by Ruth Ware
I had no way of knowing how long the pills should take to work—but I had to gamble on Liz’s ignorance too. She would have no way of knowing exactly what concentration I had taken, or how quickly it would take effect. Ten minutes? Fifteen? Whichever, she seemed to buy my performance of slipping into incoherence, and then unconsciousness.
Everything hinges now on whether she gave me enough to kill me. If she thinks she’s given me a fatal dose, I’ll be safe for a little while longer—at least until she comes back and notices I’m still breathing. But if she’s only given me enough to knock me out, she’ll be coming back very soon to finish me off. Will it be a pillow over the face like Ani, or a blow to the head, covered up as a fall down the stairs? Or something completely different?
Either way, I don’t want to find out. I have to get away, and the sooner the better.
Holding my breath, listening out for any sound from above, I hobble as swiftly and quietly as I can through the lobby, to the door behind the stairs, the one that leads to the ski lockers. My own ski clothes are up in my room, and I can’t risk trying to get to it, but my boots and skis are down in the storage lockers, and there should be enough spare clothing strewn around for me to put together an outfit that will at least keep me warm enough to ski in. I don’t have nearly enough layers to survive a night in the open, and I can’t walk on this ankle. I will have to get down to St. Antoine. But how? Skiing is the only option, and hope to God that the ski boot gives my ankle enough support to do it.
The door to the locker room opens with the gentle click, and I slide through, and close it with infinite care, my heart beating hard. It’s very dark inside, the moonlight filtering faintly through a window almost completely blocked with snow, but my eyes are used to the darkness, and I’m able to pick out the vague shapes of jackets and ski pants hanging from pegs, and boots drying on their once-heated poles. Hastily, my heart thumping in my throat, I yank on a pair of salopettes. It’s only when I look down at myself that I realize—they belonged to Ani. The thought that I’m literally stepping into a dead girl’s clothes makes my stomach lurch with guilt. But I can’t let myself get sentimental about this. Ani is gone—I can’t save her. But maybe I can bring her killer to justice.
As I struggle into someone’s ski jacket—Elliot’s, I think, judging by the size—I remember Liz’s self-pitying whine as she told me about everything that had happened. And the thing is, I could almost have bought it. I don’t know for sure what happened on that balcony—but I could believe that part of it, the frightened girl, the desperate shove. And I could believe, too, her cornered fear as she realized that Eva had her trapped—and her terrified reaction.
But Elliot—no. And most of all Ani. Poor little Ani, killed as she slept for nothing more than having seen something Liz didn’t want her to see.
Whatever Liz thinks about Eva, and that unnamed investor, and maybe even Elliot—Ani, out of everyone, didn’t deserve this. She couldn’t have.
Only a monster could have killed Ani.
It’s Ani’s face that I see before me now as I pull on wet ski socks, and search around for mittens.
Ani’s face, speckled with the scarlet dots that give the lie to Liz’s story.
Because Liz says that she never wanted Ani to die—but I know that’s not true. Ani must have fought. She fought for every breath, so hard that blood vessels broke in her skin.
And Liz stood there, and pressed the pillow down over her face, all that long, long time.
You have to want someone to die to kill them by suffocation. You have to want it a lot.
It’s Ani I’m thinking of as I open up my ski boot as wide as it will go. Ani, as I shove my foot inside, gritting my teeth as the pain in my ankle flares suddenly, bright and hot.
My breath is whimpering between my teeth, little sobs of pain coming in spite of the need for silence as I force my foot around the curve of the boot, hearing the bones in my feet click and grind in protest, feeling the swollen flesh squeezing against the hard plastic shell. But I have to do this. I have to.
Ani. Ani. Ani.
And then with a crunch, my foot slides into place. I’m sweating and shaking with the pain, cold perspiration on my upper lip. But my foot is in. And, miraculously, when I try to stand, the pain isn’t as bad as I thought it would be; the top of the boot is tight enough that I’m taking some of my weight on my shin rather than my ankle. I ratchet the boot clips as tight as I can, praying that the support will keep the joint stable for long enough to make it down the valley. If I have broken a bone, I may end up lame for good after this—but it’s better than dead.
