Colorado Christmas (18 page)

“How many kids?”

“Does it matter? Look, I’m sorry, Will, but I can’t talk right now, I’ve got to go.”

“How many?”
Will ground through teeth clenched to stop them from chattering with fear.

Matt sighed, clearly impatient. “Five.”

Will couldn’t control his mounting sense of unease. “I…I think Nick’s up there.”

“What?”

Will told him what he knew, ending the explanation with, “He went up with Johnny Cooper—the kid who’s been terrorizing him. Johnny had three buddies with him.”

Matt immediately called to the ski patrol. He turned to
Will, his expression grim. “There are two patrollers and five kids missing.”

Panic and fear wrenched Will’s gut. This was his fault. He shouldn’t have let Nick believe things were okay with Johnny. “I’m going up there. I’ve got to find him.”

Matt put a steadying hand on his arm. “You’ll only get in the way. What if you freak out up there?”

Will shook him off. “I won’t! I
have
to find Nick. And if some of the ski patrol is missing, they’ll need everyone who knows about mountain rescue to help.”

“If you freak out, you’ll end up putting someone else’s life in danger.”

“Matt…”

“All right!” Matt hugged him, surprising Will. Matt never embraced him. Then he was businesslike again. “I’ll let Becky know,” he said, his voice hoarse.

Will nodded. “Break it to her gently, will you?”

Matt clapped him on the shoulder. “Of course. I’m trained to do this sort of thing, remember?”

W
ILL GOT HIS SKIS
and strode to the chairlift loading area, where rescue teams were gathering. The ski-patrol headquarters located farther up the mountain would be in a frenzy of activity, too.

The slopes were clearing of skiers. Some who’d been waiting to board the lifts were shaking their heads at the news that people were trapped; others were grumbling about having their day’s skiing spoiled.

He joined a group of rescue personnel, including Lloyd Wilmott.

“Will! Good to have you on board. You know the routine,” Lloyd said and issued him a pack containing a shovel, walkie-talkie, crampons, lightweight emergency blanket, avalanche beacon, water and collapsible probes that could be extended to nine feet in length and pushed into the snow to search for buried victims.

As Will clicked into his skis, they were given a rundown on where the avalanche had occurred—up in White Cloud Bowl, an expanse of near-vertical walls of double-black diamond runs, high above the tree line. Only very advanced skiers—or the foolhardy—ever ventured there. The area was closed because of the heavy snowfalls of the past few days and the risk of avalanche. Now, the ski patrollers’ worst nightmare—and Will’s—had come true.

The ski patrollers were wearing beacons, so they should be located quickly. But Will, like the others around him, knew that beacons could fail, or be torn off, just as his was when he’d been caught in that monster avalanche in the Andes. Then it would be a race against time to locate and dig out the victims before they suffocated—or froze to death.

With his name checked off, Will prepared to board the chairlift. His heartbeat kicked up as he wiped away the perspiration beading his upper lip. He’d been running on adrenaline since the avalanche and during the briefing, but now the reality of going up the mountain hit him full force. He
had
to do this. He couldn’t let them down. He had to do this—for Nick…and for himself.

Gritting his teeth, he slid into position. The chair caught him and swung a little, and Will gripped the safety bar as Craig, the rescuer sharing the chair, pulled it down.

“For a moment I thought you weren’t going to get on, Will,” the other man said.

Will smiled grimly. There was no going back now. He tried to concentrate on the beauty of the day. It was sunny and cloudless again. The clouds that had shrouded the mountain earlier had moved on. A perfect day, just like that last day in the Andes…

A whoop of joy spread down the chairlift. One of the patrollers had been found. His beacon had led the rescuers to him. However, the other patroller was still missing.

They changed lifts, and now he could see up into the bowl, something that wasn’t possible from farther down. The devastation stretched right to the bottom of the bowl and beyond. Huge pines and spruce growing below the tree line had been
knocked flat. Soon they were riding over the debris field, scattered with huge chunks of ice and snow.

Will closed his eyes, trying to remember the mountain the last time he’d been up here. Beautiful, perfect, pristine. It helped calm his racing heart, and when he opened his eyes again, he knew with clarity that finding Nick was the most important thing he would ever do in his life.

