpointed the area where he thought Savanna was buried. He checked his watch. It had been more than ten minutes since she had fallen with the slide. With shaking hands, he extended his collapsible probe pole and began sticking it into the snow. Five more minutes passed before he hit something. He estimated her depth and began to dig. Careful not to force it into the snow so hard that it would harm her if he struck her, he worked diligently.

All the while, haunting images of Niya suffocated him. Her bloodied body. Her cold lips as he breathed air into her lifelessness. Pumping her chest, refusing to let her go.

The shovel revealed clothing. He threw the shovel aside and dropped to his knees to dig with his hands and find her face. His heart raced and his breathing filled the air in great billowing puffs. He exposed her chest and dug higher. Collar. Hair.

Face!

“Savanna!”

She broke through the last layer of snow, gasping for air and looking dazed, reaching for him. A new thought came to him that kept his adrenaline up. Hypothermia.

Dragging her out of her white grave, he laid her on the surface of the snow and unzipped his jacket, then hers. He pulled her against him and used his body heat to warm her.

She tried to bring her arms between their bodies in an attempt to warm them as well, but he wouldn’t let her. Her limbs would have been the first to plummet to dangerously low temperatures in the snow, and if they were warmed first, chilled blood would be driven to the core of her body. If that happened, it could kill her.

When she relaxed underneath him, he knew she was getting warm. Lifting his head, he looked down at her. She was breathing normal now, her eyes calm.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Anytime.” He grinned and got off her.

She sat up and looked around, grateful to be alive. “We should have stayed at Crimson Morning,” she said in a light tone. Humor diffused how close she’d come to dying. But she meant what she had said.

Did she think Crimson Morning would have been safer? “That shooter might have found us there.” He stood and extended his hand, which she ignored, then stood on her own and said, “Let’s get to the next yurt.”

Keeping an eye on her, watching for signs of injury, he started to look for her skis. One of them was right next to where she’d been buried. The other took some searching.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Korbin asked when they were under way again. If she wasn’t, she’d still have to ski to Silver Plume. They were closer to that than Crimson Morning.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

She’d probably be sore and bruised, but it could have been so much worse. Korbin still struggled with shaking off the memories of Niya. Why had they hit him then? They hit him often but usually he could put them out of his mind. Not so today. Today, they tormented him. Maybe that was because he’d saved Savanna and hadn’t been able to save Niya and as usual, guilt riddled him.

* * *

Wind whipped snowflakes against the balaclava that covered Savanna’s face and spotted her goggles. They’d had to stop to check a compass several times, and skiing against the wind had slowed them down. Beside her, Korbin bent his snow-caked body to remove his bindings. It had taken them two hours longer to get here through the storm. She was cold and sore everywhere.

It was dark now, which had made getting here even harder. Korbin hadn’t said much. Not that talk would have been easy with all the other challenges. Grimness had settled over him. At first she thought he was worried they wouldn’t make it to Silver Plume. But it was more than that.

Sticking her skis in the snow beside Korbin’s, out of sight from any passersby once the storm cleared, Savanna marched through the snow to the yurt door. Up under the overhang, she found the built-in container open on the top and retrieved the key. Hurley had told her where he kept spares at all of the yurts.

The octagonal yurt had two windows in front, but the wood panels were shut from the outside. Hurley had prepared them all for the blizzard. A wood-burning stove was in the center, with two twin-size beds underneath a cramped loft, two uncomfortable-looking chairs and a love seat to the right, and a kitchen with a small island on wheels. There was even a bathroom with a composting toilet and shower in a small enclosed room, the door next to the kitchen cabinets. There was no electricity. The yurt was dark. Savanna fumbled around until she found a flashlight in a kitchen drawer.

In a trunk at the foot of one of the beds, there were camping lanterns. While Korbin lit a fire in the wood-burning stove, she put three of the lanterns out, one in the kitchen, one in the living room and one between the beds.

Within thirty minutes the yurt began to warm. Savanna removed her hat and jacket. She’d be stuck with sleeping in her base layer.

Going into the kitchen, she began to scrounge for something to eat. They’d burned a ton of calories today and she was starving. Hurley kept the yurts stocked with a lot of canned and boxed food. Ordinarily he’d charge skiers who stayed here, but the main reason he kept them stocked was for emergencies like this.

“Your choice of canned chili, canned mac and cheese, canned enchiladas, or tuna with noodles and creamy broccoli sauce,” she said.