Hastily, I shove my other foot into its boot and clip it up.
And then I hear a noise from the stairs.
My heart seems to stop. It’s Liz coming down the spiral staircase.
For a second I freeze. I have everything I need—but can I get out the back entrance? The ski door faces the same way as the swimming pool, and it will have been blocked by the avalanche.
It opens inwards. At least… I’m pretty certain it does. I press my hands to my temples, trying to remember. Does it? If it opens outwards I’m screwed, regardless. But I’m sure it opens inwards. The question is whether I can dig my way out.
And then my eyes go to the narrow little window above the ski lockers. It’s letter box–shaped, and although it’s certainly long enough, it’s probably only twelve inches high, less when you take into account the frame and the hinges. But it might be my best bet.
Wincing at every sound, I climb up onto the wooden bench, and from there I lean over the ski lockers and open the window. A freezing blast scours my face, but I can see that the aperture isn’t blocked—the snow obscuring the glass was just drifting flakes sticking to the pane. There is a drift almost up to the top of the lockers—but that will cushion my fall.
I push my skis out first, one by one, listening as they tip into the soft snow with a flump. Then my poles. I pull on the borrowed mittens, and grab a helmet at random from the rack. It fits, thank God, because I don’t have time to pick and choose. And then I climb up to lie flat along the top of the lockers. They rock precariously—but only for a moment.
I feel sick with nerves. From somewhere in the chalet I hear a cry of surprise—and then a shout of “Erin?… Erin, where are you?”
Liz has discovered that I’m gone.
I slide my legs out first. I am apprehensive about falling onto my bad ankle, but the alternative is dropping face-first into the snow, and I don’t fancy that either. Okay, I’m wearing a helmet, but the fall could still break my neck, or if the drift is deep enough, I might plunge in vertically and suffocate before I could dig myself out. Feet first is safer.
It’s a squeeze, but I am managing. One boot, sideways, my good leg first, then the other. The weight of the boot hanging off my bad ankle makes me gasp, but it’s bearable, just.
And then the locker room door opens.
I can’t see anything at first because she’s holding a torch—Elliot’s phone, I think—and it’s shining full in my face. But I can see the shape of a figure in the doorway, and I know who it is before she runs towards me with a snarl of anger that sounds more animal than human.
I feel her hands grappling my arms, snatching, scratching, but her nails slide off the thick, smooth fabric, and there is nothing for her to catch hold off. I force my bum through the narrow gap, and then my body weight does the rest, dragging me after—until I stick, with a sickening jolt.
For a split second I can’t work out what’s happened. Has Liz shut the window? Has she grabbed my helmet? Then I realize.
Fuck. The helmet won’t fit.
I am hanging from my neck, and I’m beginning to choke, the strap of the helmet is digging into my jaw and throat, and I’m twisting like a fish on a line. My mittened hands are at my neck, desperately trying to relieve the pressure of the strap. My feet are scrambling in the soft snow, frantic to get enough purchase to loosen the strain on my throat.
My foot finds something, loses it again, and then finds it once more, just for a second—just long enough for me to unclip the strap.
And then I fall, gasping and retching, into a heap of soft snow and painful obstructions that after a minute or two I identify as my own skis and poles.
There is no time to recover.
Liz is yanking furiously at the helmet, stuck in the aperture, trying to pull it free so that she can follow me. I expect her to shout or swear, but she doesn’t, and somehow that’s more terrifying. She says nothing, all I can hear is her grunting breath as she struggles to get the helmet out of the window. I have to get away before she pulls it free.
I manage to stumble to my feet, sinking into the snow as I do, and using my skis as crutches I stagger down the drift to the hard-packed snow.
