One of the men spoke to her, “You’re the Delaney kid?”
Her guard went up instantly. “Who are you?”
She noticed that these guys didn’t have any skis, and there was no tracked vehicle in sight. They must have walked up through the trees all the way from the parking lot, and she couldn’t understand why.
The other man said, “We’re friends of your dad. He wanted us to come get you. There’s been an emergency. We’ll explain in the car.”
She cocked her head. “How come I don’t know you?”
“We work with him. Don’t think we’ve met.”
She looked back and forth between the two men. “What…what emergency?”
“Nothing to worry about. Look, we have to hurry.”
She took off her left mitten and reached into her jacket, pulling out her cell. This was a bluff; she was never able to get cell service on the mountain unless she was at the very top or the very bottom, but she wanted to see how these guys would react, because she suspected they were full of shit. She said, “I’m gonna call him and—”
“He’s in the hospital,” the guy on the left blurted out. “We have to take you to—”
“What hospital?”
The two men glanced at each other; now she wassurethey were full of shit.
“What’s my first name?”
“Your name? It’s Andrea,” one said.
“Yeah, right.” Everyone called her Andie.
Immediately, she realized she’d made a mistake. She’d proved the men weren’t who they said they were, but that only forced their hand in this.
They had no choice now but to come after her.
The closest of the two reached into his coat, and she just saw the butt of a pistol when she swung her snowboard at them. They both lurched back, and the man with the gun slipped on the ice and fell back into the snow, hitting his head in the process.
Andie used the momentum of swinging the board to thrust it out in front of her; she let go and it hit the snow about ten feet down, just at the far edge of the icy patch. She ducked under the standing man’s arms as she ran for it, then she leapt into the air.
Her boots landed perfectly in the bindings; with a pair of loud clicksthey snapped tight to the board, and she took off, streaking towards heavier pines and thicker snow below.
As the two men behind her struggled to find their footing, she weaved through trees, heading down the mountain. They wouldn’t catch her in a million years, this she knew with certainty, and once she made it to the base of the mountain, she’d alert the ski patrol that a couple of creeps in the trees had just tried to accost her.
But how the hell did they know her name?
—
Five minutes later, she ran through the parking lot, her phone in one hand and her board in the other. She hadn’t seen anyone with the resort standing nearby, so she concentrated on trying to get bars on her phone.
She’d been so deep in concentration doing this that she missed the Jeep Wagoneer that was following just behind.
Finally, she had a signal. She thought of calling her mom, then her dad, but then she landed on calling 911, because she knew her dad was twenty-five miles away at work and her mom wasn’t supposed to pick her up till five, and she’d said something about taking her little sister for a haircut and then going by Costco.
Just as Andie started to dial 911, she sensed motion right in front of her, and then she felt an arm wrap around her neck and she was lifted into the air.
The cell phone fell to the ground; someone knocked her big board from her hands and then dragged her backwards, onto her heels. She tried kicking and screaming, but a gloved hand went over her mouth, and she bit down hard but caught nothing but quilted insulated fabric between her teeth.
Another set of hands lifted her legs and she was thrown into the backseat of an SUV; the vehicle launched forward soon after, and a big man pushed her down to the floorboard, his feet on top of her.
The man behind the wheel spoke for the first time, shouting over the young girl’s screams. “Calm down! Nobody’s going to hurt you!” He then chuckled. “Although my associates up on the mountain would probably like to.” She looked up and saw that the man looking down at her had a beard, like the others.
