The ski patrol pair studied her. “You’re injured,” the taller one said. The glow from his flashlight revealed the reflective name tape on his jacket front. Malley.

  “Superficial.” She brushed her fingers across her scraped forehead, and was immediately sorry when her skin burned at the touch. “Do you have first aid supplies?”

  The shorter one turned away, saying, “I’ll go get the bag.”

  “We can’t let you—” Malley began.

  “At least I can try.”

  “Sam?” A familiar figure materialized beside her.

  “Blake!” They reached for each other simultaneously. Although the embrace hurt her shoulder and arm, her friend’s hug still felt good. “I’m so glad you’re okay, Blake. Where’s Claude?”

  Her housemate’s eyes filled as he thrust his chin toward a dark shape beneath a blanket on a ski patrol sled several yards away. Sam clutched Blake’s sleeve. “Oh, no, I’m so sorry . . .”

  Blake shook his head. “Claude’s not dead.” He raised a hand to wipe away a tear from his cheek. “At least not yet. But we had to dig him out, and he’s unconscious.”

  “Do you know about Chase? And Nicole?”

  Blake surveyed the wrecked building. “I think maybe . . .”

  Sam raised a fist to her mouth in horror.

  “But I don’t know for sure. They might have been in the parking lot.”

  The parking lot was not even visible. How many people were trapped in cars under that snow? How many people had been walking on the road that was now buried?

  “Or maybe even down the road,” Blake amended, trying to inject a note of hope. “All the way down, to the bottom of the mountain.”

  The shorter ski patrol guy was back. The name on his jacket was Sharpe. He thrust out a helmet with a headlight and a device projecting from the front that Sam recognized as a GoPro Camera. “And here’s the first aid bag.” He set a small red nylon bag down next to her. “Although how you’re going to carry it, I don’t know.”

  “Got a rope or a strap?” She jammed the helmet on her head. “I’ll tie it to my ankle and tow it behind.”

  Sharpe unzipped the bag and extracted a yellow nylon strap. “There will probably be broken glass.” He dug around in his jacket pockets, pulling out a pair of leather gloves. “These belong to Ashley. She’s not on duty today.” He handed them to Sam.

  “Lucky girl,” Malley commented.

  Sam pulled on the gloves. They were a bit loose, but they’d probably stay on.

  “Sam, you can’t go in there!” Blake protested.

  She pointed toward the small opening and then gestured at the people standing around them. “See anyone else who could?”

  Blake surveyed the crowd. “We need a rescue dog.”

  “See a dog?” she asked.

  All three men stared at her.

  “So I’m going.” She knelt in the snow to tie the strap to her right ankle, clenching her teeth against the pain that bending caused her. Switching on the headlamp, she then crawled toward the opening. With her palms and knees against the icy surface, she began to shiver. Oh well, she couldn’t possibly be any colder inside this tunnel than she was outside.

  The narrow beam of the headlamp revealed a tangle of massive timbers and wallboard, broken tables, chairs, and, surprisingly, rocks. She hadn’t even gotten her feet inside before she had to flatten her chest to the ground and use her elbows and toes to inch along under an X of crisscrossed boards. Her shoulder and ribs shrieked with pain as she stretched out like a worm.

  Probably be broken glass? The debris beneath her—it was no longer a floor—was littered with shards that glittered in the headlamp beam. They shredded her parka as she slithered over them. She was grateful for the leather gloves.

  “Anyone in here?” she yelled. Several muffled voices drafted toward her from different directions. At least one man’s—Chase?—and a woman’s voice, but she couldn’t make out their words behind the wailing that seemed to grow louder with every inch she moved. Then the debris overhead groaned, and for a torturous moment something up high above her ticked, like an old-fashioned clock. Or the timer on a bomb in a horror flick. Was the building shifting?

  Her breath caught in her throat. A sliding screech squealed above. A shower of snow sifted down onto her head. Then she heard nothing except the wailing. That seemed the closest sound. She’d try to move in that direction.

