The Team

by J L Raven

  She was dead.

  My shrieks echoed off the trees. I thrashed, wanting only to get away. But gravity was a bitch, and even when I grabbed the line and tried to pull myself up, I just slid back into her corpse again.

  “Lauren! Yasmine!” Adam shouted.

  Oh fuck. If he tried to come down, he’d hit me, and we’d both be killed. “Don’t come down! There’s a tree on the line!”

  “Are you okay?”

  Yasmine’s head drooped onto her shoulder, blood dripping from the wound in her head. A helmet wouldn’t have saved her. But if she hadn’t shoved me out of the way in her rush to escape, I would have gone down the line first.

  I shut my eyes so I didn’t have to look at her. “No,” I called back. “Yasmine’s hurt.”

  She was more than hurt. She was dead. But for some reason I didn’t want to yell the news at Adam, to hear the word dead echo through the forest.

  “Hang on! I’m going to try to get there on foot!” Adam yelled. The rugged terrain meant it would take Adam a while to get to me. It might, if he was lucky, shield him from any bullets.

  I had to get down.

  I tilted my head back and took deep breaths. The scent of blood mingled with the sap of the fir tree in the cold, clear air, and it was all I could do not to throw up. Yasmine was between me and the tree; there was no way to reach it without touching her.

  Oh God.

  Swallowing back my bile, I forced my eyes open. There were enough branches on the tree, and it was at enough of an angle, that I thought I could make it down if I reached the trunk.

  I let go of the line, and the pulley slid down the few inches separating me from Yasmine. It took some maneuvering, but I managed to get one hand wrapped around a sturdy branch. From there, I was able to brace one foot on another branch, then another.

  The whole time, I was careful not to look at anything but the tree. To block out the sight of her body. But when I finally unclipped the harness and swung my whole weight onto the tree and away from Yasmine, my arms and legs started shaking so badly I couldn’t do anything but cling in place.

  Adam’s shout rang down the slope. “Oh my God!”

  I peeled open my eyes, saw him half-climbing, half-sliding down the slope. He must have spotted Yasmine’s body.

  I dragged a breath of freezing air into my lungs and began to climb down the trunk. If the tree had still been upright, there was no way I could have made it. Then again, if it had been upright, we would have zoomed right past it. Crossed the ravine.

  Made it out.

  I dropped the final few feet, just as Adam arrived. He stared up at Yasmine’s body, mouth fixed open in horror. The snow beneath her was scarlet.

  Then he crumpled. A shrill, keening sound came from his throat, going on and on and on.

  My knees refused to hold me. I collapsed into the snow as well, bowed my head, and listened to the sound of his grief echo through the woods.

  “The killer must have left,” I said, after what seemed like forever. “Otherwise, he could have just shot us down here.”

  Adam had fallen silent a while ago. At the sound of my voice, he looked at me as though he’d never seen me before. “They’re all dead.” He blinked slowly, lower lip trembling. “My friends. My team. They’re dead.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t understand. I met Rick the first day of college. Melissa in class a week later. Y-Yasmine…” His eyes flickered in the direction of the bloody snow, then he jerked his head to the side. “It wasn’t…it wasn’t supposed to end like this.”

  “How was it supposed to end?” I asked softly.

  “I don’t know!” He surged to his feet, paced a short distance, then stopped. “I was going to get married! Run for congress! Call the shots!” He closed his eyes, took a deep breath. When he opened them again, he seemed calmer. “I still am. This isn’t the end. I’m still alive.”

  I rose slowly to my feet. “Do you really think we can still get out of here?”

  He nodded. The bright morning sunlight fell through the trees, unforgiving. I could see the redness in his eyes, the grime on his skin, the twigs and bark caught in his hair. He looked like a madman, or someone who’d been in the wilderness for a month, not less than a week.

  “Do you remember the ice wall by the falls?” he asked. “I can climb it.”

  A chill settled in my bones. “Okay. But I can’t.”

  “I’ll help you.” Sensing my hesitation, he offered me a winning smile. “Don’t worry. It’s not as hard as it looks.”

