by Adele Huxley
A couple of confused guards wandered aimlessly, their roles and purpose forgotten in the carnage. Phoenix felt little pity as he stepped around a lifeless arm wrapped in white camo. Rescue scenes unfolded on all sides. It was like a battle zone.
A familiar voice screaming pulled him from the waking nightmare.
“What are you doing to her?”
Penny physically shoved Shaun away from where Anna lay prone. As Phoenix jogged over, it became obvious she was not in a good state.
To her credit, Penny was trying to be as gentle as possible as she searched through the woman’s pockets.
Ethan’s teammate balled his fist, ready to strike Penny from behind. Phoenix grabbed it as he cocked it back and pushed him away. The small amount of anger in his expression drained into panic as he slammed to his ass.
Phoenix stood guard as Penny continued her search. Shaun tried to protest as she unzipped her puffy black vest, but all it took was a single shift in weight to shut him up. Penny reached her hand into an inside pocket and emerged with a tiny USB drive, no bigger than his thumbnail.
She flashed him a brief, victorious smile before tucking it safely away. “Can you check her real quick?” she asked him.
Phoenix didn’t think there was much he could do, but swiftly understood the importance of keeping Shaun distracted. He knelt by her head, pushed her long, blonde hair to the side, and felt for a pulse.
“It’s time to tell me everything you know,” Penny demanded.
Shaun shook his head. Tears flowed down his cheeks as he looked everywhere but directly at Penny. “What are we going to do now?”
“You’re going to tell me what you know.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“Yes, you do. You know something.” She rocked her head to the side to drop into his line of sight. Phoenix saw his expression shift for a second before he collapsed into tears.He feebly tried to claw his way to Anna. Penny rested her hand on his arm just as he touched Anna’s leg. They froze in this odd position.
“I don’t think you’re one of them.”
Shaun’s lip quivered.
“But I think you know something.”
The muscles at his temple clenched. “Is she going to be okay?”
Phoenix knew Penny was good at a lot of things, but having a gentle touch wasn’t one of them. He jumped in before she upset him further. “She’ll be fine. Just a knock to the head.”
Shaun appeared to accept this. He released his grip on her leg and hugged himself. “It’s not how you think. I tried to get her to stop, to leave with me. With all the stuff with her coach, I thought it would be safer to just get the hell out.”
“Okay…”
“But she insisted on coming up to the Lodge before we left. Said she wanted to see it at least once.”
Penny nodded but remained silent, letting him carry on.
Shaun closed his eyes as he swallowed hard. When he opened them, he found Penny with a disturbing intensity. “The only thing she said before I convinced her to leave with me was that we shouldn’t go to the closing ceremonies. That it was good we were missing them. That’s it.”
“That’s good! That’s a huge help. Did she say anything else? Anything about having to be some place at a certain time?”
Shaun shook his head, his swimming eyes falling to the still body of his girlfriend.
Penny wouldn’t give up. “Anything? A restaurant? A terminal in the airport? Anything.”
Chapter 26
Penny felt her grip on the situation slip when she strongly considered the idea of beating the shit out of Shaun. She was so close, so much closer than she thought she’d ever be.
Overhearing that conversation in the shed was the first sign of weakness she’d sensed in any of those involved in this whole plot. Anna had allowed herself to get familiar with an unaffiliated person. Charlie had done the same, but his relationship with Claire had all been a lie. Shaun and Anna clearly cared about each other.
Penny desperately tried to control her tone and failed miserably. “What else did she tell you?”
“Nothing,” he whimpered.
She wanted to smack the pathetic out of him, to wake him up. The girl he was mooning over was willing to kill people. If it hadn’t been for the avalanche…
A shudder ripped through her body like a head-to-toe shiver. It wasn’t the cold. She could scarcely feel the chill. It was something else she had to ignore, like the pain in her ankle.
“Shaun, man. You gotta focus. Did she touch any paintings?”
The odd question snapped his attention back to her. “What?”
“Rearrange a vase of flowers?”
“You’re fucking crazy,” he sneered, pulling away. She was losing him!
Penny tried to grab the collar of his jacket to yank him back, but her frozen fingers missed. Her sharp, numb fingernails dragged across the flesh of his neck. She didn’t break the skin, but he looked at her with such disgust she may as well have tried to take a bite out of him.
“We’re all going to die if you don’t tell me everything!” she screamed.
Phoenix was at her side, hushing in her ear. “Shhh. Maybe we don’t want to be shouting that right now.”
Another violent shiver gripped her body as she tried to get away from his embrace. “He doesn’t know what he knows. If I can just talk to him…”
“Penny!”
She finally met his eyes. It was the first time since the avalanche hit she allowed herself to stop for a moment.
“Are you cold? You’re shivering.”
She shook her head absentmindedly and looked down to his chest. “No. I’m sweaty, actually.”
He unzipped his coat and wrapped the surrounding ends, barely encompassing her back. “You might be going into shock.”
