The Team

by J L Raven

  I shrugged. “I’m the newbie, remember? I don’t know any of you well enough to say.”

  Silence followed my pronouncement. The rest of them glanced at one another, as if suddenly wondering how well they actually knew each other these days.

  “We’re wasting time,” Adam said impatiently. “Let’s find Tiffany. We’ll go in pairs. Rick and I will take the woods behind the lodge. Lauren, you and Yasmine look in front of the lodge, including around the cabins. Melissa, since your foot is bad, you’ll need to stay here.”

  “Oh hell no,” Melissa objected. “I’m not staying here by myself so some ax murderer can come in and chop me up while the rest of you are gone.”

  “Then lock the door after us,” I said. “There are knives in the kitchen—I’ll get you the biggest one before I leave. All right?”

  I could tell she wanted to argue, but at the same time, she was smart enough to know she shouldn’t be walking on her injured foot. “Fine. But before you leave, make sure every door and window is locked tight.”

  While everyone else checked the windows and doors, I went to the kitchen and pulled a big meat cleaver from the knife block, then threw the lock on the door into the kitchen. Back in the main room, I handed Melissa the cleaver. “Just the sight of that should be enough to scare off anybody,” I said encouragingly.

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Hurry up,” Adam called from the door. “If Tiffany has hypothermia, every minute counts.”

  As we left, I glanced back at Melissa. She clutched the huge knife like a lifeline, her eyes wide and wild. The flames from the fireplace reflected on the blade, turning it momentarily red, as if it had been dipped in blood.

  Fourteen

  Yasmine and I spent a fruitless hour trudging around in the snow, pausing occasionally to call Tiffany’s name. The blanket of white stretched out all around the lodge, unmarked save for our footsteps and the prints of small animals and deer. Whenever we stopped to catch our breaths, the silence that closed in was almost eerie. The only sounds were the sluff of snow sliding off an evergreen, or the startling crack of a branch giving up beneath its burden of ice. The clouds hung low and ominous, threatening more bad weather to come.

  How widespread had the storm been? The last forecast I’d seen, four days ago, only called for a few inches and no ice. If the whole region had been hit, would we be trapped here? The inholding wasn’t part of the park; the forest rangers probably didn’t even know we were here. And even if they did, they’d be busy making sure no winter campers or hikers were in trouble.

  Tiffany was out here, somewhere. God, I hoped she was okay.

  “There’s nothing,” Yasmine said at last. Her breath steamed in the freezing cold, and she’d started to shiver in her expensive coat. “Let’s go back in.”

  “Do you really think she just wandered off and got lost?” I asked as we turned back toward the lodge.

  “Of course.” Yasmine tossed her shining black hair out of her face. “Haven’t you ever watched those survival documentaries? One mistake and you’re toast. She probably got up to pee, went out in the storm, and got disoriented.”

  “But that means she’s still out there. Shouldn’t we keep looking?”

  “And get frostbite ourselves?” Yasmine clicked her tongue against her teeth. “I’m not losing my toes because she was dumb enough to wander around in a blizzard.”

  “Maybe Adam and Rick found something.”

  She shrugged. We returned to the lodge. When we opened the door, Melissa started badly, lifting the meat cleaver I’d armed her with, ready to take a swipe at anyone who came inside.

  “For fuck’s sake, put that down,” Yasmine snapped.

  “Sorry.” Melissa pressed a hand to her chest and sank back into her chair. “I’ve been jumping at every sound.” She glanced at me accusingly. “I thought you locked the front door behind you.”

  “Sorry. I forgot.”

  Yasmine went straight to the bar and poured herself a glass of wine. She didn’t offer to get either of us anything.

  “Want a drink, Melissa?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Not on an empty stomach. I’m starving.”

  “There’s probably some granola in the kitchen.”

  We sat around, crunching on granola while we waited for Adam and Rick to come back. Melissa stared out the glass wall, meat cleaver in reach, obviously on edge the whole time. After about half an hour, the men came into view, their winter coats bright against the monochrome white of the landscape.

