by Sara Grant
I straddled the wall and reached down for Mackenzie. She clasped my hand with both of hers. Together I hoisted and she climbed, and at last, she was sitting next to me. She tried to hug me but I batted her away. “Look!”
The goggled figure who had threatened Mackenzie with the ice dagger had broken free and was racing out of the maze. The man in the silver suit was hot on his heels.
“We can’t let them get away,” I told Mackenzie and pulled her to her feet.
“Are you crazy?” Mackenzie shouted. “Of course we can.”
“We need to stop this once and for all.” That’s what Grandma had said the last time we saw her. We needed to find out who was after Mackenzie or they would just keep coming. I hopped down and raced after them. Soon I could hear the crunch of Mackenzie’s steps behind me.
As we burst through the maze’s exit, I spotted the two figures heading towards the lake. The moment Mackenzie caught up to me, I grabbed her hand, and we followed. She protested with every step, but TnT had lost Katrina once, and I wouldn’t let her get away again.
Katrina.
Her name had popped into my brain like the answer to a multiple-choice test question. That’s who I thought was behind those goggles. I had no idea who was following her in the silver snowsuit, but I was going to find out.
On the lake’s shore was a line of snowmobiles. We were in the middle of nowhere and the resort kept the keys in the ignitions. I thought they were crazy, but Mr Ashworth said they’d never lost a snowmobile – until now.
The baddies wasted no time. They each stole a snowmobile and zipped off around the lake and into the snowy fog. They sort of resembled astronauts in their snowsuits and helmets.
“Hop on,” I told Mackenzie when we reached a snowmobile. I chucked a helmet and goggles at her and strapped mine on.
“I’m driving.” Mackenzie slipped to the front of the seat. I didn’t have time to argue, although my stomach lurched at the memory of her horrible yacht-driving skills in the Maldives.
I jumped on behind her and hooked my arms around her middle as we took off with a jolt. “Follow those snowmobiles!” I shouted.
But she didn’t.
“What are you doing?” I shrieked. Could she hear me? I leaned forward and pointed to the snowmobile tracks that veered around the lake’s edge. She shook her head and steered us straight on to the lake.
“They’re getting away,” I screamed. I clutched her arms and tried to steer the snowmobile in the right direction, but she elbowed me away. I slid on the seat and wrapped my arms around her middle again to keep from being flung off.
If she wanted to go for help, why wasn’t she heading to the lodge? All that was ahead of us was the lake and then miles of wilderness. Maybe her near-murdered experience had caused her to snap. I couldn’t blame her if she’d lost her mind. I hadn’t had the dagger to my throat and I was pretty freaked out by this whole ice-murder thing.
I hugged her waist in my attempt to tell her everything was OK. I understood. She was right not to follow the bad guys. What was I going to do if I caught them anyway? Once again, Mackenzie’s logic had probably saved my life.
We bounced across the frozen lake. We hit a bump and skidded one way and then the other. Mackenzie gripped the handlebars of the snowmobile, and I held on to her for dear life. We nearly tipped over, but we managed to lean our weight in the opposite direction. We slammed back on to the ice. I was surprised when she didn’t slow down. She actually revved the engine.
She pointed straight ahead.
“Woohoo!” I shouted as I realized that she had taken a shortcut across the lake, and we were on a collision course with the bad guys.
Dead ahead a snowdrift blocked our way. I would have known to veer around it. But Mackenzie bore down and tried to power through it. Big Mistake! The problem was what looked like a harmless pile of snow was actually a ramp of ice. We charged up it and…
“AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!”
we screamed as we became airborne. I leaned us forward and flattened us as much as possible to the seat. We crashed down again.
“Woohoo!” Mackenzie shouted.
I would make a daredevil out of her yet.
But our victory was short-lived.
CRACK!
The sound like thunder came from below, not above, us. We scanned our surroundings searching for the source of the sound. Mackenzie turned her head and the handlebars simultaneously, zigzagging us along the lake.
