The room comes back into view, zoomed closer now: Dan with Anna’s hair taut in his hands, her throat arching. One hand moving over her mouth, then her eyes. Using his hold to direct how she can move. Folding her over a table.
For just a moment, Dan turns, and it’s almost like he’s looking into the camera. Then he turns away. Maeve rewinds, watches again.
Did Dan guess that Sadie was secretly filming them? Did Karo? They all had their twisted loyalties before she ever arrived.
A new thumbnail, and the image changes.
She leans closer. It’s not Anna on-screen anymore, but Maeve.
Maeve in her room. When she thought she was alone. She watches herself cross from the bed to the window, rummage through a bag. Stand and pull her T-shirt off over her head; turn to the mirror, sweep a hand down along her own breasts, her waist. Examining her body before her morning warm-up.
A sudden cold feeling in her chest. Alone in the common room, Maeve looks over her shoulder despite herself.
How did Sadie get this? Why?
She pauses the video, trying to guess the vantage point. Was Sadie actually in the room with her? Or was she filming from the next room, silent and stealthy, that adjoining door just slightly ajar?
She scans forward, her heart starting to race. Maeve from overhead, from some high window, as she fights through the snow. A skip; static. Maeve in the lobby, lost in thought on the floor. Legs wide open, folding over into a stretch. Another skip. There’s no rhyme or reason to the footage, and Maeve realizes they’re almost incidental, hurriedly picked up whenever Sadie had the camera. Whenever she had a chance. Justin was so accustomed to his SD cards that he never noticed what Sadie was saving to the camera itself. Or he didn’t care.
For a second, she wonders if she’s wrong, if Justin took the videos himself the same way he took hate-footage of Anna.
On-screen, a door opens to a darkened room and the camera moves slowly inside. Everything is gray or dark gray. A streak of moonlight from the window lights the way; there’s a muffled sound, movement. But then there’s Sadie’s black, bone-straight hair falling down her back, her slim shoulder, her hip—she’s caught herself, accidentally, in the vanity mirror, camera in hand. A slow turn. Her lovely, strong cheekbones. Her lips.
The camera lifts and focuses on the mirror frame: Maeve’s own little photo strip. Maeve and the kids. Across the room then, to Maeve herself, in bed. Asleep. She stirs as though a dream has disturbed her, and the screen goes black.
Sadie was in her room.
All those nights with Iain outside her window. Watching. Maeve feels like she might vomit. She thinks of herself, just a few moments ago, using the privacy of her assigned room to have a good cry. Privacy? It’s as though she were onstage the whole time. Her every move before an audience; she just didn’t know it. She scans forward, watching herself in fast motion: in the hall by her room, down in the lobby, walking in the snow. Once, the Minnie Mouse voice of someone talking, close to the mic. Maeve slows the film down to regular speed. It’s Karo’s voice she hears, at the very end of the clip: What are you doing there? Be careful.
Then another room. It’s dark and hard to see, but Maeve’s there, parading from end to end. Peeling away her clothes.
The lights come up, sudden and bright. She’s standing naked, Sim crossing the room to meet her. It’s his room the night of the party—the blank canvas leaned up against the wall reflecting light like a photographer’s softbox. He reaches for her, a hand at her belly, her scar.
Looks into the camera, and winks.
Karo is sitting up when Maeve comes back downstairs, but she’s wrapped tight in the bedclothes, a new dullness in her eyes.
“Good morning,” Maeve says. She’s left the camera upstairs. It doesn’t matter to her now if Karo notices it’s missing: she’d like to drop-kick it into the woods, bury it in snow, destroy it. She wonders if Karo has watched it all herself, if that’s what she meant by causing too much trouble.
Maeve wonders if she always knew. If this is something Sim paid for, Sadie with a side hustle, she thinks. Or if it was merely Sadie doing favors. Sadie in love. Or Sadie, ambitious and eager to align herself with the most powerful man in the room.
Maeve shoves a foil tray of food into the hot ash at the edge of the fire.
“You should have some breakfast,” she says.