  “What about…” I glanced up the slope, in the direction of the silent trees.

  “Maybe he thinks we escaped. That’s why he gave up.”

  I didn’t reply. It seemed insanely optimistic to think someone who had put this much time and effort turning a simple team-building retreat into hell would just give up. Maybe Adam was just trying to cope.

  Snow clung to my knees, and I dusted it off. “Okay. It’s not like we have any other options.”

  “I knew I could count on you.” Adam clapped me on the arm. “We’re going to get through this, Lauren. You and me. We just have to go back to the lodge, get the climbing gear, and head for the falls.”

  He let his arm drop and started back up the slope. I watched him for a moment, wondering if he’d had some kind of mental break. Or maybe he was just compartmentalizing his grief until we were out of here, at which point he’d lose it completely.

  I took one last glance up at Yasmine. Then I turned away and followed Adam back toward the lodge.

  By the time we arrived back at the lodge, I was starving. Any energy I’d gained from the last meal I’d eaten had vanished, used up by adrenaline and exertion. I’d read somewhere people used more calories in the cold anyway, even when they were equipped for it.

  We entered cautiously, on high alert for an attack. But a thorough search revealed nothing out of place. All the windows and doors remained locked.

  “We’re going to need to replenish some energy before we tackle the ice,” Adam said when we were back in the main room. “At least the psycho left us coffee. I’ll get some camp coffee going over the fire.” He hesitated. “We might find some heat-and-eat meals in the freezer…”

  The thought of going anywhere near Rick’s body made me queasy. But Adam was right. The ice climb would be dangerous enough without adding low blood sugar to it. “I’ll see what I can scrounge up.”

  I made sure not to look at Rick when I opened the freezer door. I kept one foot outside, leaning in as far as I could. There were a couple of containers of frozen soup within arm’s reach, so I snagged them and let the door fall shut again. It took some chipping with a knife to get the soup out of the containers and into a cast-iron pot that could be put over the fire.

  I carried a couple of spoons, some napkins, and the pot of frozen soup back to the main room. “Just in time,” Adam said with a smile. He held out a cup of coffee toward me. “Trade you.”

  We swapped, the cup for the pot. As he settled it over the flames, I took a sip of the coffee. The taste was terrible, far worse than when Tiffany had made it, and it was full of grounds.

  “How is it?” Adam asked.

  “Fine,” I lied. At least it was hot and had plenty of caffeine, which was the point. With any luck, the next cup of coffee I had would be a latte back in civilization, and all this would just be a memory.

  While Adam thawed the soup, I wandered a few feet away, staring around at the room. The welcome banner still hung on the wall, encouraging us to play to win. The glass wall looked out onto a winter wonderland. Sunlight sparkled on the snow, and cardinals flitted through the firs. The view wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Christmas card.

  It wasn’t going to last long. An ominous line of clouds was still coming in from the west. An hour or two from now, the sun would be gone again. Would we get more snow? And how would that affect the ice climb?

  A wave of exhaustion swept over me. I took a bigger
gulp of coffee to counteract it, doing my best to ignore the bitter taste and grainy texture. My gaze left the view outside, took in the interior: the open space where we’d played at crossing an imaginary river, the unmanned bar, the empty chairs.

  “It feels so big now,” I murmured. When Adam cast me a look, I said: “The room.”

  Or at least, I tried to say it. What came out was a slurred jumble of syllables.

  What was happening to me? Why did I feel so damn tired all the sudden?

  I took a stumbling step toward the fireplace and ended up on one knee. The coffee cup slipped from my hands, and spilled across the rug. The residue didn’t look right: white grains mixed in with the grounds.

  Adam had drugged me.

  I should have been suspicious the moment he offered to do something for me. Adam didn’t do things for other people; they did things for him.

  I went to the floor, head spinning. “What…?” I managed to get out.

  Adam held up an orange pill bottle. “Yasmine’s sleeping pills. I knew she keeps…kept…them in her makeup case. Which of course she’d left behind; she couldn’t really take it with her on the zip line, could she?”