I held her shoulders forward to send her the message to drive straight. She did. I glanced back and wished I hadn’t.
I understood immediately what the cracking sound was. A huge hole had opened in the lake’s surface where we had crash-landed.
But that wasn’t the worst thing.
The worst thing was that our speeding snowmobile was acting like a zipper and splitting an icy crevice through the frozen lake.
“Faster!” I shouted to Mackenzie.
She shook her head.
I debated whether to tell her about our deadly dilemma. Would she hear me through her helmet and over the roar of the engine? I wished I didn’t know that we were only a few feet away from an ice-watery grave.
CRACK!
“Faster!” I shouted again. Mackenzie must have realized what was happening, because the snowmobile lurched forward and jerked me backwards with the force of our speed. My head slammed the seat behind me. I viewed the scene upside down, but the danger was unmistakable. We were barely outrunning the breaking ice!
My stomach churned and threatened to turn inside out as Mackenzie pushed the snowmobile to its max. I imagined the lake opening and swallowing us into its icy depths. We’d be weighed down by the snowmobile and our snow gear. If we hit the water, we wouldn’t survive. Would we freeze or drown first? I didn’t want to die that way. I didn’t want to die PERIOD.
The snowmobile shuddered, making my teeth chatter. My body was slammed every which way, but I didn’t care. The thick rough ice was the shoreline and it meant we were safe.
“Woohoo!” I shouted and loosened my death grip around Mackenzie. “You did it!” I dared a look behind me and nearly fell off. A huge hole had opened in the lake only a few feet from the shore. We must have been inches from being icicles.
With our focus on survival, we’d lost track of the bad guys. I scanned the forest ahead and glimpsed something moving too fast to be an animal. I pointed. Mackenzie nodded. Mackenzie revved the engine and took off. I guessed she didn’t want us to have almost died for nothing. Between the shower of snow from the sky and the spray of snow from the chase, I could barely see. I wiped at my goggles and smeared water across my field of vision. I could only see one snowmobile. Maybe the other one was too far ahead or maybe it got away all together.
Mackenzie slowed to avoid crashing into trees. At this speed we’d never catch the bad guy. I think it was the one in the silver suit. I spotted a clearing to our right. Instead of following, we’d cut him off at the pass. I pointed and shouted my idea to Mackenzie who did exactly as I instructed.
Soon we were on a crash course with our attacker in silver. By the time the driver spotted us it would be too late. I positioned myself on the seat so I was ready to spring into action. The second Mackenzie steered in close enough, I charged at the silver-suited figure and knocked us both off. I expected a fight. I moved quickly, pinning the figure to the ground. I raised my fist, prepared to strike, but the figure raised his arms in surrender.
Mackenzie circled back and parked the snowmobile next to me and my prisoner. She tumbled off the snowmobile. She tossed her helmet and gloves and took huge gulps of air.
“Are you ready to meet the killer?” I asked Mackenzie. My hands were shaking with fear and excitement. Was this Katrina? I removed the helmet and goggles and gasped. It was a black woman I’d never seen before. Mackenzie stumbled over.
“Mum?” Mackenzie said and knocked me off the woman.
Wait … did she say mum?
In a
nswer to my question, Mackenzie hauled the woman to her feet and collapsed into a hug. “Are you OK?” Mackenzie asked.
The woman nodded. “I’ve missed you so much.” There was no question that they were mother and daughter. They had the same curly hair and facial features, except Mackenzie’s mum was pumped up like an action figure while Mackenzie was Barbie.
This woman had something to do with sending my mom to prison. Mixed with the adrenaline from the chase was anger. I clenched my fists. Was the woman in front of me partially responsible for robbing me of my mom? The longer they hugged the more I felt the heat of my anger. It wasn’t fair. That thought looped on repeat in my brain.
“What are you doing here?” I blurted. That got their attention. Their hug slipped into holding hands.
“Chase, this is my mum.” Mackenzie bounced with excitement. “Mum, this is Chase.”
“Marilyn,” she said and extended her hand. I shook it once and then rubbed my palm again and again on my snowsuit.