  “Nothing,” Rick reported as they entered. “The snow’s covered any tracks.”

  I pressed my fingers into my eyes. “She’s in real trouble, then. We have to do something.”

  “Like what?” Rick headed for the bar and poured a generous amount of whiskey.

  Adam snagged a bag of granola and began crunching on it loudly. “Lauren’s right. We need to alert the authorities. Does anyone know where Tiffany kept her satellite phone?” We all shook our heads. “Okay, then. Yasmine, you and Lauren search the van. Rick and I will go through Tiffany’s cabin. Melissa, you look here in the lodge. There’s probably no cell signal, but if you find the box with our phones, grab it, too.”

  “I don’t want to stay here by myself again,” Melissa objected.

  “I can go through the van alone,” Yasmine volunteered. “It’s right outside, and there are only so many places to look. Lauren can stay in here with you.”

  The temperature in the lodge might be falling steadily, but at least I’d be out of the wind. “Sounds good to me.”

  Adam shot Yasmine a disgruntled look, as if he thought she’d been insubordinate. But he went back out onto the porch without speaking, Rick scurrying after. I couldn’t help but notice Adam had gone to great pains to make sure he and Yasmine weren’t alone together this morning. Had something happened between them last night? Another blow-up? Or had they gone back to one cabin for a round of drunken sex, which Adam was regretting now the morning after?

  Once the others had left, I turned to Melissa. “I’ll take the loft, if you want to get started down here. That should be easier on your foot.”

  She nodded. “Thanks.” Her dark eyes darted to the glass wall. “What do you think, Lauren? I mean, you saw the man standing by the road and found the blind. And Tiffany saw something the first night…but Adam does have a point, I guess, about the storm.”

  If she wanted reassurance, she’d come to the wrong person. “I think the movement Tiffany saw was someone watching us go to our cabins. Yeah, there was a storm going on last night—but this guy already knew who was in which cabin. And it gave him the perfect cover. She could have screamed her head off, and we’d never have heard it over the wind.”

  Melissa’s eyes went wide with fear. “Oh,” she said in a small voice. “Let’s…let’s just find that satellite phone.”

  I climbed the stairs. The second floor consisted of nothing more than a small loft and closet, used to store items too big to fit in the prop cabinet downstairs. It also offered the perfect place to keep anything you didn’t want the customers getting into.

  There was no trace of a satellite phone, but in the bottom drawer of a desk, I found the lockbox where Tiffany had put our cellphones.

  I tucked the box under my arm and hurried down the stairs. As I did so, Adam, Rick, and Yasmine came back inside.

  “Nothing,” Adam said in disgust. “The phones must be in here.”

  “I haven’t found anything,” Melissa said. She stood in front of the supply cabinet, a pile of gear and props at her feet. Apparently, she’d decided to empty it just to be thorough. “But I haven’t checked the kitchen or bathrooms yet.”

  “Who’d keep phones in the bathroom?” Rick asked.

  “No one.” I held up the box triumphantly as I descended the last steps. “I didn’t find the satellite phone, but I did find these.”

  “Thank God.” Adam all but yanked the box from my hands. “Where’s the key?�
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  I shrugged. “It wasn’t with the box. Tiffany might have had it on her when she disappeared.”

  “She probably had the sat phone, too.” Rick said. “Do you really think we can get a regular cell signal up here?”

  “Maybe not at the lodge, but we’ll climb a tree if we need to. Or hike out a couple of miles.” Adam tugged fruitlessly on the box, as if it might just pop open. “Someone get the ax from the woodpile. We’re going to have to break this open.”

  Adam was being optimistic if he thought we’d get a signal in easy walking distance, but there didn’t seem to be any point in saying so. Instead, I fetched the ax from the wood stacked in one corner of the porch.

  Adam put the box on the stone hearth and gripped the ax in both hands. “Don’t hit it too hard,” Yasmine said. “You don’t want to break the phones.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” he snapped.

  The first blow only served to crumple the lid. But with the second, the lock popped free. Melissa knelt and eagerly opened the box.