There, I take a split-second inventory. Mittens—yes. Skis—yes, both. And my poles.
Scarf—gone. It must have got pulled off with the helmet. And no hat of course. I don’t wear one now—the helmet is usually warm enough, but with the cold wind scouring my cheeks and face I know I’m going to regret that. Still, there is nothing I can do. I can’t turn back. I have to make it down to St. Antoine, somehow.
I also have no avalanche pack.
Fuck. Fuck. Which way?
Slowly, painfully, I drag myself and my skis around to the side of the chalet, and survey the piste.
The long blue down into St. Antoine is a wreck—there is no other way to describe it. I saw the top of the run when Danny and I made our way painfully back from the crushed funicular—the avalanche has dumped everything straight down it—huge boulders, lift poles, tree trunks. It’s not just unskiable—it’s impassable. And the path through the woods to the green run, Atchoum, is totally inaccessible—the little copse has taken the full force of the avalanche and the trees are crushed and obliterated, buried under a hundred tonnes of snow.
But there is another way.
It’s called the Secret Valley, or at least, that’s what the English skiers call it. I don’t think it has an official name—it’s not a piste, just an unofficial route that you can just about ski if the conditions are right, and if you’re very good and you enjoy a challenge. Besides, “piste” gives completely the wrong impression anyway—it conjures up the image of a flat apron of snow, with skiers crisscrossing each other with elegant turns. This is nothing like that. It’s a long couloir between two sheer rock walls, formed by a deep crevasse in the mountains. It needs a lot of snow to blanket the jagged boulders at the bottom, and even when conditions are good, the path at the bottom is so narrow that it can only take a single skier, and in places if you reach out, you can touch both sides with your fingertips.
If I can get down to it, I think it will be passable—surely we’ve had enough snow to cover the worst of the jagged rocks, and it’s out of the path of the main avalanche.
But it’s not a run so much as an obstacle course—a twisting, turning slalom of boulders and tree trunks, hard enough to navigate in daylight, let alone with no light but the moon. It’s also very prone to mini avalanches—the snow builds up on the ridges above, and breaks off without warning, deluging the skiers below.
That’s not the worst part though. The worst part, the part that is making me hesitate, is that once you’re down there—there is no way out. The sides of the crevasse rise higher, and higher, and there is no way of getting a helicopter or a blood wagon down to someone trapped there. You just have to keep going, until the chute spits you out among the trees at the top of the village.
It is my best chance. And Liz very likely doesn’t know about it. There’s no way of finding it unless someone shows you the entrance.
It’s also my worst nightmare.
But I have no choice.
Holding my skis like a crutch, I begin to walk towards the head of the pass.
LIZ
Snoop ID: ANON101
Listening to: Offline
Snoopers: 0
Snoopscribers: 1
Erin is missing.
I almost don’t notice. When I first walk into the living room, I am so sure she will be there that it doesn’t even occur to me to check. But then something catches at the corner of my vision—something that is not quite as I left it. When I turn around I see what has changed, the sofa is empty.
For a moment I just stand there, too puzzled to be worried. Has she woken up? Stumbled to the toilet?
“Erin?” I shout. I go back into the lobby. I stare around the dark space, shining my torch up the stairs, into the kitchen. “Erin, where are you?”
She cannot have gone far. She drank enough of those pills to knock her out for a week.
It is only when I go back into the living room that I see the dark spreading stain on the sofa. I touch it and sniff my fingers. It smells of tea. That is when I understand. She never drank the tea at all.
I don’t often swear, but I do when I see this, and I realize how she tricked me.
I run. First to the door in the lobby, but the snow outside is untouched. She hasn’t left the building by that route at any rate.
Then into the kitchen—but she is not there either.
I am halfway upstairs, ready to check the bedrooms, when I hear a noise. It is very faint, but it sounds like something falling onto the snow outside. It is coming from the back of the building, where the ski entrance is.