When I spoke, I tried to smooth the jagged edges in my voice. “Why were you chasing us?”
“You clever girl, you’ve spotted me a few times over the last few days, didn’t you?” She smiled the same smile as Mackenzie.
So she was the stalker I’d seen lurking around the Winter Wonder Resort. I wasn’t imagining things. “I told you someone was watching us,” I said to Mackenzie.
“When I saw you leaving the lodge, I was finally going to talk to you,” Mackenzie’s mum continued. “But you ran away and then I saw that person chasing you…” She scanned her surroundings. “I shouldn’t have come here, but after everything that happened in the Maldives, I had to see for myself that my beautiful girl was OK.” She kissed Mackenzie on the cheek. “I know I’m supposed to be publically grieving for my dead daughter. I told everyone that I needed a break. You can’t blame a mother for caring about her only child.”
Ugh! They were hugging again. I’d never had any experience with a mother-daughter relationship. I was happy for Mackenzie, but I also felt that all-too-familiar ping of jealousy I always felt with any mother-daughter thing. I remembered the email I’d sent to my mom.
Mackenzie rode with her mum and I followed on my own snowmobile. We went around the lake this time. We parked the snowmobiles where we’d found them.
“I must leave you two here,” Marilyn said, but I could tell it was the last thing in the known and unexplored universe that she wanted to do. “I’m going to go for help. I’ll watch until you are safely in the lodge. I want you to collect everyone in the lobby.” She took Mackenzie’s hand again. “If everyone stays together then you should be safe. Can you do that?”
I didn’t nod. She couldn’t show up and boss me around.
“Why don’t you stay with us?” Mackenzie begged.
“Grandma’s missing,” I told her. “Shauna said Grandma was going for help, but we’ve tried calling her and she doesn’t answer and she left a long time ago and there’s a killer on the loose and…”
“I’ll go for help and search for Ariadne,” Marilyn said. “I’ll drag the police here if I have to. I don’t want you girls worrying about it. I’ll take care of everything.” She opened her arms, offering me a hug, but I flinched away.
“Thanks and whatever.” I could take care of myself.
“You look so much like your mum,” Marilyn said. “Looking at the two of you, it’s like I’m looking at a picture of me and Bea when we were your age.”
It hurt for her to talk about my mom. I vowed that Mackenzie and I wouldn’t turn out like our moms. We would stay friends for ever.
They hugged again.
“Come on,” I told Mackenzie.
“You need to go,” Marilyn said. I pulled Mackenzie away.
“Be careful,” she told her mum.
“Love you,” they said at the same time.
Gross!
Mackenzie and I walked to the lodge in silence. At least we’d solved one mystery.
We could hear shouting before we even entered the lodge.
“Enough!”
Mackenzie and I flinched at the anger in the shouted voice. Was that the voice of a killer? The lodge’s lobby was deserted. We crouched behind the reception desk and then crawled around it.
“I expect this entire storage area to be ship-shape by the time I return.”
I recognized Mr Ashworth’s voice. Mackenzie and I dived into the nearest office when we heard his pounding footsteps heading our way. We waited until he’d stomped across the lobby before we approached the storage room.
“Looks like we can cross the Ashworths off our suspect list,” Mackenzie whispered to me when we saw the state of the storage room. Everything had been pulled off the shelves. The boys were crawling around on the floor arranging the snow boots by size.
I nodded. “They must have been here since we left.”
“Hi,” I said as Mackenzie and I stepped into the room.
“What are you two losers doing here?” Toby said. “I thought you’d have caught the killer by now.”
“We were almost the next victims,” Mackenzie said.
Both boys were on their feet and at our side. “Really?” “Are you OK?” “What happened?” They fired questions at us, and we answered every one.
“Have you guys been trapped in here with your dad this entire time?” I asked, not so subtly double-checking their alibis.
They nodded.
Then I remembered the conversation that was cut short with Taylor. “You were telling me about the ghost that haunts the Ingenium lake seeking revenge—”
“What?” Mackenzie blurted. “You never said anything about…”
“We were sort of trying to not die,” I said. “I’m telling you now.”
