Abandon

NINETY

S

unlight streamed through the tall windows with a brilliance that suggested the world outside had turned to glass. Abigail’s head throbbed, as if someone had shoved a hot coal deep into the base of her skull, and with the woodstove extinguished, the living room was cold, particularly where she lay shivering on the futon by the window.

She had no idea how she’d come to be in this house. The last piece of memory that felt like solid ground seemed ages ago—driving Scott’s Suburban away from the trailhead at dusk. Whatever came after had shattered against the back of her mind, and based on what few frames she’d glimpsed, she didn’t want those memories reassembled. Her eyes watered with pain as she eased her weight onto her feet.

The nearest archway opened into a kitchen, and something about the table and the stainless-steel refrigerator and the shelf of bottles over the sink made her nauseous with fear—an inexplicable familiarity.

She limped into the foyer and pulled open the front door to cloudless early-morning cobalt, Silverton buried under a foot of new snow, spruce and aspen in the front yard sagging under the weight, the town silent save the murmur of a snowplow scraping north up Greene Street.

At her feet, a woman dressed only in a pink satin nightgown lay unmoving on her stomach, her skin tinged blue and powdered with snow, her bare legs smeared with blood.

“Oh my God.”

“And then you shot them both,” the woman said.

“Yes.”

“Because you believed your life was in danger.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me again why you thought the sheriff of Silverton and her brother wanted to kill you?”

“You’re looking at me like you don’t believe me.”

“It’s not that we don’t believe—”

“Then what?”

“Ms. Foster, we’ve got the sheriff and her brother dead here in town, and you’re telling us there’re six more bodies in the backcountry, most of which we won’t be able to locate until sometime next summer when the snow breaks, and forget the small concern that none of this jives with the Jen Primack I’ve known and worked with for three years. Look, I know you’ve been through quite an ordeal, but for a small-time undersheriff in a sleepy town like Silverton, this is a helluva lot to choke down.”

When Abigail awoke, they were sitting at the foot of her bed, whispering. She shut her eyes and eavesdropped on a debate concerning the merits of parallel versus telemark turns in champagne powder.

Silverton’s size didn’t warrant a hospital, so the undersheriff had put Abigail up in the Grand Imperial for the night and asked two nurses from San Juan County Public Health to check in on her every few hours.

She liked the undersheriff, Hans, a tall, lanky man in the neighborhood of thirty, who looked more like a snowboard instructor than a lawman—longhaired, bearded, and with a tattoo of a rock-climbing skeleton inked into the skin of his left forearm, just visible where he’d rolled up the sleeve of his khaki button-up shirt.

The special agent with the Forest Service made her nervous. She couldn’t recall the redhead’s name, but despite her rustic wardrobe, she managed to exude the cool, impassive confidence of a fed. And she’d hardly asked Abigail a thing, letting Hans lob questions while she leaned back in her chair in her muddy hiking boots, jeans, and down vest, not even bothering to veil her scrutiny and suspicion.

The special agent cut her eyes at Abigail.

“She’s awake.”

They dragged their chairs over into patches of afternoon sunlight that spilled in through the second-floor windows.

“How you feeling?” the undersheriff asked.

“All right.”

Hans leaned forward in the chair, clasped his hands together.

“Search-and-rescue just got back a half hour ago. You might’ve heard the helicopter.”

“They didn’t find my father.”

“They spent forty-five minutes hovering over the mountainside you think you came out on, with two men combing the area with binoculars.”

“I told you: There was a chimney I climbed out—”

“I believe you, Abigail. Thing is, that’s steep terrain up there. They spotted numerous avalanches, and they’re thinking a slide may have swept down the mountain at some point in the last twenty-four hours, buried the opening to the chimney.”

“So they’ve given up?”

“No, of course not. But there’s another storm coming in tonight, blizzard warnings already up, so our window for finding your father is shrinking.”

Abigail glanced at the special agent, could have sworn she caught a glint of compassion through the federal facade. “Maybe my father left that chimney room, tried to find his way back to the cavern where we first entered.”

“Okay, even assuming he was able to find his way back, this morning an avalanche swept down that hillside where you say you entered the cave. So wouldn’t the entrance be buried? And as you said, it was practically impossible to find in dry conditions in broad daylight.”

Abigail shook her head, the tears coming. “He thinks I’m coming for him. Please. Fly me back there. Let me—”

“You honestly believe you can find it?”

“Tell me something, Hans. At what point would you quit looking for your father?”