He made a silent vow.
I won’t leave the mountain until every last skier’s been brought out. Alive!

Becky’s worst fears were realized when Matt strode into her chambers to report that victims were caught in the avalanche.

“Then why are you here, rather than up there helping?” she asked.

At the desolation in his eyes, her blood turned to ice. “Will? Oh, God, no! Please, no!”

Matt came around her desk and caught her hands. “Will’s fine. Becky, it’s…Nicolas.”

A primal scream burst up from the deepest reaches of her soul.
“No! How?”

He outlined what he knew, ending with, “Will’s gone up there to find him.”

Becky fought to make sense of what Matt was telling her. Will had gone up the mountain to find Nicolas? To the danger zone, too!

“How can he? He told me about the avalanche that nearly…killed him. He…said he has panic attacks just thinking of going up the mountain.”

Matt nodded and said, “He loves Nick like a son. He’ll bring him home to you.”

W
ILL SLID OFF THE
T-
BAR,
completing the last leg of his uphill journey to the avalanche zone. He traversed along the narrow ledge to the start of White Cloud Bowl.

The scene that confronted him chilled him to the core.

The entire expanse of the bowl was a mass of devastation. How would they ever find anyone in this mess?

Will and Craig kicked out of their skis and picked their way over chunks of ice, some bigger than a car, toward a group of rescuers. An avalanche-rescue dog barked excitedly as he helped them dig.

The other ski patroller was found minutes later and taken down the mountain in a rescue sled and evacuated by helicopter.

Another team was working its way upslope an arm’s length apart, probing the snow as the probe-line leader called, “Down. Up and forward.” And the searchers would probe once, between their feet, before moving forward.

Will breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of the coarse-probe search. A fine-probe search would mean body recovery.

He opened his probe and set to work. Sometimes the probe would hit ice or snow packed as hard as cement. Disappointed, he continued.

The only sounds were of the avalanche dogs barking occasionally as they patrolled in an organized search pattern, sniffing at the snow, then moving on.

Just below Will’s position a ski pole was spotted. Soon after, a rescuer called, “Strike!” indicating his probe had hit something. Will raced to the spot and began digging a hole as wide as the depth of the probe’s insertion into the snow. Other rescuers joined him.
Please let him be all right
was Will’s mantra as he dug.
Please let it be Nick.

Within minutes, a child was being hauled out.

Johnny Cooper!
Will wanted to rail at the injustice of it. The kid wore the cockiest look and said, “Took you long enough.”

Will grabbed the collar of his ski jacket. “Where’s Nick?” he demanded.

“Hey! Git yer hands off me!” Johnny shouted. Then seeing the anger on Will’s face, he broke into tears. “I want my mom!” he cried and implored the other rescuers. “He’s hurtin’ me!”

At the commotion, Lloyd Wilmott joined them. “Will—”

But Will knew Johnny—knew the tears were fake. “Show me where Nick was when the slope went,” he yelled.

“I want my mom! I’m gonna sue you for hurtin’ me!”

“Will!”

“Dammit, Lloyd!
This kid is responsible for
all
this and I’m not letting him go down the mountain until we find every last kid here!”

“Will, you can’t make him stay. He has a right to medical attention.”

“Yeah, and if I don’t git it, I’m gonna sue the whole ski patrol. You guys are useless!” Johnny cried.

Lloyd Wilmott brought his face close to the kid’s and said, “My teams are risking their lives because of you, and you want to sue them?”

The kid sneered.

“Grateful little punk, aren’t you?” Will asked in a mockingly sweet tone that changed to lethal when he shouted in a roar of adrenaline-fueled anger, “
Now, point to where everyone was or I’ll personally take you down that mountain and, in front of everyone, hand you over to the police and tell them to lock you up and throw away the key!”

“You can’t do that,” Johnny scoffed.

“Try me,” Will growled. “I doubt anyone’ll care once they hear you caused the slide and may have caused the death of others. At the very least, you’re in trouble for a boundary violation. Now, where are the rest of them?”

