Snow Blind

by Jim Heskett

  But the large wolf and the wolf he'd kicked were preparing for more. They formed a line of two. Layne readied for them to push forward. He had to hope they wouldn’t both attack at once.

  As Layne gripped the snowshoe, imagining he might make one swing when they were both close enough and hit two at once, an object came flying from Layne’s left, over his shoulder. Harry's laptop. It smacked one of the wolves in the mouth. The wolf yelped a desperate cry of pain, turned, and trotted away. Layne tracked it out of his peripheral, padding down the side of the mountain. But, he kept his eyes on the remaining wolf. The alpha.

  This creature was not swayed by the fate of its two companions.

  With a growl, it charged. Layne brought the snowshoe down on top of the head of the large wolf when it was inches away from snapping at his legs. A metal cleat underneath the snowshoe connected with its head, a spurt of blood ejecting into the air.

  It stopped, momentarily dazed.

  Layne had no desire to kill this last wolf, but he didn't know if the beast would back off. Two of them were gone, and the third one now rested on the ground, half buried in snow, looking sluggish.

  Out in the mountains around Colorado, Layne had experienced more than a few close encounters with animals. Bears, moose, and he’d even seen mountain lions. Every trip contained a little danger, but not like this.

  He didn’t think he’d feel so guilty about defending himself against these wolves. But, it had to be done.

  “Stay down,” Layne said to the beast.

  Layne reached down and grabbed Harry's laptop, then shoved it toward his friend. "Grab the snowshoes, and we’ll put them on down the hill. Let’s go, while this one is still thinking about it.”

  The wolf, prone in the snow, huffed steam from its nostrils and stared at them. Yellow eyes flicking all around.

  Harry didn't argue. He shoved the laptop into his bag, picked up his snowshoes, and ran like the devil. Layne followed him, and they didn't look back for two minutes. He tried to stick to the trail but ended up taking a more direct route, despite the angle of the descent. Lucky he didn’t fall.

  By the time they both stopped to catch their breath, Layne turned around, and the wolves were not trailing. He dropped his snowshoes onto the ground in front of him and flexed his right hand, sore from how hard he’d gripped his makeshift weapon.

  Panting, Harry said, "thank you. That was crazy, right?”

  “Never thought I’d find myself in a fistfight with wolves.”

  Harry eyed him as Layne breathed in and out, calming himself. “You okay?”

  “They were just animals defending against some home invaders. It’s a shame we had to do that.”

  “Either way, thanks for saving our asses.”

  Layne patted Harry on the shoulder before kneeling into the snow to strap on his snowshoes.

  They spent the next hour trudging through the snow to return to the retreat center, and by the time they were at the edge of campus, any remaining evening light had gone. The milky gray of the snowing sky provided a little bit of pathfinding on the way home, but they had undertaken the trip mostly in darkness.

  When they entered the campus, Harry hiked straight back to the bungalow, but Layne heard voices over near the main lodge. He decided to investigate.

  What he saw there made him grit his teeth. Two dozen retreat center guests, standing outside the main lodge, shaking their fists and yelling at the closed doors. They shouted about the roads, about the lack of snowcats, about the dwindling supply of fresh food at the retreat center. Some of them pleaded for helicopters to be sent in to fly the guests out immediately.

  With the regular high winds accompanying the snow, Layne didn’t think a helicopter rescue was likely. If the roads weren’t cleared, these people would need a vehicle with treads to reach all the way down this mountain.

  Many of them mentioned the two deaths at the SMRC. Two within two days would make anyone uneasy. Speaking of which, Layne scanned through the crowd to find Janine Paluski, but she wasn’t there. He assumed she would seek refuge in her bungalow since her husband had died only a few hours ago.

  Layne hovered at the edge of the group, arms crossed, and observed how the collective voice of the group escalated with each new demand or complaint.