  Every foot or so, she had to crawl over rocks or across a two-by-four, yanking the first aid kit behind her with her foot. The constant pattern of two-by-fours beneath her made no sense until she realized she was crawling on top of a collapsed wall. Her headlamp snagged on a wire, and when she raised her chin to disentangle it, the light illuminated a spiderweb of wires that she’d have to find her way through. Please let the power be off, she prayed as she snaked over and under the tangle, pushing the wires aside when she could.

  The wailing grew louder. “I’m coming,” she said aloud. The first aid kit, anchored to her ankle, got caught up in the wire web, and she had to contort her frame to pull the bag through. A sharp pain shot through her shoulder, but she managed to clasp her hand around the strap and yank the nylon bag out of the tangle. Ahead, she saw a sneaker suspended in the air among a pile of rocks and broken beams. Sam had never been in the Raven Hut Lodge, but she’d seen photos of the stone fireplace. That explained the rocks. Farther on, a blue plastic structure, half-embedded in snow, had been shoved partway under a broken chair. Her helmet smacked into a table leg, and she was forced to press her face practically to the ground to slither beneath it.

  Reaching up, she took hold of the sneaker. Purple, small. Her memory tortured her with a flashback of the dead girl in the purple parka, ice covering her young face. Purple seemed to be an unlucky color today.

  Oh, sweet Jesus, it was not just a sneaker; there was a foot inside. Which she assumed was attached to a leg and eventually a whole human being, but she couldn’t see anything more than the bottom part of the shoe wedged into the rock pile. “Hey,” she said, shaking the sneaker. “Can you move? Are you okay?”

  No movement. If there was a verbal response, she couldn’t hear it above the shrieking ahead. Was she holding onto a corpse’s foot? Of course there would be bodies, she told herself—what did she expect inside a collapsed building? Pulling her hand back, Sam closed her eyes for a second, hoping for tranquility, and then moved on.

  There! Another foot, this one tiny, alive, wearing miniscule white leather booties, kicking at the snow. She thought she heard muffled cheers outside, and remembered that the camera on her helmet was recording. Whoever owned it—probably one of the ski patrol guys—must be watching on some electronic device. Did it have a microphone, too? “Yes, it’s a baby,” she said, brushing the snow away, thankful that the infant had been strapped into a sturdy carrier that had come to rest on its back. That carrier had saved the little girl’s life.

  The child seemed unhurt except for a bleeding scratch along one cheek. She was no doubt cold and scared to death, and she wouldn’t stop crying. This close, it sounded more like screaming. “Are you Emma?” Sam crooned, trying to make her voice soothing. “I hope so. Your mama misses you.”

  The baby wasn’t buying it. Her shrieking seemed to grow in volume. Now what? Sam hadn’t thought any farther than seeing what—or who—was in here. There was no space to turn around, she could barely bend her knee to drag up the first aid kit. Should she try to reverse course and take the baby out, or continue on her search? There could be other victims who needed her more.

  The little girl grabbed a handful of Sam’s long blonde hair and refused to let go.

  “Okay, okay.” Sam struggled to unleash the nylon bag from her ankle and buckle it onto the baby carrier. Then she began to shove herself backward, dragging the baby carrier with her hands. Close up, the child’s shrieks were deafening. When Sam reached the tangle of wires, she found just enough space to fold herself like an inchworm and turn so she could push the carrier in front of her.

  How could she be sweating and freezing at the same time? Her hair was full of glass shards and snow. Every muscle in her body ached. At one point she had to tip the baby carrier on its side to slide it under the debris. That made the baby scream even louder.

  Then she finally saw the opening ahead, and a pair of hands reached in and pulled the carrier from her. Sam collapsed against the ground and laid her head on her outstretched arm for a minute, panting.

  Blake’s face appeared in the opening. “Sam? Are you okay?”

  She stretched both arms toward him. “Can you pull me out?”

  Grasping her wrists, he pulled her outside. It hurt like hell, but then everything had been hurting like hell for hours. She sat up, stretching her back, tilting her head back to relax her neck muscles. Her face met an icy blast. The snow was falling harder now.

  A few feet away, the mother clutched the baby, murmuring to her, and mouthing “Thank you” to Sam.

