Don’t panic, Rennie. Don’t think. Just dig. The probe is there. Unless it’s some crazy fluke, that means that Annie is down there. Dig.
My heart thundered. Sweat poured down my face and prickled my armpits. My breath was a fog in front of me, making it hard to see.
Dig. Dig. Dig.
I was down about half a meter. An avalanche probe, fully extended, could be over two meters.
Don’t think.
Do not think, and for sure do not think the worst.
Dig.
A flash of red.
Not blood red. Hot-chick-lipstick red. Cloth red.
Annie’s jacket.
I threw myself down and started clawing at it.
“Annie! Annie!”
Hair. I uncovered a hank of her hair. Her head moved.
She was alive!
“Annie!” I clawed out the snow around her.
She looked up at me, dazed but breathing.
“Are you okay? Is anything broken? Sorry. Sorry. Dumb question. Just don’t move, okay? Just breathe, and I’ll get you out of there.”
She didn’t move. She didn’t say anything, either, and one word flashed into my brain: shock. That’s when I did something I almost never do. I said a silent thank-you to the Major. He was the one who had enrolled me in a first-aid workshop, and no amount of yelling or foot-stomping or even wall-punching by me got me out of it.
These are things you should know, he’d insisted. They are things everyone should know.
And don’t you know it? Here I was, needing what I had learned that day but had resented having to learn.
I dug Annie out as fast as I could. I checked her over. It didn’t seem like anything was broken.
“There was, like, an air bubble or something down there,” Annie said, her voice low, her lips barely moving. I peeled off my jacket and wrapped it around her to fight the shock. “If there hadn’t been…” Her voice trailed off.
I won’t lie. The air was cold, and there was just enough breeze to whisk away whatever heat came off me, making me even colder. I had to move fast.
I looked around. I’d gotten Annie out of the snow, which was excellent, but there was no sign of her skis. She seemed mystified by their disappearance. We were a long way from the chalet, and far enough away from the ranger station, considering we had one pair of skis between us and I wasn’t even sure how steady Annie was on her feet.
I was starting to shiver. I needed a plan. Now.
Start moving and keep moving was the only one that came to mind. I’d made it here from the ranger station in twenty minutes. If I could just make it back with Annie in the same time…
“Annie? Annie, do you think you can stand up?”
I got to my feet and put out my hands. She took them and let me help her to her feet. Her face was so white that it scared me. What if she had frostbite? What if something terrible was going to happen to her face even if I did manage to get her back to safety?
“We have to go back, Annie. We need to make sure you’re okay.”
She looked stiffly around.
“Derek,” she said. “Where’s Derek? He’s supposed to be here. What if he got caught in the avalanche too?” A wild look came into her eyes. “Rennie, we have to find Derek!”
“It’s okay, Annie,” I said. “He’s not here.”
“But he’s supposed to be here. He sent me a note.”
“Derek left last night for Denver. I saw him go, Annie.”
Annie didn’t seem to understand. “Denver? But he asked me to meet him. He said he had something special he wanted to ask me. I thought…” She fell silent again.
“I don’t know exactly what’s going on, Annie. But we have to get out of here. Okay?”
She nodded.
“I’ll go first and you follow me, okay? I’ll do my best to make a trail.” It would get easier, I hoped, when I reached the spot where I had stopped. From there I could retrace the path we had both already taken. I hoped Annie could move and keep moving. I hoped I didn’t freeze to death. I hated being cold.
I also hated having to go first, but I had no choice. There was no way her boots were going to fit my bindings. With every step I took forward, I looked over my shoulder to make sure that Annie was following. She stayed behind me every step of the way, and pretty soon her face wasn’t white anymore. Pretty soon it was pink. Then red.
She started talking after that. Or, to be totally accurate, she started asking questions. How come I had just happened to see the avalanche? Why had I been following her? What had I heard Derek say? What had I seen last night?
“Derek would never hurt me,” she insisted. “Never.”
“But I heard him, Annie.”
She refused to believe it. “He would never hurt me, Rennie. This must all be a huge mix-up.”
“The note Derek left for you—was it in his handwriting, Annie?”