Penny nodded. “I might be.” With her cheek pressed against the warmth of his chest, she scanned the area for the first time. It was horrific.
“What happened?”
Phoenix pulled away to check on her, concern flooding his features. “You don’t remember?”
She shrugged and snuggled in closer, savoring the heat. Her mind felt fuzzy and disconnected. “I do. I don’t know why I said that.” Even her voice didn’t feel like her own.
She couldn’t tell how long they sat in the cold. It felt like forever. Slowly the world came back to her, or rather, she returned to the world. The sounds of Shaun whispering softly to Anna. The screams of pain. The shouts for help. A rapid burst of gunfire a great distance away muted everything for a moment. The sound slammed all the memories into place.
“I’m okay,” she whispered as she reluctantly released her grip on him.
“Are you sure?”
“I mean, under the circumstances.” The comment sparked a fresh scan.
Two people carrying another between them walked by with purpose, as if helping him to an emergency room. But there was no help to be found.
Penny focused on a small group clumped in a circle. They were screaming and kicking at something in the middle. One of the guards.
“We have to find the button,” she muttered weakly.
Phoenix dramatically waved one arm. “Where would you even start?”
“We have to do something.” She hated how helpless and scared her voice sounded.
“Let’s go find the others,” he suggested, looping an arm around her for support.
She allowed him to guide her away a few steps before halting and looking back at Anna. “But she—”
“She’s not waking up any time soon,” he replied. The tone of his voice made it clear he thought she might not ever wake up.
Penny gave one lingering look at the couple before accepting it. She had the USB. Whatever was on it would prove more than she could get out of harassing those two.
As she allowed Phoenix to guide her to the others, she struggled to kick-start her brain into moving. Maybe an impact from the avalanche had rattled her more than she first thought.
>
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she dismissed reactively.
Phoenix slowed. “You’re limping.”
It only took him commenting on it for her to realize how badly her left ankle ached. The pain had been a dull distraction up until he brought attention to it. She deliberately put weight on it to hide how bad it was.
“I know you want to be my knight in shining armor, but honestly, I’m alright.”
Phoenix smirked but narrowed his eyes. “I’m watching you, Frost.”
The others noticed their approach. Penny looked around for Miah but didn’t see any sign of him. They stared at each other in open shock.
“What a mind-fuck, huh?” Hadley said with wide eyes.
Groups of athletes huddled together, clearly unable or unwilling to make a decision. In the distance, two had started a snowmobile and zipped toward the road and away. Some milled around, confused and dazed. Others frantically, fruitless dug into the snow to uncover people who had now simply become bodies. It seemed that most of the guards had been killed or had the good sense to flee before they were cornered.
“We should go back to the Lodge,” Rebel suggested.
“Are you nuts? That’s the last place I want to go,” Hadley balked.
“The road is wiped out up there,” Phoenix added.
Penny was so tired of Hadley’s inability to read a situation. “Why do I always have to spell this shit out for you? We’re sitting ducks here. One more earthquake and…”
“Not to mention the cold,” said Rebel.
“Jumpin’ Jesus. The next thing you’re gonna tell me, this phantom group of terrorists sent all this snow down to kill us,” Hadley sneered.
Penny nearly jumped down her throat. If it hadn’t been for the brilliant train of thought her sarcasm had triggered, she might’ve. A little scuffle, pull some hair out, blame the stress of the situation later. Instead, she grabbed Phoenix’s elbow and pulled him to the side.
“I’m going to sound nuts, but you gotta trust me for a minute,” she whispered.
Phoenix suppressed a small smile and nodded tightly. “What’s on that gorgeous little mind of yours?”
“What if this was all part of the plan from the start?”
“The avalanche?”
“The kidnapping, the avalanche, all of it.”
Phoenix pressed his lips together and shook his head. “I’m not following.”
Penny tried not to lose her temper. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t read her mind, especially when it jumped from point to point with lightning speed. “Think it through. The police and fire department down there are all bought and paid for, right? I’ve proven that. There was always a tight control over what the media is able to report. That was from the very start. That is Michel Landry 101.”
“Okay…”
“How do sixty athletes go missing for a full day without anyone coming to look for us?”
She watched his expression shift as he considered it. He probably wasn’t thinking the same thing she was, but understood there was more than met the eye. “But that’s crazy.”
“Yeah, it is, to normal people. But we aren’t dealing with normal people. I’d bet anything the world out there believes we’re trapped up at the Lodge, missing in an accident, or dead already.”
Phoenix held his hands up. “I’m seriously trying to follow you here, but this is nuts. You’re saying they wanted the avalanche to kill everyone? What about all the guys with semi-automatics? How would they explain them?”
The more she spelled out, the more sure of it all she became. “They wouldn’t have to. They control the message, the images, the scene. They come in, strip out anything that looks suspicious, and we become another tragic disaster in a long string of accidents. I heard that bitch say something about making sure the charges were set. Like, explosive charges.”
At this point, the others had inched closer and openly listened to their conversation.
