CHAPTER 37

Claudia was petrified. She dropped her skis on the edge of the cornice and planted her two poles on either side of the skis. “It’s them. Move. We have to get out of here.” She shifted the skis slightly, lifted her right boot, and edged her toe into the bindings.

Todd stuck his poles in the snow and dropped his skis.

“Wait a second,” he said, and gripped her arm, pulling her away from the edge. He watched the two vehicles enter the driveway. Lucien stepped out, followed by Hamid and the rest of the thugs.

“It’s okay,” said Todd calmly. “I recognize them. These are John’s extra security people.”

“I thought John said they were all killed.”

“No, these are –”

“I don’t recognize them,” said Claudia, panicked by the sight of the men.

“I do. John introduced me to them.”

Todd held onto her arm.

Claudia was confused. “Are you sure? Who are they? They don’t look like somebody John would –”

Todd pulled a hidden revolver from the small of his back and stuck it in Claudia’s side.

“Let’s just call them my meal ticket.”

“What?”

Lucien walked up to the pair. “I see you have everything under control, Todd.”

Claudia felt numb. Her mind raced. She was unable to fathom what was happening. NO, it wasn’t possible, she thought. The man she loved with all her heart, the one person who had managed to penetrate her inner core, a man she had contemplated spending the rest of her life with - now held a gun against her ribs.

She was devastated.

He had turned on her.

He was one of them. Impossible.

Two thugs followed Lucien and stood on either side of Claudia. Todd stepped away and the thugs clamped onto her arms.

She felt an electrical shock run through her body.

“How could you?”

Tears streamed down her face as she finally realized that Todd was the mole John had warned them about.

Todd ignored her. The timid character he had played throughout the month-long charade was gone forever. The handsome ski instructor, the darling of the Ski & Ride School, was no more. Todd Morgan, she saw, was every bit as cold and ruthless as the thugs sent to kidnap her.

He looked at Lucien. “Do you know the difference between a large pizza and a ski instructor?”

Lucien was amused. “No.”

“A large pizza can feed a family of four.”

Todd glared at Claudia. “I’ve been waiting a long time for something like this to come along.”

Tears streamed down her cheeks. She leaned forward, unable to stand, held up by the thugs on either arm.

“But what about us?”

“It was great while it lasted, sweetie, but my good looks will only get me so far in life. Those old rich broads at the resort are a lot smarter than they look. Good for a few laughs and they go back home. …I’m tired of being poor.”

“But how could you? You said you loved me.”

Something was terribly wrong. He must be sick, she thought, or out of his mind. This could not be him, not the Todd that she knew. This was a different person talking. It had to be.

She began to sob uncontrollably.

Lucien smirked at Claudia. Love was a subject he found meaningless. Power was what counted in this life. Soon, he thought, things were going to be different. He would have limitless power and the ability to control his own destiny.

He would show all of them.

The scientist reached into his coat pocket and handed Todd a slip of paper that had an international bank logo in the corner.

“The remainder of the funds have been wired,” said Lucien. “This is the wire confirmation and email from the bank, validating the transfer into your account… everything as we agreed.”

Todd scanned the document. “Looks good.”

“But before you go,” said Todd, “I think I need a few bruises to demonstrate my chivalry on Claudia’s behalf.”

Lucien again smiled. He enjoyed violence almost as much as he enjoyed his other obsessions.

“I’m sure Mr. Hamid can accommodate you.”

The men gathered round Hamid and Todd, anxious to watch the beating. Todd stood next to Hamid with his chin out and his eyes closed. The two men holding a sobbing Claudia loosened their grip as Hamid removed his jacket and circled in front of Todd.

Claudia kept crying, sobbing louder as she glanced with her peripheral vision at the skis and poles she had planted on the edge of the cornice. She dropped slightly, as if to cower in a fetal position in the snow. The two men laughed and released her arms.

The circle of men laughed and shoved each other as Hamid drew back his arm to pummel Todd.

Claudia knew this would be her only chance. She leapt forward and scrambled away, lunging for her poles and skis.

“NO!” Lucien was the first to see her jump.

He ran after her, screaming. “Don’t let her escape, you idiots!”

Hamid turned and rushed for her. He watched helplessly as his two men tried to grab her. Claudia was too fast. She jumped forward, grabbed her poles and with the same movement, vaulted into her bindings. The forward momentum, combined with her forward leaning torso, thrust her over the edge and into the precipitous bowl. The dense, but champagne-texture powder splashed into her face.

Todd watched in shock as she launched off the cornice. The two thugs had chased after her, and lunged, just as she clipped in to her skis, but they missed her. As she pushed forward and launched, her pole planted onto one thug’s foot. He lost his balance and fell onto the back of her skis. The other man struggled to get around his companion, but was too late.

Claudia yelped as she shot into the bowl, happy to escape, happy to be back in her element, and pleased to once again be in control. She dropped in and made a short turn, moving faster and faster into a terrain that she had spent her childhood in. Claudia had developed her love for skiing here, and knew that it would be difficult, almost impossible, for any of these men to catch her.

Anyone except Todd.

Her only danger was from him, a much faster skier, and able to adapt to any kind of terrain.

Todd shoved past the thugs and scrambled for the edge. The two skiers Lucien had hired followed close behind him. Claudia was down, tucked into a race position, headed into the center of the bowl. Todd could see she was still close enough for him to catch her. He clipped into his skis and leapt off the cornice, racing straight down, rushing to catch her.

The two men followed, jumping off at the same time. The thugs were good skiers, but Todd was exceptional, a former downhill champion, and he knew he could catch her. She had an early start, but he would close the distance. He put everything he had into the chase. His mind raced as he leaned into his skis. His future was tied to Claudia; all of it: his wealth, and his new found independence from anything and anybody.