  Sam briefly blinded Blake with the headlamp before she remembered to switch the thing off. “Any word on rescue?”

  He unscrewed the top of a thermos and handed it to her. “The road’s closed by the avalanche, and the choppers can’t fly in this.”

  She grimaced at the taste of sweetened coffee. But at least it was lukewarm. “I meant any good news. So it will be hours.”

  “They’re going to try to get snowmobiles up the highway from the closure. And the ski patrol went up to Heather Meadows to get a snowcat out of a maintenance shed, but the doors are jammed, so they’re breaking their way in. Apparently, they can plow with that, or drive on top of the snow or something.”

  “Yippee,” she whined. “What we really need is an excavator or a crane or a machine that can lift things.”

  The mother approached. “Did you see any sign of my husband, Jerry? Black parka, bald head. Or my babysitter, Amber? Sixteen, long dark hair?”

  “Was Amber wearing purple sneakers?” Sam chewed her lip as she waited for a reply.

  Doubt overtook the woman’s face. “I think so, maybe.”

  “Then maybe I saw her foot. She was sandwiched in a lot of debris.”

  The woman clutched baby Emma to her chest. “Good lord.”

  “There’s still hope.” Sam prayed she wasn’t lying to the woman.

  She scanned the area for a moment, studying all the people she could see. No sign of Gina. Sam’s heart dropped. Had Kevin Zhao and his friend been unable to find her friend? Had she survived? Had she sent the two snowmobile rescuers to their deaths down in that snowy valley as well? Guilt gnawed at her insides.

  Chapter 22

  A few bystanders in the crowd tugged at debris around the edges of the collapsed building, lifting small pieces away. A little farther down the slope, several skiers shoved avalanche poles into the snow in back of the collapsed building, hoping to locate the missing. They would only find corpses, Sam knew. Nobody could have survived this long under the snow. The only possibility of survival under the snow was if some victims had been inside a car when the avalanche hit, and by now, the air would be running out if it hadn’t long ago.

  This was supposed to be a celebratory outing for everyone who came up here. She and all her friends had looked forward to sharing sun and snow and happy people. And then she’d hoped to rescue a wolverine, finally see a skunk bear in the flesh instead of through a camera lens. Instead, she—and all these other people—had crash-landed in a snowy hell. As if she needed reminding, her brain flashed the unwelcome memory of the female poacher’s ice-masked face across her mental screen.

  Focus on where there’s still possibility of life, she told herself. She shook the snow and shards of glass out of her hair and studied the frantic scene around her. She would enjoy the contrast of snow and the dark night if she weren’t so exhausted. Even her bones felt tired. But Chase . . .

  She faced the opening in the collapsed lodge again, putting her gloved hands down onto the snow. “I heard several other voices inside. I’m going back.”

  “Sam . . .” Blake started to protest, but then stopped.

  There really wasn’t anything to say, was there? There was no indication that more capable rescuers would show up soon. She couldn’t leave people to die in there if there was a chance of saving a single one. Deciding to leave the first aid kit behind so she could be more agile, she zipped several tightly wrapped metallic thermal blankets inside her pockets. She couldn’t do much of anything in the way of first aid, but maybe she could save someone from freezing to death. If there was anyone to save.

  She belly-flopped her way in and scrabbled to the wire web again. After she was through, she elbowed her way to the left, through a star-shaped opening surrounded by the sharp teeth of splintered boards. She’d managed to get her top half through the hole when her shoulder nudged a dangling piece of paneling, shifting it.

  Abruptly, the structure above her groaned as if alive. Debris tumbled down like a rockslide. Something hard smacked her in the back of the head, and then a wave of snow washed over her face and shoulders. OhGodohGodohGod, she was buried again! Her scream was muffled by the snow. She twisted her head, bashing her aching nose into whatever was beneath her. Frantically waving her outstretched hand in front of her face, she shoved the icy clumps away.

  Muffled calls from outside reached her ears. Or was that just her imagination? Her shoulder was pinned by whatever had fallen on her. The board at the bottom of the sharp opening she had crawled halfway through was pressing into her ribs and abdomen. She was being cut in half. A weight rested solidly on her back and shoulders. Holy hell—was she going to die in here?