“Derek’s handwriting is illegible. He always texts me.” She paused and looked at me. “Derek would never leave me a note. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. He would have texted me. He always texted me.”
“Was the note handwritten?”
“It was from a printer.” She shook her head again. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”
“Do you still have it?”
“It’s back in my room.”
“If I’m right, I think someone left a note for Derek too. One that made him think you’d changed your mind.”
“Uncle Raj.” Annie looked like one of those superhero villainesses, ready to wreak vengeance on the world.
“Uncle Raj must be behind this.”
“But why?” I asked.
“This has nothing to do with my grandmother,” Annie said grimly. “There’s nothing wrong with my grandmother. I talked to her. He said she was in the hospital and refused to tell me where. But I did what you said, Rennie. I called one of her neighbors. My gran isn’t in the hospital. She isn’t even sick. My uncle lied to me.”
“Then why did he come here? What does he want? And why is he trying to kill you?”
“He came here to take me home so he could marry me off,” she said. “To that nephew of his, one of his sister’s sons. Uncle Raj raised him. He’ll do anything Uncle Raj wants him to, including marry me and let Uncle Raj continue to control the trust fund.”
“Trust fund?”
“My father left me well provided for. My uncle has been controlling the fund. But he can’t touch the money himself, except for an administrator’s fee. When I turn twenty-one or when I marry, whichever comes first, the whole fund reverts to me. He probably wants me to marry Nirmal so he can get Nirmal to let him have complete access to the money.”
“He can’t force you to marry him, can he?” That wasn’t possible, was it?
“You don’t know what it’s like in some places, Rennie. If I’d believed Uncle Raj about my gran and gone back with him, he would have taken me to his village, taken my passport away and married me off whether I wanted it or not. Then I would be no better than a prisoner. It happens, Rennie.”
“What are you going to do, Annie?”
She shook her head, and we plodded on.
We slowed down when we approached the ranger station. Chuck’s truck was gone, but still we proceeded with caution. The place was deserted, and the station was locked. I felt bad about what I did next, but I didn’t think I had much choice. I needed to make a phone call.
“We should get back to the chalet before my uncle gets away,” Annie said.
I broke a window in the ranger station so that we could get inside.
“Did you hear me, Rennie?”
“If you go back there without proof, your uncle will deny everything. He’ll probably deny everything anyway.”
I went to the wall where the blast schedule was posted and removed the thumbtacks holding it there. I folded it and slid it into my pocket.
“I also have to make a phone call,” I said.
“W
ho are you going to call?”
Who else would I call?
I called Grandma.
SEVENTEEN
By the time I reached Grandma, Chef Gaston had already called Rod twice, first to complain that Annie had blown off her morning shift and again when she didn’t show up for her lunch shift. Rod had followed up by calling Derek at the chalet, only to find that he was gone too. Then Chef called back to say that someone who claimed to be Annie’s uncle was demanding to know what had happened to Annie and wanted to report her missing and was furious because the police told him they didn’t go chasing eighteen-year-olds who had been missing for less than twenty-four hours, never mind less than six.
“He’s not wasting any time,” Annie said sourly. “He wants me dead so that the money reverts to him.”
It was torture to keep her from marching into the chalet to confront her uncle. Grandma said we should wait until the police arrived. She said Raj might do something rash if he was desperate enough. She said to wait in Rod’s office for the cops. She said his door was always open.
When they finally showed up, one cop went into the chalet and the other one, called Jackson, came to the office. He made us repeat our story a couple of times. He still looked skeptical when we finished.
“Let’s go see what your uncle has to say,” Jackson said.
Did you ever read the book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer? Me neither. My grandma read it to me when she came to stay for a month, back when my mom was still alive. There’s this part in it where Tom and his friend Huck listen in on their own funeral before they reveal that they’re still alive. Well, what happened next was sort of like that.
We followed him down the hall and stopped outside another office. There were three people inside: Raj, Chuck, and another cop. The cop was facing us. Raj and Chuck had their backs to us. Raj was talking.
“I am telling you, this man saw my niece. He saw her ski straight into a place that was about to be exploded.”