“How about all of it?”

She glanced back with a grin and then took out both boxes of creamy broccoli noodles and two cans of tuna. Korbin took two kettles outside and came back in with heaping piles of snow.

Savanna started the gas stove. Each of Hurley’s yurts came equipped with a propane tank. She’d boil one kettle for drinking water and the other for the noodles. Retrieving a frying pan, she emptied the tuna into that and prepared the sauce mix. While she did that, Korbin went to get more snow so they could take showers. There was no running water because it would freeze, so all water had to be brought in.

A half hour later, she filled their plates with the steaming noodle mixture and made two cups of tea. She joined Korbin at the small square table. Hunger kept them quiet for a while, but Savanna noticed that Korbin frequently drifted into thought. He’d been like that ever since the avalanche. And before that he’d seemed to be hiding something. This was a different silence, though. Not hesitation, not reluctance to say too much.

He must be worried about the shooter catching up to them. They’d been careful to make sure they weren’t followed, and Korbin had told her he saw the shooter driving away on his snowmobile. They were safe for now, but the danger still loomed. His drifting attention hinted to something more akin to sorrow.

“You’ve been awfully quiet since the avalanche,” she said.

Drawn from another faraway memory, it took him a moment to respond. “We had to get to this yurt as soon as possible.”

The weather wasn’t the entire reason. “You’re still quiet.”

“A lot on my mind.”

His curt reply was more of an evasive tactic. He didn’t want to talk at all tonight.

Well, she did. He had some explaining to do. “There’s been a lot on my mind, too,” she said. “Like why did a man break into my house and start shooting? He must have been after you.”

When he didn’t respond, she asked, “Do you know who he is?”

“Yes.”

That was all she got out of him. He owed her an explanation. He’d almost gotten her killed.

“Who is he?” she asked.

Gone was that ruminating look and in its place came shrewdness she’d seen in him before. “Someone who’s in a lot of trouble.”

Whatever that meant. “What’s his name?”

“Savanna, it’s best if you—”

“Tell me.” She was getting impatient.

“It isn’t safe.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “And that was?” She motioned with her thumb toward the door of the yurt.

After a bit, he sighed. “His name is Damen Ricchetti. He was a friend of mine until he got into something he shouldn’t have.”

“What something? Can you be more specific?”

With a resigned blink, he finally said, “I found out he was into some black-market business.” When she started to ask what business, he held up his hand. “I’ll tell you all I can.”

All he felt
safe
in telling her.

“I learned the name of a man he’s been in contact with,” he said. “I read a revealing email exchange. He and another man discussed a business arrangement they had made together. There wasn’t much detail but I have the name of the man he was communicating with. Damen doesn’t want me to know the man’s name. I didn’t think he’d come after me and try to kill me with what little I discovered. That I didn’t see coming.” He paused. “I didn’t see a lot until recently.” He looked at her. “But no more. I’m going to end this. Damen isn’t going to hurt anyone else.”

By his vehement conviction, she believed him. But something didn’t add up. “Is that why you were on the way to the cabin?”

“Partly, yes.”

Partly? There was more? He was withholding the whole truth. He’d come here to hide. That much she was sure of now.

“Is Damen a computer scientist like you?” she asked.

He grinned along with a cynical laugh. “No. He barely graduated from high school.”

“What does he do for a living?”

When he hesitated, Savanna suspected he was choosing his words carefully.

“He’s a con artist.”

That surprised her. He’d told her. “And he’s your friend?”

“Not anymore. He ripped off wealthy people who made money by taking advantage of others. Executives of pharmaceutical companies who hide bad results of testing. Banking executives who get bloated bonuses. Unethical entrepreneurs. It was a game to him. He’d find their weaknesses and plan a way to rob them. Somewhere along the line he lost his scruples. Anyone is a target now. Including me.”

She took in his big form, light gray eyes assessing, seeing how she’d react to this. He was imperturbable. Matter-of-fact. But his honesty touched her and somehow made what he said all right.

“Did you work with him?” she asked. Con artist...

Again, he hesitated. His eyes blinked. “Sometimes.”

Only when hacking was required? He helped his friend steal from wealthy people they’d deemed immoral. Did that make the theft okay? She had trouble with that. She had even more trouble with how she almost justified it along with him.

She was attracted to him—a thief. He put an appealing twist on his purpose, but that didn’t change the fact that he’d helped his friend steal.