I make my way back down to the lobby and I open the door to the rear part of the building, where all the ski lockers are. It takes a moment for my eyes to get used to the darkness—and then I see something—or someone—moving at the far side of the room. It is Erin. She has climbed up on top of the ski lockers, and she is almost out of the window.
I hurl myself across the locker room, scramble up the bench she has placed below the window, ignoring the twinges in my knee, and grab hold of her helmet, which is just about to disappear through the window.
Then I realize why she is still there. The helmet won’t fit through the gap. She is stuck. She is dangling from the helmet, horrible wheezing noises coming from her throat, kicking and kicking to try and get enough purchase on the snow to twist free.
But before I have had time to figure out what to do, there is a sudden jerk, and the weight on the helmet falls away. The catch has broken—or she has unclipped herself, I am not sure which. For a second she lies, gasping and winded in the snow, and then she staggers to her feet, picks up her skis, and begins to hobble off towards the front of the chalet and the path that leads up to the funicular.
I have to follow her, but the helmet is stuck in the frame, blocking it. It is only after a few minutes of fruitless tugging that I realize, this is stupid. Erin has her skis and poles. She is clearly intending to ski to St. Antoine—and I have to stop her.
I have to ski after her.
Letting go of the helmet, I turn back to the room. I am wearing my jumpsuit already. All I need are boots, skis, and mittens. Fast, before Erin gets away.
I have two realizations to comfort me—first, in the soft snow, she won’t be able to hide her tracks. I will be able to tell exactly which way she has gone.
And second, I can ski faster than her. My wrenched knee has almost recovered, while her ankle has only been getting worse. I saw the way she hobbled back from the kitchen with the tea just a couple of hours ago. She couldn’t put any real weight on it at all. I am pretty sure it is broken—and there is no way she can ski aggressively with a broken ankle. She will have to go slowly and carefully, and it will take her a long time to clamber over the broken-up snow at the beginning of the blue piste. I saw what it looked like after the avalanche—a mess of rubble and debris. It will take a while to pick her way through that, even if it clears further down. I will be able to catch up to her. If I act quickly.
I make up my mind. I ram my feet into my boots and grab my skis and poles from the rack. My mittens are in the pocket of my jumpsuit. But my helmet—where is my helmet? It’s missing from the locker, and after a few secon
ds I realize: it’s the one that Erin took, and it is wedged into the window.
I have another go at trying to free it, but it’s useless, and I cast around for an alternative before realizing that I am wasting time. If Erin gets too much of a head start, even with her ankle, I won’t catch her.
Shoving Elliot’s phone into my pocket, I hoist my skis onto my shoulder and clack-clack my way back along the corridor to the lobby, where I open the door into the snow, and squeeze into the night.
It is unbelievably cold outside, and I realize that however chilly the chalet was without heating, it was actually doing a pretty good job of protecting us from the elements.
Now, out here, I don’t know what the temperature is, but it can’t be much over minus twenty. Maybe even less. The sky is clear, and the moon has that strange frost halo around it that you only get in extreme cold.
Shivering, even in my warm jumpsuit, I clip my boots into my ski bindings and then straighten up, looking around for Erin’s tracks.
There they are—deep slashes of furrowed snow, dark against the moonlit white.
But they are not leading up the track to the smashed-up blue piste. They are going the other way, into the forest.
ERIN
Snoop ID: LITTLEMY
Listening to: Offline
Snoopers: 5
Snoopscribers: 10
I had forgotten the beginning. Oh God, the beginning. It’s like a sheer wall of thick, soft snow, hemmed in with trees, studded with boulders, narrowing to a steep path just a few feet wide. And taking the first step is basically like jumping off the edge of a cliff and trusting to the snow to hold you.
With two good legs I could do this—probably not elegantly, but I could do this. I’m rusty, but I’ve done enough off-piste skiing that I am pretty confident in my technique. I know how to manage the deep, dragging snow, how to navigate the heavy turns, how to avoid plunging into drifts and how to keep up momentum.
