Wired (6 page)

“It's not going to help,” Cassie said. “Kidnapping us is just going to make it worse.”

“Oh? Because your dad has photos?”

Her silence confirmed it.

“Tell your daddy,” Goatee Guy said, “that this is the digital age. He needs to upgrade his equipment.”

“I...I don't understand,” Cassie said.

“If he used a digital camera, we wouldn't be up here. But he's still using a camera that takes film. Which we now have.”

“What!”

“Not tough to break into a hotel room,” the guy said. “We've got everything. And now we've got you.”

The scarf was still around her neck. I needed to keep the conversation going for as long as possible. Maybe someone had seen us go up. Maybe security had spotted the broken window in the chairlift building. The longer we kept talking, the better the chance we might get help.

“Garth and Budgie were stealing skis,” I said. “They always made sure they were taking equipment that looked like their
own. If they got caught, all they had to do was pretend they grabbed the wrong equipment.”

Goatee Guy snorted. “Another detective. Think you'll get off the hill before we're long gone?”

“I'm right though.”

“Big deal.”

“As long as they always took skis that looked like theirs,” I said, “nothing could go wrong. How much were they making?”

“Couple hundred bucks a day,” Goatee Guy answered. “Just for walking into the parking lot with the wrong equipment.”

“So why are Garth and Budgie in the hospital?” I asked.

“Simple. They got greedy. The way it works, they steal the equipment. They give it to us. We find buyers. We give them half of what we make. But Garth and Budgie wanted to go into business on their own. We don't like that. Our snowboarding buddy set up a cable for Garth to hit. Today we did a little trick with the tires on Budgie's van. They both learned their lessons.”

“There's one thing I don't understand,” I said. At least we were talking, not getting beat up. “Why did Sid set up a cable between the trees for me? I'm not part of this.”

“Budgie switched jersey numbers with you, remember?” Goatee Guy answered. “All you racers look the same with your helmets on. I was watching the starting gate with binoculars. When I saw Budgie's number, I called Sid. He was waiting to set the wire. It was going to work the same way it did with Garth. As soon as Budgie hit the wire, Sid would take it down again and leave on his snowboard. Of course, you were wearing Budgie's number. So we had to wait to get Budgie.”

The bald guy finally spoke. “Hey! We don't have all night.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Cassie is going to have a snowboarding accident,” the bald guy said. “We'll break her leg and leave her on the mountain. We ski out. She stays behind. Then we call her old man and tell him to start looking. That will
distract him and everyone else long enough for us to be hundreds of miles away by the time she's found.”

Goatee Guy said, “What should we do with Joe Detective here?”

“Nothing,” I said, “especially if Cassie throws me the snowboard.”

“Huh?” Goatee Guy said.

“Unless you want to spend all night trying to walk up and over the other side of the mountain,” I said, “the only way off the hill is straight down. And I am going to get down before you do and call the cops. So you'd be stupid to do anything to Cassie. I'm not going to stand back and take the chance that someone else might die. Not again.”

“What do you mean, not again?” Cassie said. “Have—”

“The snowboard, Cassie,” I said. “Now!”

The guy holding her by the scarf tried to yank her back, but it was too late.

She tossed the snowboard just ahead of me. It landed and started sliding downhill away from me.

I dove onto it. Belly first. The bindings hit my stomach hard. But I didn't care. I was on my way down the hill.

I spun the snowboard to the right. It tilted and nearly threw me into the snow.

The hill was so steep I was already at full speed.

If I didn't slow down, the snowboard would kill me instead of them doing it.

I remembered what I had planned to do with the sled. I dug my toes into the ground.

It slowed me some and brought me to a stop. But I didn't have much time.

Goatee Guy behind me was on skis!

I looked back.

He was a dark shadow against the moonlight and snow. And he was already moving toward me.

I stood as fast as I could. I stepped into the bindings on the snowboard. I strapped them tight around my shoes. I started down the hill.

He was on skis. I was on a snowboard. And I was in for the run of my life!