He shrugged and said sulkily, “I don’t remember.”

Lloyd uttered an expletive and directed the other teams to search across the slope on a level similar to the one they’d found Johnny on.

Will stuck his face an inch from the kid’s and demanded,
“Tell me!”

He glared insolently back, then flung his hand casually around the slope as if he didn’t give a damn about the devastation around him. “Over there.”

The ski patroller who’d been rescued first and checked over
by a paramedic came over to join them. “This guy and his buddies were heading in this direction. You should be digging on the other side of him. The other kid was a lot farther up, doing a shallow traverse. He wasn’t an experienced skier and he was calling out, but they ignored him. I think they were deliberately leaving him behind.”

Directed by Lloyd, a team began digging in the area he’d indicated. They were joined by a dog team.

Johnny sneered as he watched them work. “He was so chickenshit he had to traverse the slope all the way across to the other side instead of skiin’ down like us. If you ask me,
he’s
the one who caused the avalanche.”

With a growl of anger, Will released Johnny, grabbed his rescue backpack and headed uphill.

“Will! Be careful,” Lloyd warned. “The slope up there is unstable.”

But Will didn’t care. He scrambled over huge boulders of ice and hard-packed snow, scanning the slope for any sign of ski clothing or equipment that might have been dislodged in the fall.

By the time his search team caught up with him, he’d already probed a small area.

B
ECKY PACED THE RESCUE
headquarters set up for the relatives of victims. She hated that word. It implied there was no hope of bringing anyone out alive.

“Luke will be here soon, and Jack’s on his way, too,” Matt had told her as he tried to settle her in a seat to wait. But she was too impatient to sit.

“After what happened to Will, I can’t imagine the courage it must’ve taken to go up there into the avalanche zone,” she said.

Matt nodded grimly. “I’ll come and get you if there’s any news,” he said before leaving to coordinate the contingent from the sheriff’s department.

Becky looked toward the mountains.
My son and Will are up there somewhere.
To distract herself from thinking the worst, she concentrated on the organization of the rescue effort.

The base area of the mountain was abuzz. Snowmobiles zoomed back and forth, shuttling equipment, rescuers and their search dogs up the mountain. Mountain Rescue had erected a triage tent and the ski-school building was also being used. Firefighters, paramedics and law enforcement officers were everywhere.

The only people allowed past the police line were anxious parents collecting their children from the ski school and the families of those trapped. Becky wanted to give the parents of the boys who were with Johnny Cooper a piece of her mind about letting their sons hang around with such a thug. But she was too raw, too fragile, to deal with any of them right now.

“Becky!” Jack called as he strode up.

Her spirits lifted at seeing another friendly face. She clasped his hands. “I’m grateful you’re here.”

“They’ve found Johnny Cooper,” Matt reported minutes later. “That’s a positive sign—”

“But it’s not Nicolas!” she cried, unable to keep the panic from her voice.

“Oh, honey,” Jack soothed, rubbing her back in comforting strokes. “Will’ll take good care of him.”

Becky could only nod. Yes, Will would take care of her son, of that she was certain.

Sarah arrived with Luke. “Nick will be fine,” Luke said. “Will’s up there.”

Sarah busied herself getting coffee for everyone. Edna Carmichael arrived with Miss Patterson, who immediately clasped Becky’s hand. The small gesture managed to calm her like nothing else had. “Will adores your little boy. He’ll bring him home to you,” Miss Patterson murmured, her voice cracking with emotion.

Becky looked into her pale blue eyes and whispered, “Thank you.”

Feeling guilty about keeping the older woman out in the cold, Becky drew her into the warmth of the shelter and sat and waited with her.

T
HE REST OF
J
OHNNY’S BUDDIES
were pulled out within minutes. All were alive. All were mute with terror.

But there was still no sign of Nick.

Will was frantic. The chances of getting him out alive were slim to none, since it was now more than an hour since the slide. Then one of the rescuers let out a shout. His dog had found something. Several rescuers probed the area where the dog was digging so excitedly as Will scrambled toward them. With their probes, they established there was a body nine feet below them.