Karo gives an odd smile.
“Imagine, this is what we’ve come to. The ballerina is going to make me eat.”
Maeve bristles but doesn’t respond. She turns the tray on the hearth, moving it with a careful hand.
“So, no rescue crew in the night, huh? Only more new snow.” Karo shakes the blankets off her shoulders but stays where she is, slumped against the back of the couch. “And then there were two.”
Her voice is low and cracks at the edges. A symptom of the dry air, but also something else.
Or is it? Maeve catches herself. Maybe it’s just lack of sleep, or stress. How can you know if someone is behaving oddly when you’ve known her only a few days?
“I should melt some snow,” she says, using the task as a cushion against Karolina’s mood and her own. “We need water.”
She gets to her feet and grabs the pot from its perch at one end of the hearth. Karo rocks a little in her seat.
“Any minute now,” she says. “We should hear the purr of the plow engine. Isn’t that right?” She leans her head against the back of the couch and laughs.
Maeve pauses, watching her, then throws on her coat and goes to the back entrance with the pot to scoop snow. She’s careful to wedge herself firmly against the door, never breaking contact with it; there’s no telling if the lock will jam should the door fall closed, leaving Maeve stranded outside.
She straightens up, squinting at the trees. It’s the same view as the night before, although she’s peering into daylight this time. There are no shadows now, no moonlight. No hint of a bear’s huff or rough grunt.
She feels watched all the same.
Maeve sees the dusky room from Sadie’s video form again in her mind, another kind of dreamscape. The camera over Maeve’s bare shoulder. The light comes up, bleaching her skin. Sim crosses the room to meet her.
There is no sound at all outside of the wind, the creaking of the near tree branches, and the occasional rhythmic flap of an awning or a flag somewhere out of sight. The snow is falling heavier now.
Always snow.
There is no motor. No plow.
“You’re beginning to wish you’d gone with them, aren’t you?” Karo, still wrapped in her blanket, still unwilling to leave the couch.
Nothing, Maeve thinks, could be further from the truth. She doesn’t want to be here at all.
Maeve wishes to God she had never come.
Karo seems off, in a deeper way. Paralyzed for the moment, biting at her thumb. She had high expectations for rescue by sunup; now the sun is up, and nothing has changed. Maeve has already mentioned the ice forming in the upstairs toilets and the news landed poorly.
“There’s no reason to think we’ve been abandoned,” Maeve says. But she’s doing the math in her head—it’s been eighteen hours since the others left.
She gets up to check the melting snow, pulling off the lid and giving the pot a violent shake.
What could have gone wrong? They got to the village and no one was there. There were other, bigger slides; the slides multiplied on each other. The trip from the empty village down to where people are did not go as well. Did not go at all.
She looks back to Karo, smaller and harder than ever where she’s curled in place on the couch.
“I know Dan said—”
“Oh, fuck what Dan said.” Karo’s head snaps up. “If Dan doesn’t show up with his rescue crew in another day or two, it’ll be you on your own, trying your luck down the mountain,” she says. “How much longer do you think we can really survive here?”
The speed of the turn throws Maeve for a loop. She can’t quite respond.
“Okay.” Maeve sets the lid firmly back into place. “Maybe you need a little fresh air. I’ll hold the door open for you. Might make you feel better—”
Karo just stares at her.
Maeve pauses, not sure whether to keep talking or just forget it. Karo leans forward and peels back the blanket, revealing her legs. Her feet in their wool socks are curled, cramped beyond any of Maeve’s expectations. Each foot a crescent moon, a sickle, an exaggerated arching pointe.
“I can’t.”
Maeve wets her lip with her tongue, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”
“It could get so bad so quickly?”
“I’m sorry,” Maeve says again.
Karolina smooths the blanket back in place, then reaches down to massage her foot through the layers. Gingerly, as though it hurts to touch.