  The phones were gone. In their place was a single newspaper clipping with the word MURDERERS written in blood red marker in the margin.

  HERBAL SUPPLEMENT COMPANY WILL NOT FACE PENALTIES

  Agonarch, Inc., the maker of herbal supplements including Dozeaway and Fit-U-Fi, will not have to pay any fines in connection with its X-ULT line of products. Consumer advocates allege X-ULT, a popular supplement among young athletes, has caused liver damage, seizures, and even death among its users.

  The FDA briefly considered issuing a warning against use of the product, but ultimately decided against doing so. Herbal supplements are regulated as food, rather than drugs.

  One family has already announced it will bring a wrongful death lawsuit against the company. The parents of Theodora Lamb, 19, who suffered a seizure before dying last year, allege her death was linked to her use of X-ULT while training for her first marathon.

  Fifteen

  Melissa let the news article fall from her fingers. For a long moment after she stopped reading, no one said anything. Yasmine pressed her hands to her mouth, and Rick looked like he might throw up. My heart pounded, adrenaline flooding my veins, my body getting ready to fight or flee.

  But there was no one to fight and nowhere to run.

  Adam’s face flushed slowly red—then he kicked the lockbox, sending it flying into the fire. “This is bullshit!”

  Melissa crawled across the floor and grabbed her meat cleaver off the table. “I knew it.” Her voice spiraled up into hysteria. “I told you it was the man Lauren and Tiffany saw, but you wouldn’t listen! He’s been sitting up there in the blind, watching us this whole time! He came in here while we were all gone and stole the phones!”

  “And left the red balloon.” Rick looked around wildly, as if he expected a chainsaw-wielding maniac to spring out at any moment. “That wasn’t about Melissa’s DUI after all. It was about us.”

  “Oh my God,” Yasmine whispered. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”

  I shook my head and took a step back from them. “I didn’t even work for Agonarch then!” I turned my face toward the glass wall, as if I might appeal to whoever was out there. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I just do PR,” Melissa whined. “If this maniac is after anyone, it should be Rick!”

  Rick’s mouth gaped open. “What the fuck, Melissa?”

  “You’re the head of product development! You’re the one who put God-knows-what into those pills!”

  “Enough.” Adam’s voice cracked like a whip. “We can’t fight among ourselves. That’s what this person wants. We have to work together as a team.” When no one responded, he said, “Melissa, tell Rick you’re sorry.”

  Her mouth tightened. I would have been mad, too, if Adam had talked to me like I was a three-year-old. But she finally said, “Sorry, Rick.”

  “So am I,” I said. “I didn’t mean to sound like I was throwing the rest of you to the wolves.” I offered a shaky smile. “Does anyone want a drink?”

  “God, yes,” Rick muttered. Yasmine nodded mutely.

  I went to the bar. Away from the heat of the fire, the temperature dropped steeply, and I wished I’d kept my gloves on. At least the booze wouldn’t freeze, though if it got much colder in here, we wouldn’t have anything to mix it with.

  It was a stupid thing to worry about, of course, but it kept my mind occupied. Tiffany was out there somewhere in the cold, we had no way of calling for help, and the team was fraying rapidly around the edges. Worrying about the booze was almost a relief.

  “We need to figure out what to do,” Adam said as I poured. Even though he and Melissa hadn’t asked for anything, I put a drink for each of them on the tray as well.

  “I brought brandy, to help steady the nerves.” I passed out the tumblers. “That’s what Saint Bernard’s carry for alpine rescues, right?”

  “I think that’s an urban legend, but thanks anyway,” Rick said, and downed his in a single gulp.

  Yasmine seemed to have recovered from her shock. “Let’s think rationally.” She took a sip of her brandy and made a face—but she didn’t put it aside, either. “We can’t stay here and just…wait for something to happen. We have the van—can we drive it out?”

  A current of excitement ran through the group. “Did Tiffany have the keys?” I asked. “Because I don’t think modern cars are as easy to hot wire as they show in the movies.”