He would catch his former lover, or die trying.

The two thugs separated. One followed directly behind Todd, while the other, a slower but skillful skier, traversed across the top of the bowl as he tried to cut across and drop in on Claudia, who had started on a traverse in the same direction. Directly above the slower skier was the “ripe” cornice that Todd and Claudia had been concerned about.

As the thug skier reached a point under the big overhang, a mammoth boulder appeared, and he dug in, carving a hard turn, just missing the large rock. Now headed back in the opposite direction, he carved another deep turn that put him around the boulder, traveling in the original direction. Picking up speed, he could see he was directly above his target and started to close in on her.

It was at that moment the first crack appeared.

Several weeks earlier, the area around the cabin had suffered a dry spell. Temperatures had escalated to a point where some of the snow began to melt. As in any high alpine setting, weather was fickle and could change at a moment’s notice. The warm temperature was now gone and the warmer snow, still loose and in some places liquid, had been covered up by a frozen two-foot-thick layer from a new flurry of snowstorms.

The turn the skier carved to avoid the boulder exposed the underlying loose snow and split an opening in the top layer. The upper layer began to move, slowly at first, a large section separating from the lower layer, into a path driven by gravity and momentum. It was a momentum that grew with every passing second. And when the avalanche stopped, the snow became hard-packed concrete, something that would pin a victim’s arms and legs in a death grip.

Avalanches are phenomena that are innocuous to persons above the break, the ones who sometimes trigger the slide and continue down. A light flurry of snow starts to move downward. When the skier chasing Claudia opened a crack in the top layer, he also removed the tenuous support for the cornice of snow that stuck out like a wave above him.

In harm’s way.

The top cracked, shifted, and the several tons of snow above the thug started to move downhill. Its velocity and force began slowly, but quickly increased beyond the power of twenty speeding locomotives. An unstoppable train, it continued to gain strength and inertia, snapping thick mountain trees like tiny matchsticks, pulling them up by their roots, growing in size as it ripped away everything in its path.

The first skier had barely time to turn his head when the thundering cloud of white death raced down the steep bowl and gobbled him up, tossing him about like a tiny marionette. The tons of snow mixed with rocks and debris overwhelmed and crushed him, instantly snapping his neck.

The second skier, petrified by the sound above him, was the next to be swept into the carnage that killed his partner. At first, he was in front of the white cloud, trying to outrun it. He disappeared, swept up, buried under the tons of snow. The skier choked as he struggled to breathe, inhaling the crushing wet force entering his trachea and lungs, suffocating him instantly.

Todd knew what the sound above him meant. At the ski resort he had accompanied ski patrol during their early morning forays into avalanche prone areas, watching as they blasted snow with dynamite, protecting resort skiers from the threatening slides.

He quickly glanced back and realized the enormity of what was coming. Now almost on top of Claudia, he abandoned the pursuit of his former lover and shot downward, tucked into a racing stance. His tips pointed in a straight vertical path, flying over rocks and bushes, dodging trees, oblivious to anything in front of him. He knew all about the destructive power of an avalanche. There was no caution in what he was doing.

He was at death’s door.

Claudia understood what was happening. When she escaped, dropping into the bowl, she knew it was a calculated risk, but it had been her only option. She needed to flee her captors and head in a direction that would traverse her away from any potential slide. Now that the mountain had broken free and was upon her, she shot harder to the right, perpendicular to Todd, rushing sideways, away from the white monster that was about to devour her.

Todd continued straight down, racing faster than ever, gaining speed and distance from the colossal white cloud. But the avalanche continued to grow, and its size and speed increased with the inertia generated by the gravitational pull of the steep terrain.

It began to catch him.

He spotted a cliff ahead, an almost twenty foot drop that curved hard right at the bottom, and he could see it was protected by a sharp rise of mountain, a place that would both protect him and give him a path to shoot sideways, away from the vertical direction of the slide. As he tucked to spring off the edge of the drop, he failed to notice the small branch hidden under the snow on the edge of the cliff. He had often joked with his fellow skiers about the “snow snakes,” hidden or non-existent obstacles that sometimes reached up and tangled a beginner skier.

This time, the snow snake was lethal and real. His ski caught the branch and it snagged him, tumbling him over the cliff. His skis and poles flew into the air as he bounced off the side, insulated by a white blanket of snow. The damage was minimal until the last bounce. He landed square on an outcropped boulder and snapped his vertebrae. The now paralyzed instructor’s eyes grew wide as the white cloud of snow headed his way.

There had not been enough time for the pain of his severed spine to reach his brain. So he smiled as he lay there and thought about the money. It was his ticket out, and he had done it. Just as the white cloud of snow turned his world black, he wondered: If he were gone, who would get the large deposit he had hidden in the Panamanian bank account?

You can’t take it with you, you know.

Claudia’s mind was in overdrive, her survival instincts sharp as she continued her traverse into a glade of trees. She was oblivious to Todd, her captors, the treatise, her work. All that she knew was she had to survive. She screamed sideways, tucked in a tight stance, headed for the protected overhang that she knew was there. For a brief moment she had happy thoughts of Uncle Rodney and John. She thought of Kaiser, smiling at her, wagging his tail, giving her his love. Harder and harder she pushed forward, using every ounce of her strength, flying to the spot, focused on her survival.

She would make it, she was sure of it.

The gigantic white monster, a huge wall of broken trees and rocks, blasted forward, sweeping up everything in its path. It rose up, a gigantic wall of white death, and drew her into its belly.

Claudia disappeared.