I knew if I fell, I was dead. He would catch me before I could get to my feet again.

I had to cover over a kilometer of ski run before I reached the resort buildings. He was faster on skis than I was on my snowboard. I had only learned how to snowboard that afternoon.

The good news was that he would have to go slower in the moonlight than in daylight.
I would not have to worry as much. I knew nearly ever bump and dip on this ski hill.

The other good news was that Cassie was safe, for now. They didn't dare do anything to her, because if I got away, they'd be caught. But I would have to make it to the bottom without killing myself by wrapping my body around a tree.

I turned hard into a corner.

Ahead of me the ski hill broke into two runs. One was called the Hammer, because it hit you hard with moguls. I didn't want to hit moguls. They are like tiny hills. You have to ski around them. Not through them or over them. I can handle moguls at high speeds on skis. But not on a snowboard.

I took the other run. The Monster. It was steep, but smoother than the Hammer. I picked a straight line and crouched.

The wind tore at my hair and face.

I caught a small bump. I was going so fast it threw me into the air. I concentrated on keeping my knees bent. I concentrated on keeping the snowboard pointed down the hill.

Whomp!

I landed hard and tilted to one side. My hand banged the ground. I pushed off and kept on my feet.

I didn't dare look back to see if he was close.

Was I scared?

So scared I could hardly think. And I still had a half kilometer to go.

I cut to one side, then the other. I made sure I zigged and zagged so that he couldn't guess where I was going.

As I made a turn I saw him over my shoulder. He was close. So close there wasn't room to park a bus between us.

I knew I didn't have enough room to outrun him.

I did know there was a trail through the trees that came out near the hotel parking lot.

I cut hard. I almost skidded and wiped out.

The black outlines of the trees were coming at me fast. I turned a bit more and hit the trail through the trees.

If I fell now, I didn't need to worry about getting caught. Slamming into the trees on either side of the trail would do more damage than a dozen big bald guys.

I ducked. I bobbed. I fought to keep my balance on the snowboard. Somehow I managed to stay upright. Then I shot through a gap in the trees out into the open of another run.

I was nearly at the bottom of the hill.

Then I hit another bump.

Because I was standing nearly straight up, and because my arms were too high in the air, I lost my balance.

The snowboard flipped me high in the air. I did a half turn. My feet were higher than my head. Coming down felt like slow motion.

I tried to get my hands out to block my fall. It didn't work.

My head banged into the hard packed snow. I tumbled hard. And lost my snow-board as it whizzed forward and smashed into the trees ahead.

As I finished rolling, the bottom of my left leg hit a tree. The pain was like a white-hot knife, and I knew my ankle was broken.

But it could have been worse. It could have been my skull.

I looked up, expecting Goatee Guy to be all over me.

It took me a couple of seconds to realize Goatee Guy had been so close behind me that he hadn't been able to stop until he was a hundred meters below me.

But by the way he was looking back up the hill, he knew exactly where I was.

Which was too far away from the bottom of the hill to have any chance to get away.

I tried to get up. I nearly screamed at the pain of my left ankle.

There was no way I could try to run. I was like a mouse with its leg pinned in a trap.

Goatee Guy began to push his way back up the hill. Slowly he got closer and closer, stepping into the side of the hill with his skis.

What could I do?

My cell phone!

I pulled off my gloves and reached inside my jacket and found it.

At best, I had a couple of minutes.

I flipped it open, grateful that the back-light allowed me to see the keypad.

As my fingers grew cold, I began hitting the numbers.

Then a thought hit me.

What if Goatee Guy found the cell phone on me and took it? But I couldn't throw it away. Not in this deep snow. It was too valuable. Unless I could find a way to make sure I didn't need it.

Instead of calling the hotel for security, I decided to do something else.

And when Goatee Guy finally reached me, I was sitting and trying to pretend that I wasn't sweating with pain.

He was puffing hard. “You're going to pay for this.”

