Prologue

It was difficult to say what motivated Claudia Kohl.

Some observers dismissed her as distant or aloof. Others mistook her pensive nature and said she was timid. Most raved at her natural beauty. The stunning blue eyes, brunette coif, her petit athletic frame. All of it a head turner. But it was not her looks that captured the most attention. Rebellious and uncompromising, Claudia Kohl was unaffected by her beauty. It was her intellect that garnered the most interest. Someone who stood apart from the crowd, she was a pearl in a sea of conformity, comfortable in her own skin and driven by her life’s passion: elemental physics. For those lucky enough to know Claudia they would tell you about the demons that drove her. Never without a notepad or paper, the twenty-six-year-old prodigy appeared to be writing the great American novel. But a close examination of her notes would reveal quite the opposite; a string of complex mathematical equations, revised at length, cryptic notations made anytime a thought struck her, which was often.

It was an early winter morning, a remote location in the heart of the Colorado Rockies. Two feet of new snow had fallen the night before, creating a glistening white blanket of powder that covered Summit County, an area known for its majestic peaks and quaint ski resort villages. The sky was clear, a luminous day waiting to start, the sun just beginning to rise above snow-capped mountains that surrounded area townships.

Up before dawn, Claudia was “on the hill” as the locals called it, trekking past posted avalanche warnings in a forbidden area outside the ski resort boundary. Her skis were strapped to her back, her posthole tracks in sunken snow the only sign of life in the harsh alpine setting.

Claudia often made this journey. The splendor of the mountains, awe inspiring and humbling, dwarfed anything she had ever done or would ever do. It was her primary reason for being in Colorado.

That and her research.

The new snowfall always drew a few early morning riders, the “poachers” as they were known, those who made their way into the out-of-bounds danger zones. For Claudia there was never a choice. She had to be there. The cool silence, broken by the crunch of boots in snow and her labored breathing, was her only way of coping with the continual movement inside her head, a constant presence of four complex thoughts at once - concepts decipherable to only a handful of humans on the planet.

Behind her the morning sun cast jagged shadows across harsh Rocky Mountain peaks. Orange and brown colors reflected off avalanche chutes; the twelve-thousand foot tacos carved vertically into the mountains, etched in place by a thousand years of snow, too heavy to hold, breaking free into a sudden massive slide, roaring downward like a freight train, snapping through rocks and trees, creating a permanent scar, a scar that reminded all of its majesty – and unforgiving nature.

Claudia reached the summit. She paused to gather in the view. A warm cloud of vapor filled the air with each labored breath, the frigid air burning her lungs. To her right a cornice had built up across the top of the bowl, an elongated peak that reminded her of a gigantic wave, tons of white concrete frozen above the steep vertical run, ready to crash. Claudia knew how to read the snow. She understood its layering nature, the effect of temperature and climate, and whether the base of the drawn out ledge would support the two feet of powder that fell overnight.

The cornice would hold - she hoped.

Claudia unstrapped her pack and lowered her skis to the ground. She scraped her boots across the top of her bindings, kicked off the accumulated snow and jammed her boots into her skis. The loud click echoed across the still white setting, a foreign sound that would turn the head of the few animals not in hibernation. She lifted her skis, checking the fit. Planting her poles to push off, she was about to drop into the precipitous bowl when she heard a distant noise: the sound of two snowmobiles closing in on her.

Ski patrol was on the prowl.

Claudia had not expected the patrollers to be in the area, at this altitude, this early. Camouflaged by her ski helmet and goggles, she had made the mistake of wearing her bright orange ski instructor uniform. If she were caught, she would lose both her job and her ski pass, something Claudia was not ready to surrender.

With one quick move she lunged off the top of the cornice and flew downward. Digging her edges in a sharp traverse, she pushed her way through the light drifts of snow, raising puffs of white clouds, splashing her face as she dove into the steep bowl.

The snowmobiles spotted the orange uniform and gave chase.