  I fought to stay awake, to get up. I made it to my elbows and no further. “Why?” I slurred.

  “I can’t die out here,” Adam said, as if explaining a simple, incontrovertible fact. “I have too much to live for. I’ve got a real life waiting for me, not just an existence like most people have. So I’m going to leave you somewhere obvious. Somewhere the killer is bound to see you. He won’t be able to pass up the bait. While he’s distracted with you, I can make a break for it. By the time he realizes what’s going on, I’ll already be gone.”

  Rage fired adrenaline through me, but it wasn’t enough to counteract the pills. “You son of a bitch,” I tried to say, but my tongue refused to cooperate. The world was getting dark, as if the clouds had swept in, and my eyelids weighed a million pounds apiece.

  My last, blurry glimpse was of Adam’s face leaning over me. “No hard feelings,” he said. “This is just the way it has to be.”

  Then my eyes slid shut, and the world disappeared.

  Twenty-Six

  Cold.

  Consciousness dripped back slowly, filling up my skull drop by drop. Cold. Stiffness. Pain.

  Christ, I was freezing.

  My lids seemed to scrape my corneas when I opened my eyes. My head pounded, and the taste in my mouth was beyond foul. Nausea clawed at the back of my throat, and I shut my eyes again. Took a deep breath. Another.

  Okay. I was seated upright, my legs stretched in front of me. Something cold and damp touched my cheeks. I tried to wipe it away, only to discover my arms were bound to my sides.

  Adam. He’d drugged me. And now I was tied up like a prize turkey at Thanksgiving.

  My eyes snapped open, and I looked about frantically. Climbing rope looped around my chest and arms several times, binding me securely to a tree on the edge of the driveway. My bright clothing stood out starkly against the snow; if our stalker so much as glanced this way, I’d be spotted.

  Other things might be out there in the woods, too. Bears? They’d be hibernating at this time of year, wouldn’t they? I wasn’t sure.

  The dark clouds had moved in while I was unconscious, and snow sifted down. Light now, but what if it got heavier? If the stalker didn’t find me, or bears didn’t eat me, the cold would do me in for sure.

  As my mind cleared, the full impact of what Adam had done settled over me. What was it Tom had said, when he’d told me to come here in his place? “This could be your big break. The chance to make friends with senior management…well, I’ll be honest, I’m jealous.”

  Tom wouldn’t be jealous if he could see me now. Adam, Yasmine, Melissa, Rick…none of them had friends except each other, and barely even then. They’d moved in their own charmed world of money and power. People like me—people like Theodora Lamb and the others who had gotten sick from X-ULT—were only there to be used. They hadn’t hesitated to shove me out of the way, to abandon me.

  And now I was going to freeze to death out here, or get eaten by bears, or God only knew what, because Adam had decided his life mattered more. Maybe this was his idea of teamwork: I stay here and die, and he gets away. I didn’t think Tiffany would approve.

  Where was Adam now? I had no idea how much time had passed. Had he made it to the falls? Climbed out over the wall of ice?

  Had he gotten away?

  I ground my teeth together, and a wave of fury washed the last of the fuzziness from my brain. That wasn’t going to happen. Adam might think he could just leave me here to die and go back to his old life, but he was dead wrong.

  I drew up my knees and felt the press of the scissors in the zipper pocket of my pants. Either it hadn’t occurred to Adam to search me, or else he’d figured the stalker would murder me long before I could get loose.

  Wrong again.

  The rope around me was secure but not tight. I wriggled around until my gloved fingers brushed the zipper on the pocket. Gritting my teeth in concentration, I managed to just grasp the pull, only to have it slip free from my shaking hands.

  Damn it. I took a deep breath and tried again. This time, I kept hold. The angle was terrible, and the zipper jammed several times, but eventually I had it open far enough for the scissors to slide out.

  I caught the scissors before they fell out of reach. Again, the angle was bad, and the rope resistant to cutting, but I had no choice but to be patient. Thank God Tiffany or someone had thought to sharpen the blades.