“Why did you tell them about the legend?” Toby punched his brother.
“Katrina’s article,” Taylor said and rubbed his sore arm. “It sounded like that legend. The dead girl was covered in our school colours.”
“Former school,” Toby added.
“Before Blake passed out, he said the word revenge,” I told them.
“Oooooo, spooky,” Toby said.
“Could the legend be real?” I asked. “Were Lucinda, Alexia, Blake or Katrina mixed up in it?”
“Wait,” Toby said, “are you serious?”
I nodded.
“You think that this is payback for a girl who drowned five years ago at Ingenium?” Toby asked.
“What do you know about it?” I asked, and we instinctively huddled closer together.
“I asked my dad about it once,” Toby said. “He told me that two girls were taken out at night, covered in paint and then dumped in the school lake as a harmless prank, but one of the girls didn’t know how to swim.”
None of us knew what to say for a long time. A prank had gone horribly wrong. I wondered if we were all thinking about the stupid pranks we’d pulled. What if something had gone wrong and someone had got hurt? “It was an accident, right?” I said.
The boys shrugged.
“Who would want to seek revenge for the drowned girl?” Mackenzie asked.
“This might have happened about the time that Alexia, Blake and Katrina were at school,” Taylor said.
“Yeah, and Lucinda would have been headmistress then,” Toby added.
“And covered it up,” Mackenzie finished our theory.
Well, almost… “Lucinda would definitely have covered it up if her granddaughter was responsible for someone dying.”
“So I can see why Alexia and Lucinda would be targeted but what about Blake and Katrina?” Mackenzie asked.
Then it all snapped into place. “What if Katrina was the other girl in the lake?”
“So she was going to make the people responsible for her friend’s death pay?” Mackenzie added.
“Yeah, and then she was going to write a story and tell the world,” Toby said. “We’ve solved it!”
We high-fived each other, but it didn’t quite feel r
ight to be celebrating when we found out about something so tragic. One terrible, horrible accident had led to Lucinda’s death and a lot of other near-deaths.
“Doesn’t Katrina see that she’s no better than Lucinda and Alexia?” I said.
“Worse,” Toby said. “The girl in the lake was an accident. Katrina killed Mrs Sterling in cold blood.”
“I don’t know what I’d do if someone hurt my brother,” Taylor admitted.
We nodded, even though we must have realized how wrong revenge was. What would I do if someone hurt my dad or grandma or Mackenzie?
“This has to stop and it has to stop now,” I said. “You guys go tell your father everything and gather everyone in the lobby. We are going to form a search and rescue party. We know who the murderer is. If we stick together we should be able to find her, right?”
“We should tell Shauna,” Mackenzie said. “Have you seen her?”
Toby and Taylor looked at each other as if they were collectively trying to remember.
“She was heading out in her snow gear as Dad was hauling us in here,” Taylor added. “She said something to Dad about the ice hotel.”
“You round up everyone else,” I said, “and we’ll find Shauna.” I grabbed Mackenzie’s hand and led her outside. I punched open the lodge’s front door.
“There!” Mackenzie pointed to the faint impression of footprints in the snow ahead, leading directly to the ice hotel. “Maybe those belong to Shauna.”
Or Katrina, I thought but didn’t say. We followed the trail.
I burst into the ice hotel lobby, calling for Shauna.
A figure shifted from behind Sven’s sculpture of Cupid.
I stopped dead in my snowy tracks. Mackenzie ploughed right into me.
“What the…” she started but her voice trailed away.
“Stay back!” It was Katrina.
I raised my hands in surrender. How could I continue to be so stupid? We survived her attack in the maze and lost her in the forest only to deliver ourselves like room service to the killer.
“Katrina, we know everything,” I blurted. “We understand — ”
“Do you?” she shrieked and broke off Cupid’s arrow, pointing the sharp edge right at my chest. “I doubt that. You set me up.”