  “I saw them!” Melissa lunged up off the floor and limped over to the cabinet. “When I was looking for the phones, they were right here.”

  She swung the supply closet open, and sure enough, the van keys hung neatly on a hook just below the keys to the empty cabins.

  I frowned. Why hadn’t the keys been taken along with the phones? Maybe the van was sabotaged?

  “Thank God!” Rick exclaimed. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “If the van even starts,” Adam said, speaking my own thought aloud.

  No one wanted to linger in the lodge another second. We trudged out across the icy porch. The snow had started again, and the day seemed to be getting colder instead of warmer. The only sound other than the crunch of our feet was the crack of branches as they gave way beneath the heavy burden.

  The van was encased in snow and ice, but Yasmine had knocked some off the side when she searched it for the satellite phone. Adam brushed the snow off the driver’s side door, revealing a thick crust of ice. He kicked it impatiently, until it loosened enough to open the door. The interior of the van was dark as a cave, all the windows coated in inches of snow.

  We all held our breaths as he climbed into the seat. The person who had taken the phones, who was behind Tiffany’s disappearance, had surely disabled the van. There was no way it would start.

  Adam turned the key, and the engine roared to life.

  Rick leaned against the van, limp with relief. “Thank you, Jesus,” Melissa said. I kept my mouth shut, but my primary emotion was confusion. It seemed strange that the phones would be gone, but an easy way back to civilization left behind.

  Adam put the defroster on high, then climbed out. “Okay, let’s clear off the van and get out of here.”

  Yasmine, however, was eyeing the drive uncertainly. The drive, and the road beyond, were both unbroken expanses of smooth white. “Are we going to be able to get out?”

  Rick groaned. “Come on, Yasmine. Think positive.”

  “I’m thinking realistically,” she snapped. “It’s a long way back to civilization, on a winding, hilly road covered in a foot of snow over a layer of solid ice. Not to mention all of us have been drinking, without much on our stomachs. No one’s reflexes are going to be at their sharpest. Do we want to risk getting stranded someplace with no shelter? At least at the lodge we have heat and food.”

  “Are you nuts?” Melissa glanced wildly at Adam, as if afraid he’d change his mind about driving to safety. “Some crazy person has been watching us! He stole our phones.
God knows what he’s done to poor Tiffany. We have to get out of here.”

  Adam kept his gaze fixed on Yasmine. “I’m getting sick and tired of you constantly undermining me.” She flinched, but he continued relentlessly. “I’m driving us out of here. If you want to stay behind at the lodge by yourself, feel free.”

  Yasmine wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m coming.”

  “That’s what I thought. Now let’s get to work.”

  Fortunately, my borrowed gloves had originally been intended for skiing, which meant they were waterproof. Yasmine wasn’t so lucky; hers were cashmere knit and quickly soaked through. Even so, she worked as diligently as the rest of us, only stopping to strip them off and blow warmth into her fingers.

  Once the van’s windows were cleared, Rick ducked back into the lodge just long enough to shove some food and water into the backpack Tiffany had used for our hike the other day. Then we climbed inside. The heater had time to work its magic by then, and I all but groaned with the pleasure of finally, finally being truly warm again.

  Adam and Melissa were in the front, Yasmine and Rick in the middle, and I took the back seat again. Looking out at the long stretch of snow-covered road in front of us, I made sure my seatbelt was secure. Just in case.

  The tires spun on the ice, and we slipped sideways. Adam eased off the gas—then we were moving forward. Rick let out a whoop of triumph, and Melissa grinned.

  The van’s clearance was just high enough to keep the front fender from bogging down. Within a few minutes, we were down the drive and onto the road proper. I glanced back just in time for the lodge to disappear behind a wall of trees.

  “I’ll be glad if I never see that place again,” I said fervently.

  “Amen to that,” Rick agreed.

  I bit my lip. “I just hope Tiffany’s okay.”

  “The police will rescue her,” Adam said firmly. “She’ll be fine.”

  I hoped so. It was so cold. What if she was exposed? Suffering from hypothermia? Frostbite?