“I haven’t been off the meds in five years. A lot can change in that time.” She takes a breath and pushes it out, then looks at Maeve. “But you’re right. It’s my job, isn’t it? To know what’s out there?” There’s a beat, and Maeve feels almost wary, as though Karo might be about to lose her composure or fly off the handle completely. Instead her face just hardens. “But I can’t,” she says. “So you’re going to go for me. Outside.” When Maeve starts to shake her head, Karo cuts it off quickly. “I need you to do a perimeter check, because I can’t. I need to know if there’s anyone coming for us.”
Maeve feels her stomach drop, and she sinks onto the arm of the couch. She thinks of the shadow the night before, back where the trees begin. And in her dreams, that strange, dark presence, closing in. Maeve, outside, lost in a storm.
She knows it’s irrational. She still doesn’t want to go out there.
“In the toolbox in my office, you’ll find some fluorescent ties—take those with you and use them as markers. The color will stand out against the snow.” She means the markers will help Maeve orient herself, find her way back. She’ll be out there alone this time. “Go down as far as the main gates, if you can,” Karo says. “And as far again to the rear in case they’re coming up the back road. You don’t need to go all the way out along the ridge, not as far as we went together. Just to where it begins, to the break in the trees where the path used to be.”
At the mention of the word trees, Maeve balks. She feels pushed into this, like she can’t say no. Karo at her back, nudging her, urging her on.
“I don’t think—” she begins. Is it even safe to leave Karo on her own?
“I need to know,” Karo says, catching her look. She pauses, then says it again: “Maeve, I need to know. I can’t bear this. Maybe you’ll be able to see something, or hear them coming.” She leans in, wincing. “You can flag them down. You can make sure they find us.”
Her expression is less hard now. She looks like she might crumble. Even her voice has begun to shake. “You’re a smart woman. And I’ll be here—” She takes another breath. “I’ll make sure you can get back inside.” As she pulls up against the back of the couch, she winces again.
Maeve still doesn’t move until Karo waves her away.
“Go on, get yourself ready. I need a moment to clear my head.” But as she rises to her feet, Karo suddenly looks up. “And, Maeve—” She holds a hand out, as though she could catch Maeve’s arm. “There’s a cane, back in the closet in my office.” She pauses, steadying herself. “I need to use the bathroom and I won’t be able to walk without it.”
The toolbox, plus whatever Karo salvaged as Dan loaded up his pack the day before, is tucked just inside her office door. Toolbox is a misnomer, Maeve finds. Not a toolbox at all but a large plastic storage container with a tight-fitting lid, the sort of thing Maeve herself uses to store Christmas decorations in the off-season, tucked away under her basement stairs.
Maeve cracks the box’s lid and pulls it back.
On top, there’s the tarp that Dan left behind, which Karo has folded up like a parcel: Maeve pulls this out first. Tucked inside, surplus flares and two cans of bear spray. In the tool bin proper there are a couple of cans of fire starter, a flashlight, six more flares, two neon safety vests, a small hacksaw, an ice pick, a camp stove. A bottle purifier plus two packs of tablets. A blue zip case for first aid containing latex gloves and bandages, disinfectant, a splint, a pharmacy bottle of penicillin. At the bottom of the tub, buried, she finds the fluorescent trail markers along with two rolls of duct tape.
But no snowshoes, not inside the tub or anywhere in the room. She swears under her breath: Dan has locked the extra pairs away. When she combs through the desk, she finds an envelope marked storage keys—but it’s empty and she realizes he’s taken the keys with him. The two women are not supposed to go outside, and this is another way for him to control that, even from a distance.
She pulls on a heavy coat she finds hanging on the back of the door and sinks her hands into the deep pockets. Her own boots, meant for city snow and warmer climes, will have to do.
She grabs a roll of duct tape instinctively—once, in an emergency, Maeve used half a roll to repair her pointe shoes; more than once, she’s used it to wrap a sore ankle—then pulls out a handful of other items: the tie-on trail markers, a can of bear spray in a holster, a neon vest to strap over her coat. The blinding whiteout of her dream is still fresh in her mind. She can feel herself groping through it, as visceral as a real memory. She layers up, a pair of Karo’s mittens over her own gloves, her hood pulled up over top of a wool hat, the safety vest as an extra measure. If things go sideways, she wants to be sure that Karo will see her from the door.