  Finally, the rope loosened, then fell free. I yanked it away and stumbled to my feet. I was stiff from the cold and from being in one position for too long, and my arms and legs tingled as blood rushed into them.

  Adam’s footprints churned the area. He’d dragged me to the tree, tied me up, then gone back into the lodge, probably for the climbing gear. From there, his prints led to the trail we’d taken to the falls just a few days ago.

  Clutching the scissors tight in my hand, I followed him into the woods.

  The snowfall grew thicker, and the wind picked up. The trees moaned, branches giving way under the strain, the sharp cracks sounding like gunshots in the forest. I could still make out Adam’s footprints with ease, though if I’d slept for even a half hour more, that might not have been the case. Not that it would have mattered—I knew exactly where he was going.

  My heart drummed in my chest, and my fingers ached from gripping the scissors so hard. I had only the vaguest idea of what I’d do if Adam hadn’t yet escaped the inholding. Movement had warmed me up a little, but that would only last so long. My stomach gnawed on my spine—had Adam taken the time to eat the soup before he left, to give himself strength? If so, he might not be too far ahead of me.

  Between hunger and cold, anger was the only thing propelling me forward. I listed Adam’s sins, stoking the fires of rage that were the only warmth I had out here in the snowy wilderness.

  He’d profited from death, from pain, from tears. Self-absorbed, a liar, who didn’t care about anything but money and power. He’d even been willing to stab members of his precious team in the back, tossing aside stupid, love-lorn Yasmine because she didn’t have the political connections he craved.

  And he’d gotten away with all of it. He was rich, from a rich family, just like the rest of them. Drunk driving, developing dangerous products, ruining people’s lives—none of it ever stuck.

  No wonder he’d been so willing to leave me in the snow to die. If I’d been killed by a madman, it wouldn’t have affected Adam’s life. He’d climb out over the ice, find the park rangers, and be hailed a hero. Probably sell his story to the networks, the movies. A book deal. He’d doubtless sue the owner of the inholding for good measure—maybe he’d actually miss Yasmine once he got to court.

  The creek Melissa had stumbled into had completely frozen over by now. The protruding rocks, capped with snow, reminded me of the river where she had dro
wned. Maybe her death would bring some peace to the grandson of the woman she’d killed while driving drunk. I hoped so.

  I couldn’t see running water through the ice and snow, but the creek wouldn’t have frozen all the way to the bottom so quickly. I didn’t want to repeat her mistake, so even though I wanted nothing more than to hurry across and maybe catch up with Adam, I forced myself to go slow. The snow slid under my boots as I stepped rock-to-rock, and my arms windmilled to keep my balance, but I made it.

  As soon as I was on the other bank, I stopped to catch my breath. I glanced at Adam’s tracks in the snow—and froze.

  A line of snowshoe tracks emerged from the woods and fell in behind his.

  No wonder I’d been left tied up alone in the cold. Adam’s little ploy hadn’t worked after all.

  I grinned, my chapped lips cracking in the dry air. There was no escape. We had the bastard right where we wanted him.

  I followed their trail with new energy. The land sloped sharply up after the creek, toward the bluff where we’d viewed the falls. My boots had thick treads, but the snow broke free every few feet, and I slid down again. I swore and grabbed the nearest trees and branches, hauling myself up by sheer force.

  The roar of the falls grew steadily louder as I clambered and slid my way up. About halfway to the top of the slope, the snowshoe tracks split off. Making for higher ground? A gunshot or two might convince Adam to abandon his climb.

  I shook my head. No point worrying about it now. I’d bitten my tongue for six solid days, but no more. I wanted nothing more than to confront Adam, to let him know exactly what I thought of him and his team.

  By the time the ground leveled off and the trees gave way to rock, I was panting with effort. Adrenaline kept me going, but the long days and nights had taken their toll. I was exhausted, shaky with hunger, and cold to the bone.

  But it didn’t matter. It would all be over soon.

  I stepped out of the trees. Adam crouched near the edge of the bluff, the cliff with its wall of ice towering above him. He was in the process of attaching a saw-toothed pick to the curved handle of the ice tool used for climbing. A second one was already assembled.