“A blast zone,” Chuck explained helpfully. So not only had Chuck changed the time of the blast to suit Raj’s plan, but he was also serving as the eyewitness who had seen Annie go toward the blast zone, so that there could be no doubt about what had happened to her when she never showed up again.
“I am so afraid for my niece,” Raj said to Jackson’s partner. “You must try to find her.”
Nothing could have held Annie back any longer, not that anyone tried.
“Liar!” she screamed at her uncle. “Murderer!” She flew at him and started hitting him. It took both cops to pull her off him.
“Is this your niece, sir?” Jackson’s partner asked Raj with a straight face.
Chuck tried to weasel out of any wrongdoing. He said he’d told Rod about the change in the blast time and it wasn’t his fault if Rod didn’t keep his information up-to-date. He said he’d tried to warn Annie too, but she hadn’t listened to him. He denied seeing me at all, even when I produced the updated blast schedule from his office. As for Raj, the notes to both Annie and Derek had been printed on stationery with a chalet watermark in it, and the woman on the desk the previous night said she had allowed Annie’s uncle to use the printer. His cell phone was confiscated so that the police could follow up on the call I’d heard him make.
That was the breaking point for Raj. He fell to his knees and begged Annie for forgiveness. He begged her for the money too.
“These men who are harassing me—you don’t understand, Annie. They started out as my business partners, but they turned out to be crooks. If I don’t give them what they ask for, there’s no telling what they’ll do. Think of your auntie. Think of your grandmother. Please, Annie.”
Some of the stiffness went out of Annie.
“I would never let anything happen to Auntie or Gran,” she said. “But I’m not helping you, Uncle Raj. Not after what you did.”
The cops arrested Raj and Chuck. Annie tracked down Derek, who was at the Denver airport, waiting to stop her from boarding a plane to India. The note he’d received said that Annie had agreed to go with her uncle because it was the right thing to do and that he should never try to contact her again. What Derek had set out to show her was that he loved her and would do anything to stop her from leaving him. It hadn’t been a threat at all.
* * *
“My, don’t you look handsome!” Grandma declared later that day.
I looked down at myself. I wasn’t wearing anything special. Just a pair of black jeans and a brand-new shirt that Grandma had bought for me earlier when she was sightseeing with Rod.
Grandma was looking pretty good too. She was wearing a dress and one high-heeled shoe. She smelled like flowers. Rod was taking us out for dinner in town. I didn’t want to go, but Grandma insisted.
“He’s grateful for what you did,” she said. “Think what would have happened if you hadn’t sprung into action like that, Rennie. I’m sure Annie is asking herself the same question.” I wished I was going out to dinner with Annie instead. “I’m so proud of you, Rennie.”
I wondered if the Major would be as proud, assuming we ever got around to telling him how we had spent the time he was away.
Grandma’s cell phone buzzed.
“Hand that to me, will you, dear?” Grandma asked.
I picked up her phone. The caller ID read DM, and when Grandma saw it, she shooed me out of the room, saying she had to take this and that it was personal.
“So who’s DM?” I asked her later when I was helping her down the stairs to meet Rod.
Grandma smiled one of her mysterious smiles. “A friend,” Grandma said. “An old friend.”
“As in old boyfriend?” Grandma seemed to have lots of those kicking around. And she was still friends with most of them.
“You ask too many questions, Rennie. Now help me up. We don’t want to keep Rod waiting.”
It took us longer than usual to get downstairs. It turned out the combination of one foot in a cast and the other in a high-heeled shoe makes for tricky walking. But Grandma refused to change. She is like that. She always does things her way. It was what I like best about her.
NORAH McCLINTOCK writes mystery and crime fiction for young adult readers. She is the author of the Chloe and Levesque, Mike and Riel, Robyn Hunter, and Ryan Dooley series, as well as many stand-alone novels. Norah grew up in Montreal, Quebec, and lives in Toronto, Ontario. She is a five-time winner of the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for Best Juvenile Crime Novel. Her novels have been translated into sixteen languages. For more information, visit www.norahmcclintock.com. Slide is the prequel to Close to the Heel, Norah’s novel in Seven (the series).
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