Rebel lifted her hand shoulder-height as if asking a question in class. “What about the people who survived?”
Penny almost didn’t want to say it aloud, but knew if they had any chance of organizing and getting out, she had to scare them.
“Athletes have been disappearing from the start of the Unity Games. At first, I thought they simply went home. But before I slipped back into the barn, I overheard a conversation that makes me think they’ve been doing it on purpose.”
“Oh my God,” Rebel whispered as her hands flew her to mouth.
“You can’t seriously believe this!” Hadley demanded.
Penny turned her back to the bickering and spoke to Phoenix in a low voice. “Deliberate or not, we have to move. Are you with me?”
“Always.”
The lack of hesitation in his response made her heart beat double.
Hadley’s ranting hit new volumes. “Do I have to remind you what we caught her with only two days ago? Shit. Even her eyes can’t agree on one color.”
“Haddie…” Hunter started.
“I’m serious! I don’t trust her!”
Penny reached the point of no longer caring. “Fine. You don’t have to. We’re getting off this mountain and out of this country before it’s too late.”
Phoenix’s voice faded in her ears as she scanned the area for anything useful. “Anyone who wants to come with us…”
A small structure, untouched and empty. A silent countdown had begun in her mind. They would descend on this place soon and she wanted to be gone.
With a target in sight, Penny hardly noticed their path took them right past Shaun and Anna. He had to chase Penny down, snagging her sleeve a few feet away from where Anna lay.
“She did say something,” he said hurriedly, searching her eyes. “I can’t get it out of my head.”
“Right, anything!”
His eyelashes fluttered as he looked back, not quite far enough to reach her. It was as if he were betraying her trust. Penny shifted to get his mind working again. “It wasn’t just one time, but over and over she kept saying stuff like, ‘you won’t be alone now,’ or ‘at least we aren’t alone anymore.’ Weird, right?”
“Weird,” she agreed. And not at all helpful.
“I swear, I didn’t have anything to do with this.”
Penny pressed her hand over his. Against all logic, she actually believed him. “Then you need to run.”
Chapter 27
With Phoenix at her side, Penny felt like she could do anything. He knew her truth and that was all that mattered. Well, that and surviving the damn Unity Games intact. They could sort out the rest later.
She struggled to walk normally in the snow with her throbbing ankle. It couldn’t hurt. She didn’t have the time or patience to deal with an injury.
“People are coming to help us! They tell you to stay put in these situations and wait for help,” Hadley whined as she and the others followed behind.
Penny lifted her chin into the air and shouted back. “The people who survive in these situations are the ones who act.”
Her heart sank as she skirted the corner of the small shed. The door was wide open. Before she could even duck her head inside, she knew it’d been ransacked. Whatever objects of value were long gone, scattered among the survivors, guards or athlete.
“We have to get moving. Go find anything you think we can use and meet back in a few minutes,” Penny commanded. Her tone left little room for debate, although Hadley still felt the need to.
“This is ridiculous.”
Penny wasn’t sure how she’d ended up in a position of authority, but she rolled with it.
They split up to search the grounds for anything useful. In the back of her mind was a constant tick-tick-tick. People were coming to get them and these people would not be nice about it.
She found nothing of use. Carefully rotating her ankle, she took a break to look around. If the buses had simply crashed and left them abandoned, the scene would be one of cooperation a
nd mutual help. The kidnapping had reprogrammed them into survival mode. Small clans of people grouped together, scavenging, fighting, fleeing.
It was bizarre.
And a tiny part of her brain told her it was relevant.
As she gazed across the expanse, her eyes fell on Phoenix picking through the snow. Like a pack of hyenas, a few men lurked behind him, waiting to see if he’d found anything.
Ignoring the pain, she covered the distance between them in a half-jog, hoping her arrival would scare the others away. It didn’t.
“You’ve got company,” she whispered as she bent to look into the hole he’d created.
Phoenix glanced over his shoulder and continued digging. “Whatever.”
Penny eyed them. Three men, all strong, lean, and desperate looking. They inched closer. They knew how to count and the situation leaned to their advantage.
The one in the front spoke first, his French accent thick. “Would you like to trade?”
Penny sneered. “You don’t have anything.”
“My jacket has many pockets.”
“We’re good.”
Phoenix dug like a dog with a scent for something good.
It happened in a blur. She barely had enough time to see the butt and strap of the white rifle before they pounced on it. Phoenix flattened his body across the hole, partly to protect it and also from the impact. They struggled in the snow, wrestling for control over the weapon. Two of them backed away as it became clear one had a good grip, but Phoenix wouldn't let go easily.
With four hands grappling for control over the weapon, they tugged and pulled at each other. Phoenix’s foot slid in the snow as the other guy yanked him off balance. Her imagination took over and all she could see was an accidental discharge right into his gut.
“It’s not worth it!” Penny screamed as she desperately wrenched Phoenix’s shoulder. It was only with a combination of her pulling and a slip on the ice that the Frenchman ripped the rifle away.