Her breath in the dream, coming sharp and frozen. She has to tell herself off, shake the feeling away.
“You’re ready to head out on expedition,” Karo says when she emerges, puffed up like a child in a snowsuit. Her tone is oddly suspicious.
“I enjoy expecting the worst,” Maeve says. She adds some wood to the fire and shifts the waning pile a little closer to the hearth. Looking back at Karo, she tries to gauge her state of mind. “I’ll be within sight of the center the whole time—you’ll be able to track me in this beautiful vest.” She offers a twirl, and the frown line at Karo’s brow relaxes, at least a little bit.
Success, Maeve thinks. But she lingers, a piece of tinder in her hand, wondering if she should use it to wedge the door open. Just in case Karo can’t manage it by the time she gets back.
Karo follows her eyes to the latch.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “I won’t leave you stranded. We can’t afford to lose any heat to an open door.” Using the cane, she pulls herself across the lobby to see Maeve out the back way. It’s a small reassurance.
Outside, Maeve feels less secure. Remembering the elk’s sudden flight earlier in the day, she avoids the trees and walks around the building, following the route Anna must have forged between the doors, although there is no discernible path anymore. There’s no evidence of Anna at all: she scans for the shoes Anna might have thrown off, the storm lantern she must have brought down with her, but any trace is long buried. New flurries dust her jacket and she shifts her weight, trying to keep her balance. She feels like she’s sinking with every step.
At the front window, she waves and then checks to see if Karo is waving back, but the glare of daylight and all that white on the ground makes the window a mirror. All Maeve sees is a figure she knows must be herself, her face buried within her hood, the neon X of the vest across her chest. She leans in and visors her hands against the glass to look inside: Karo is nestled back on the couch, absently tending the fire with a long stick. Maeve knocks on the window and Karo glances up, lifts a hand in greeting. It’s enough to allow Maeve to move on, the knowledge that Karo will at least be able to see and hear her when she needs to be let back inside.
She pushes forward in the direction of the road. The snow underfoot is
denser now, hard-packed, and she tries to find a way to walk on top of it rather than forcing her way through, the frozen crust occasionally and suddenly breaking under her weight. Somewhere under here is the circular drive where the shuttle driver left her in the pouring rain—after telling her the rain itself was not to be trusted.
Can’t predict nothing anymore, not around here.
Maeve squints up at the clouds. How could that have been only a week ago? Has she lost track completely? She tries to count back in her mind while plowing forward with her body through the drifts, hips tightening against it and her thighs starting to burn. She can see the trail the others made the day before already filling in, but it makes a deep enough cut through the white and she moves herself into it and shakes the snow off her legs. Turning back to see how far she’s come, then pressing on, down to where the road used to lead, serpentine, to the main gates below. She pulls out her trail markers and reaches high to tie one on, then stops there, staring out. She tries to imagine the others on their trek: Dan out in front, Justin struggling to match his pace, Sadie keeping as close to Sim as she can.
And Anna gone, just gone. The curve of the bear claw in her pocket, hitched against her hip—a joke, in the end. It breaks her heart a little, the feel of it there. A memento, planted by a friend. Something to trigger a dream, and the dream just an image to record, to recycle, to make into something new.
All that time Maeve was sure it was a threat, evidence some man had been in her room—and the only real intruder had been Sadie. Sadie with her camera.
No wonder she’s been dogged by a feeling of something there, looming over her. Somewhere in her subconscious, she knew.
But if Maeve was Sadie’s main target, why did Anna’s death have such an impact on the girl? Why did Sadie need to find that camera right away? Her first thought, her first opportunity. Because she was embarrassed or guilty—because she felt it incriminated her somehow?
The truth is, if not for the avalanche and everything that came after, Maeve would never have found out—and Anna herself would hardly have cared that she was being filmed. She might even have wanted to use the footage, a different angle to add to her own. The only person who really hates cameras is Dan.
The Retreat Page 20