He dug into his pocket. And pulled out a cell phone. He punched a button. “Yeah,” he said, “I've got him. Break the girl's leg and leave her up there. And trust me, when I finish with him, he won't be going anywhere either.”

“No!” I said. I held up my own cell phone. I'd kept it hidden behind my back. “I had enough time to call for help. See?”

I pointed. At the bottom of the hill we could see pinpricks of light. Flashlights. People rushing toward the chairlift.

He cursed.

“Hey,” he said into his own cell. “Don't hurt the girl. We've got to run. Meet you at the bottom of the other chairlift.”

A pause. Then Goatee Guy nodded. “Yeah, I'll take his cell phone. That way it will take longer for them to find him.”

Another pause. “You're right. But I can take care of that.”

He snapped his phone shut.

“You didn't change anything, you know. We'll still get away as planned.” He snorted. “Of course I'll need to make sure you keep your mouth shut. First, give me the phone.”

I threw it into the snow as far as I could.

“No big deal,” he said. “Doesn't look like you're able to go anywhere anyway.”

He took off one of his skis and balanced on the other ski above me. I couldn't go anywhere. Not with the broken ankle.

He lifted the ski high above my head.

“Your choice,” he said. “Close your eyes, or watch it coming. Either way, I'm going to make sure you won't be yelling for help.”

I wanted to have the courage to keep my eyes open. But, as usual, I was a coward. I shut my eyes and covered my head as best I could.

But it didn't help.

Everything, as they say, went black. Very very black.

It was the nightmare that smothered me in a dark pit. I was on my bicycle, looking up the road behind me. I yelled at my brother for how stupid he was to get his bike stuck in the train tracks. Just like the last time I had this nightmare, and the time before that, the locomotive rounded the corner, with a big white headlight that was painful to look into even in daylight. I yelled at my brother to jump off his bike.

My brother's pants were caught in his bicycle chain—the bicycle that was stuck in the railroad tracks. He needed help. I was too scared to move and by the time I did, it was too late.

The next thing I knew we were all at the hospital—my parents, my brother and me. The doctors and nurses said they were so sorry but they couldn't do a thing. I lied and told my parents I couldn't have done anything either...

I woke up on a couch in the lobby of the Big Bear Hotel.

The first thing I saw was the stuffed moose head above the front desk. I had seen it many times before. This was the first time I felt sorry for it. My head felt as if someone had cut it off my body and stuffed it too.

“Are you all right, son?” a man asked. He stood above me.

I blinked my eyes. I did not know him.

“My parents,” I said. “Someone call them and tell them I'm okay.”

“I'll do it,” he said. He smiled. “I'm John Holt, Cassie's father.”

I tried to sit up. “She's...on...the... mountain!”

It hurt to talk. But I had to tell him. “They...want...to...break...her...leg!”

“Relax, son,” he said. “She's right here.”

He stepped away and Cassie stepped up to the couch. Still in her purple ski suit. Still as beautiful as I remembered.

Behind her were policemen and other people. They were talking to each other and were not looking at us. John Holt went over to them. That left Cassie and me alone.

“I hope you're all right,” she said. “The doctors said it was a mild concussion. They couldn't find any broken bones.”

I would hate to know what a serious concussion felt like.

“I'm okay,” I said. I managed to sit up. “Glad you are too.”

“Didn't take the security guys long to find me once they got to the top,” she said. “You took a little longer.”

Cassie smiled. I liked her smile. I thought it would be good to get her to smile as much as I could.

“Your dad's a detective,” I said. “You weren't part of this.”

She nodded. “Dad was hired by the Big Bear ski resort. He used to be a cop for the New York City Police. He retired and became a private detective.”

“And the Big Bear ski resort hired him and comped your rooms.”

“The manager knew it was really strange how much equipment was stolen every week. He knew it couldn't be people who just took the snowboards and skis to use themselves. Too much was being taken for that. He thought it might be something more. He even thought it might be Sid and Garth and Budgie. But the manager wanted to know who they were stealing the equipment for.”