  Finally, one guest lifted a rock the size of his fist and tossed it at the lodge. It crashed through a window, which made some guests gasp and others cheer. They were bordering on a mob. That would help nothing, but Layne knew better than to speak up to act as a voice of reason right now.

  Thirty seconds later, the front door of the lodge opened, and there stood Victoria Overton. She lifted her hands, trying to soothe the crowd. Her face tentative, the normally stoic Victoria did seem rattled by the ferocity of these previously docile retreat guests.

  "Friends," she said, "I understand you're upset. We have snowcats arriving tomorrow morning to transport everyone back to the town of Squamish. I'm very sorry for the delay, but it couldn't be avoided. I only found out a few minutes ago that we would be able to accommodate everyone, and I didn’t want to announce anything until I was sure.

  “At some point tomorrow—maybe at first light, or maybe not until midmorning—but at some point tomorrow morning, this will all be resolved. Please accept my humble apologies. Mother Nature has had her way with us this week, and for that, I’m truly sorry.”

  The rabble of the crowd died down, but only a little. Layne observed the hesitancy on Victoria's face. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted several retreat guests who didn't seem at all satisfied with Victoria's response. Layne said nothing, but he hoped she would think of a better way to soothe them than a vague promise that hadn’t convinced anyone.

  Because if she didn't deliver, this place would turn into a madhouse.

  26

  In his room at the bungalow, Harry Boukadakis mounted the contents of the cave device’s laptop onto a virtual drive, and then his eyes flicked across the room to a shadow making a sudden and unwelcome appearance. His heart raced, his throat closing up when he tried to swallow.

  The shadow was nothing. Just a flicker of the light out in the hallway. He wasn’t sure if he was expecting the wolves from the mountainside to have tracked him down and broken into the bungalow. Truthfully, he did expect that, but he would never admit it out loud to anyone. That would be silly.

  Harry hated the in-the-field stuff. He was much more comfortable working in his home office back in Virginia, with a cup of coffee on a coaster and the family dog at his feet.

  Field work was nothing but danger and complications. But, Harry wasn’t an idiot. He knew Daphne had insisted he come along in person to help persuade Layne to rejoin the team on a full-time basis. And although he would love for a shadow soldier with Layne’s talent and track record to come on board full-time, he would not manipulate his friend. If Layne wanted to sign up again, that was his decision.

  Harry’s phone dinged. Odd, since he hadn’t had service all day long. One measly bar that faded in and out. But, with service now, a flood of collected data all came in at once.

  A slew of text message notifications streamed by on his phone’s lock screen, ranging from minutes to hours before. One each from his friends Ethan and Danny, likely related to their long-running Dungeons and Dragons campaign which never seemed to end. One from his mother, and a couple from his wife.

  But the oldest message was from his son, who had only recently been given a phone. Harry immediately assumed the worst. He unlocked the phone, his heart pounding.

  Mom took the biggest poop this morning. Stank up the whole house for hours.

  Harry sighed and typed a single word: gross. Then, he tossed his phone onto the bed and explored the contents of the virtual drive. Most of it was buried behind airtight encryption, but he was able to access a few documents. The files made references to GPS data, which could support the theory about the device in the cave being some sort of homing beacon.

  But who was the beacon talki
ng to, and what information was it sending?

  Harry tugged on his lip as he sat back in the chair. He rolled his neck around a few times. Maybe he was in need of a walk. With his legs burning from an afternoon of hiking in the snow outside, he wouldn’t go far—not after almost being mauled to death by a trio of wolves—but sitting in here, staring at this collection of scrambled files wasn’t getting anything done. He needed to initiate brute force hacks and give them time to work on the encryption.

  He stood, collected his shoes at the front of the bungalow, and then froze when he heard footsteps right outside the door.

  His breath caught in his throat.

  Three quick knocks rapped on the door. “Mr. Brown? It’s Victoria, from the SMRC. Are you there?”