  “Summer?”

  She clamped her lips together and stopped to listen. Had she really heard Chase’s voice? She moaned and coughed, spit out a wad of snow and dust, tried to push herself off the floor. Maybe an inch, that’s all she gained. The constriction at her waist hurt like hell. She could barely breathe. The weight on her back was crushing. An agonizing vision of the wolverine trapped and buried and smothering in a smashed dog carrier filled her head.

  She bent her legs and feet as much as she could, tightening her thighs against the other side of the opening, at the same time shoving backward with her outstretched hands. The helmet strap under her chin threatened to choke her. With fumbling fingers barely wedged beneath her neck, she managed to unsnap the strap and then pushed backward again.

  Whatever was crushing her shoulder slid up onto her neck and then, after ripping away what felt like half her scalp against the debris resting on her back, she succeeded in pulling her head and shoulders out of the opening. Coughing, she wriggled backward like a prairie dog that had just spotted a rattler lurking ahead in its tunnel. Her helmet and GoPro stayed behind, wedged beneath the rubble.

  “Fuck!” She wasn’t prone to cussing, but now seemed like the perfect moment for it. Resting her head against her forearms, she closed her dust-caked eyes and allowed herself a pause to reflect on her situation. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  A faint voice responded. “Help! Help us!”

  Ahead and more to the left, she thought. Sounded female. Nicole? Us, she’d said. So at least two. Was Chase with her? The structure screeched again. Whining, cracking, gasps—were any of those human sounds, or just the unstable wreck of the building shifting into a new position?

  Why had she imagined she could rescue anyone? She was more likely to die in the cold and dark here with the other victims.

  Suck it up, Westin.

  The opening she had tried to crawl through was now blocked with fallen debris, glowing eerily in the beam from the headlamp on the helmet. Only patches of very dim light filtered through the wreckage above. Everything else was pitch black. She needed that headlamp. Snaking an arm through the tangle of broken wood and sheetrock, she grabbed an edge of the helmet. She pulled. Nothing moved. The helmet was tightly wedged between fallen boards. Sliding her fingers over the helmet, she found the strap that held the lamp in place. She managed to slide the strap off one side, but it snagged on the other.

  Damn. She yanked hard, wedging her shoulder against the wall of debris in front of her. Just when she thought the strap couldn’t stretch any more, it snapped. She barely managed to keep hold of it, but finally succeeded in pulling the headlamp back.

  Okay. She coughed again at a mouthful of sheetrock dust. She no longer had a helmet, but she had a headlamp. On a broken strap. Its beam revealed a possible opening farther to her right, back toward where she’d found baby Emma. She couldn’t figure any way to tie the strap onto her head, so she resorted to pushing the strap down into her collar, letting the lamp hang out beside her neck as she inched her way forward. She was now a lighted inchworm. Or maybe a luminescent mole. A new species, born of necessity.

  Was that a moan she heard? “Chase? Nicole? Anyone?”

  Her words sounded as unintelligible as when she’d shouted underwater through a scuba mouthpiece. She’d been in bad circumstances before. She’d survived a near drowning in the Galápagos. Don’t go there. That story was hardly inspiring. She’d lived, but her partner hadn’t. She coughed again, tasting blood that she hoped was only from her broken nose.

  Was that tapping? Faint human voices? Coming from inside or outside? She couldn’t tell. Imagining herself as a lithe python now, she slithered over the end of a set of metal shelves and then between the shelves, elbowing her way through broken dishes that crunched beneath her.

  Off to the right, she spotted the purple sneaker again, redirected her vision, studying where the baby had been. Beyond that small space was another web of wires, and beyond that, she could see a pale green gleam. Hadn’t Nicole been wearing a mint-green ski jacket?

  Something shifted overhead. Panic flared in Sam’s gut. She inhaled, trying to sift the dusty cloud through her teeth, and then coughed on air that tasted of chemicals she didn’t want to analyze. A powerful urge to retreat gripped her for a few seconds. But it would take her just as long to get back. And she would not have accomplished anything.