Zipping back and forth in a serpentine move, she twisted her hips and knees in perfect synch, a textbook combination of speed and grace, swooshing downhill, the thrill of the chase enhancing the adrenaline rush of her skiing. Continuing at full speed, she came upon a twenty-foot cliff and launched, airborne, past the treetops and below, exhilarated by the weightlessness of her flight, landing upright, a soft touch in the snow, “hooting” as a second cloud of powder enveloped her.

The two men on snowmobiles yelled at their prey, a sound dwarfed by the noisy snowmobile motors. Cautious, the pair stopped where Claudia had been and examined the dizzying cornice. The first man looked at his partner, shook his head “no” and pointed at an easier route. The second man nodded in agreement. Simultaneously they twisted their throttles and accelerated around and over the top of the peak, missing the dangerous overhang where Claudia had launched into the bowl. They traversed across the vertical drop and down into the base, losing sight of their target.

“There!” screamed the first patroller, spotting her.

Moving parallel to a line of trees, Claudia kept her arms in motion, planting her poles, barely touching the tops of the short bumps, moguls, zipping down, navigating the difficult terrain at a rapid pace. The patroller’s motors screamed in pursuit, sliding sideways, shooting a shower of snow into the air as they accelerated forward, moving fast enough to close the distance.

Claudia caught their movement in her peripheral vision. At this speed she knew they would snare her, or be able to identify who she was if they came close enough. Not ready to capitulate, she turned sharply into a tight grove of pines, a narrow entrance, lifting her right ski to miss a shortened tree stump as she shot through the center of the opening.

The first patroller slid parallel to the trees and stopped. He jumped off his snowmobile and clipped into the pair of skis racked behind him. “I’ll pick up the sled later,” he said, yelling to his partner. “I wanna nail this guy.” The second patroller nodded and spun his snowmobile sideways. “I’m with you.” He killed the engine and grabbed his snowboard. In the brief moment it took the pair to lock into their gear, Claudia was out of sight.

The patrollers’ skills were excellent; a well matched pair, their speed and technique honed by their many years on the mountain. They sped after her, flying into the constricted pines, following her fresh snow tracks, traversing through and around the trees, accelerating their speed as they narrowed the gap.

Claudia jammed her skis forward in tight tuck position, pushing to her limit, knowing her adversaries were closing in. The exhilaration she felt fueled her rush into a rock-strewn area she normally avoided. Atop one clump of boulders, she paused to look behind and noticed the telltale path that gave her pursuers their line of sight. Knowing their speed and momentum would be great as they approached, Claudia dropped several feet and traversed the cliff, cringing as the exposed rock tore the bottoms of her carefully tuned skis.

It worked.

The two men launched off the top, into the thick base of powder below, flying down though a dense glade of aspen trees. From a hidden area on the side of the hill, Claudia recognized her pursuers. They were good, but not better than the gravity she had spent her lifetime studying. Once the patrollers realized there were no tracks to follow, there would be no way to reverse their direction, uphill, in time to catch her.

Claudia stood tall to survey the two men, now stopped several hundred feet down the mountain. The skier looked up and swore in disgust, throwing his poles against a tree. The snowboarder smiled; a fellow adrenaline junky acknowledging his defeat.

Claudia prepared to launch off the rock. The patrollers were too far to hear, but she could not resist a parting taunt, her Austrian accent pronounced as she spoke:

“It’s called gravity, boys. Isaac Newton, Principia, page 214. …Once you go down, you can’t come up.”

In the moments that followed, Claudia skied down, fleeing into a secluded grove a few feet off the paved road, a spot outside the ski resort boundary where she hid her Jeep. Glowing, she tossed her equipment into the vehicle and jumped in, assured the adrenaline rush of the chase would last the entire day. Twisting the key in the ignition, she jammed the shifter forward. The four wheels spun as she floored the accelerator and popped the clutch, sliding sideways, barely missing a tree.

Camouflaged by a shooting cloud of snow and mud, she gave one last “hoot” and made her escape, disappearing into the early morning mist.