  Oh, shit. The laptop was running all sorts of illegal programs in the other room. He’d brought things with him into Canada that definitely should not have been allowed to clear Customs. Harry dropped his shoes and raced back into the bedroom. He snatched his laptop, tablet, and all the associated cables, and then shoved them under the bed.

  The front door of his bungalow opened. “Harvey?”

  Harry, nearly in a panic, sprinted out of his bedroom, skidding to a halt ten feet in front of Victoria. She stood in front of his open door. He bumped against an end table, making a lamp rock on its base.

  Her cheeks reddened as she shut the door behind her. “I’m so sorry to intrude without permission. I wanted to check on you, and you didn’t come to the door.”

  “Well, that’s not really… I mean… my privacy,” he said, panting.

  “You’re right. Of course, my apologies. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  Their eyes met, sending a chill down Harry’s back. No matter what soft and harmless words came out of this woman’s mouth, her face made him uneasy. Like a stern grade school teacher. Maybe that was overly dramatic, but Harry didn’t know a better way to classify the expression on her face.

  “I do have another reason for stopping by, if you’ll indulge me for another minute or two.”

  “Mmkay.”

  “I know it’s been a tumultuous couple of days here. There’s no good way to sugarcoat that fact or dress it up in any pretty language. We’ve had two deaths at the SMRC. Two horrible, awful incidents, and I wanted to converse with each guest to check their temperature, as it were. We want to make sure you’re able to speak with someone if you’ve found the events of the last few days troubling.”

  “Speak with someone?”

  “As in, a therapist. To help you process things. Some of our staff have degrees and certifications in therapeutic psychology.”

  “I don’t need to speak to a therapist. Mr. Costello fell in the shower. That fist-fighter Paluski guy had a heart attack, right?”

  “That’s correct.”

  Harry shrugged. “There. I just spoke to someone about it. Shit happens. That’s what my father used to say.” Being so assertive with her made his heart race even faster. He decided to carry it one step further. “What I really want to know is why the roads haven’t been cleared yet.”

  “I understand your frustration. This is the worst snowfall the Squamish area has had for over a hundred years. I’m afraid we weren’t prepared for it, and that’s something I take responsibility for. I must ask again for your forgiveness.”

  “Not angry. I just want to know if you have a plan.”

  “I do,” she said, “and I wanted to share a final note with you. Despite your roommate being expelled from the retreat center’s activities, you are, of course, still welcome to complete your stay. Or, if you wish to leave tomorrow when the snowcats arrive, you may do that as well. You still have two days left on your reservation.”

  “Okay. Sure. Fine. I’ll let you know what I’m going to do. Also, it’s kinda late, so I’d like to get back to relaxing now.”

  She offered a curt smile. “Of course. Good evening, Mr. Brown, and thank you for your time.”

  Victoria spun on her heels and left the room, and Harry could feel the space shrink behind her. How did that woman project such power?

  After checking through the window to make sure she had left, Harry hurried back into the bedroom and retrieved the laptop from under the bed. The cracking programs trying to uncover the contents of the beacon’s hard drive had so far made no progress.

  But there was now a different notification blinking on Harry’s screen. Something he’d been waiting on for days. A report from an agency he’d queried had finally come back with a very long email, delivered over one of his secure channels.

  Harry clicked the link and opened the document. As his eyes scanned over the first few lines, his jaw dropped. He had to find Layne and tell him about this. Now.

  27

  Serena paced back and forth in her hotel room, her brain aching from all the extended contemplation sessions. She wandered across to the window and opened the curtains to look out over the city. The lights illuminated the buildings, bouncing off the clouds above and the misty sheets of barely-rain below.

  The Space Needle erupted from the ground like a glowing hypodermic needle topped with a flying saucer. Nothing said Seattle like that monolithic structure did.

  With a sigh, she returned to her workstation at the desk next to the television. A stack of pages fanned out around the laptop. She pressed the spacebar on her computer to wake it from sleep as she flipped over the first page in the photocopied set of the documents she'd stolen from the shady loan officer at the bank. Ed Chafetz. What a sleazeball.