When a piece of Nick’s jacket was removed with one of the probes, Will dug like a man possessed. “I’m coming, buddy,” he muttered, moving three times as much snow as the others in a frantic race to uncover Nick and get him out of there alive.

A chunk of ice the size of a small car barred the way directly down, so they dug beneath it. As they neared the nine-foot mark, shovels were thrown aside and the rescuers dug the rest of the way with their hands.

Nick was buried beneath the huge block of ice, but the snow had held it back from crushing him. With a cry of elation, Will felt his hands touch something different in texture. It was the back of Nick’s helmet. He sent up a silent prayer. The helmet would’ve protected Nick’s head and kept him warmer.

Will pulled off his gloves and, heart racing, scratched away the snow, feeling for Nick’s face to establish if he was conscious. His hand plunged into open space, confusing him until he realized the chunk of ice had created an air pocket.

Heart racing, he felt around while the other rescuers continued digging, mindful of the precarious state of the enormous ice cube hovering above them.

When a tiny hand closed over his, Will wanted to weep with joy. “He’s alive!” he cried, desperate to get him out, but knowing they couldn’t until he was checked by a paramedic.

“Can you hear me?” He prayed that first squeeze wasn’t his imagination. He got two squeezes of his hand in return.

Tears filling his eyes, he said, “We’re trying to get you out,
champ. You…hold on there, okay? I’m going to stay with you the whole ti—”

Will was cut off by the blast of a whistle, warning that the slope was becoming more unstable. It was the signal for all rescuers to get off until it could be established that everything was safe.

“Will, I’m sorry,” Lloyd said. “We have to go.”

“I’m not leaving him. You go. But I’m not leaving until I get him out.”

Will could hear hurried discussion from above, while he held Nick’s hand tightly. If more of Nick’s body had been freed, he’d have pulled him from the hole, but his legs were encased in hardened snow.

“Why don’t you come with us, just for a bit,” Lloyd urged as he crawled back into the hole. “It’s probably a false alarm. We’ll be back in no time.”

“Then if it’s a false alarm,” Will said through his teeth, “there’s no point in me leaving, is there? Now, go!”

Refusing to listen to any more entreaties, Will was soon left in silence as everyone deserted the slope until they were given the all clear.

M
ATT CAME BY TO REPORT.
“They’ve found Nick! He’s alive.”

Becky and Miss Patterson burst into tears.

He laid a hand on her shoulder and said with a smile, “I told you Will would find him.”

Speechless, Becky nodded through her tears.

W
ILL CONTINUED TALKING
to Nick, reassuring him, as he worked with his free hand to try to clear the snow around the child’s legs.

And then he heard an all-too-familiar sound.

Tearing the avalanche beacon off his jacket, Will threw it into the air pocket surrounding Nick. Moments later, he was wrenched from the hole by the churning snow and tumbled down the slope, completely at the mercy of nature’s fury.

A
GROUP OF RESCUERS
came down the mountain. Exhausted, they were taking a break before heading back out again. If
they
were exhausted, how must Will be feeling? Becky wondered.

She was about to get coffee for Miss Patterson when a tremendous rumble echoed around the mountains.

She dropped the cup and raced outside, hoping to find Matt. She didn’t care if she looked like a madwoman screaming at the top of her lungs.
“Matt!”

He strode toward her, face grim.

She felt a knot of stomach-churning fear and could only manage one word.
“What?”

“Will refused to leave the search area when they sounded the alarm to clear the slope. Now he’s trapped, too.”

Becky’s knees liquefied and she sank to the snow. “Oh, God,” she murmured. “Oh, God. Oh, God, no! Please, no,” she begged.

“It’s okay, Becky,” Jack assured her as he and Luke helped her to her feet. “Will’s wearing a beacon and as soon as they’re confident the slope’s stabilized they’ll start searching again.”

“Will’s worked like a demon up there today,” Matt said. “You should be proud of him.”

“I am. I’m so very proud of him. For this…for everything.”

“I’m sure he’ll be here soon enough and you can tell him all that in person.”

Becky gazed toward the mountains and prayed she’d get the chance.