  She paged through the documents for the fiftieth time, frustrated and thinking of giving up for the night. They were a series of purchase orders and invoices all related to shipping, but the contents seemed benign. There was no mention of the Asian man presumably named Z or anyone who could fit that description at all.

  One name did come up repeatedly, though. The name Shelby Waterston.

  When Serena’s laptop screensaver engaged, she watched the stream of her photos slide by for a few moments, in a half-trance. Many of the pics were of her cat, but not all. In a randomized order, she noted pictures of old friends and boyfriends drift by, college spring break trips and camping excursions. A picture of her on Bowen Island popped up, standing on a black sandy beach with two of her girlfriends. All of them in bikinis, dotted with goosebumps, clutching champagne flutes in their hands.

  Serena smiled. She hadn’t thought about that college trip in years… almost a decade ago, now. And, funny enough, she was only about a hundred and fifty miles from there.

  The weather had been miserable throughout, but when saturated with enough alcohol, she and her friends had cared little about that.

  She pressed the space bar to disable the screensaver. Probably, having this photostream set as her screensaver wasn’t a good idea. If she were captured by hostiles while on an operation, they could easily use this info to identify her. To tie her to friends and family.

  She imagined Daphne, leaning over her shoulder, tossing a pointed sigh at her for such a silly breach of etiquette. This sort of thing could get her kicked off the team.

  Serena clicked into the computer settings and disabled the link to her personal cloud photo account. And she promised herself she would thoroughly wipe the computer later and omit these details from her report for the mission debrief. No reason to give Daphne any additional ammunition to yell at her. Their post-operation debriefings were usually bleak and harsh enough.

  As she closed the computer settings, a notification blinked, informing her the results of the trace had come back. She entered the password, held her thumb on the USB-attached biometric thumbprint scanner, and then opened the file.

  Shelby Waterston was a known alias for Victoria Overton, who happened to be a former resident of Seattle. Victoria Overton was also the director of the Squamish Mountain Retreat Center. So, Shelby, or Victoria, was seemingly involved in the human trafficking game. Enough pieces of the puzzle linked here to suggest that assumption.

&n
bsp; Serena had seen this name before, in connection with the previous indictments. But why was there no mention of Z? If he wasn’t the money man, as Serena had assumed, was he connected to human trafficking at all?

  What did Layne know already? Victoria was the SMRC director, but did that mean she was present at the actual campus or did she run things from afar?

  If he was in contact with this Victoria person, then Layne was in danger. Victoria had been involved in several legal cases where evidence and witnesses had both gone missing. That suggested an organized crime connection, most likely. That also suggested she was someone with access to considerable resources, who was able to go to great lengths to cover her tracks.

  All the information on this woman indicated she was powerful and dangerous. A mysterious figure who had multiple names and enough blank spots across her past to obfuscate any attempt to pin her down.

  Serena removed her phone from her pocket and tried to call Layne. It went straight to voicemail.

  28

  Layne stood near the tennis courts. The net was barely visible above the snow clogging the court, a webbed white line hovering in the air. Wind rippled the chain link fence around the exterior. A single lamppost flickered on and off, sending a strobe light down on the trickling snow.

  Victoria had appeased the mob a few minutes earlier by promising snowcats and then making the rounds to speak to everyone individually in their bungalows. Layne had avoided contact by hiking past campus.

  Initially, she’d told the crowd their transportation would appear at daybreak, then she’d walked that back and said it might be late morning.

  Either way, once people started the exodus, Layne would lose control. Potential suspects in the trafficking investigation would vanish, especially since he and Harry didn’t have names for some of them.

  He strolled to the edge of the campus, eying the roads snaking down the mountain. Or, where he thought the roads down the mountain were, since he couldn’t see them. Not looking good to make an easy escape. Plus, he had no cell reception, and with spotty internet access, it was like living in a snow globe with a view of—but no access to—the outside world.