The Drop (10 page)

I took another quick look back. Hope was close behind, carving beautiful lines in the snow. I smiled a little and thought of the kiss on the cheek. Then I tucked hard, rode up on my front side edge and went as fast as I could down the mountain. I had a plan on how to get Sam. To save Dave. And maybe even find Bryce.

It took a couple of minutes, but with Dave weaving all over the place, it was easy enough to catch up to him and Sam. I waited until the last second, hoping that Sam wouldn't see me. Luckily, he was focused on Dave. The gun he was holding looked strange. It was short but had a very large barrel.

“Stop, Dave!” Sam yelled. “It's not what you think.” He turned one way, then the other, and as he was about to turn back onto his heel side, I went straight into him, jumping a little as I did so. He went down hard in the snow, and it was all I could do to stay upright. I landed sideways, spun out, hit the ground with my arms outstretched and then bounced back up again as I came to a stop.

The gun had flown out of Sam's hand and was lying between the two of us. Sam looked at me. There was a bit of blood coming from his nose. His eyes were wide and his mouth slack. Just then, Hope came up behind him.

“Grab the gun,” I yelled. Sam looked over his shoulder, and Hope curled around him, went down low and snatched the gun out of the snow.

Dave had stopped beneath us, yelling. “He's with them! He's in on it.”

Hope stopped beside me and handed me the gun. It was huge. On the side it said
Flare Pistol
.

“What are you doing, Sam?” I said.

He shook his head. “It's not what you think.”

“Are you in on it?” I said. “Are you in on the kidnapping?”

He shook his head again. “No. It's not…”

I pointed the flare gun at him. “This likely won't kill you, but it will
really
hurt. We'll leave you up here, Sam.”

“It wasn't supposed to go this way,” he said. “It was all Bryce's idea.”

“What?” Hope said. “He wanted to be kidnapped?”

“Yeah. He did.”

“Why?” Hope said. She didn't look like she believed anything Sam was saying. Sam wiped a bit of blood from his face, then spat into the snow. “And for once, Sam, tell the truth.”

The wind had died down, and we were able to speak to one another without yelling. Sam took his sunglasses off and dropped his arms at his sides.

“He wanted to prove something to his father. That's what he said, anyway.”

“Who? Bryce?”

“Yeah, Bryce. You know how his brothers are such big deals. Hockey star. Race-car driver?” Sam shrugged. “And as cool as being in Backcountry Patrol is, it doesn't really match up with driving four hundred miles an hour or being named the NHL's mvp. I guess his father kind of looks down on him. So Bryce wanted to make his father sit up and take notice. To see him as being an equal to his brothers. So he decided to prove to his father how smart he is. He might not be an mvp or win Formula 1 races, but he could pull off a kidnapping scheme against his own father.”

“How would that work?” I said. It didn't make sense. “Byrce is an amazing snowboarder. I mean, why not just become a professional? Wouldn't that impress his father?”

“Compared to his brothers, he would still be nothing. That's what he believes, anyway.”

“An Olympic medal might work,” I said.

“Listen, Alex, I know you love snowboarding. I know you think it's the greatest thing in the world. And, hey, I agree. But what are the chances of an Olympic medal? He'd be lucky if he got a good sponsorship and maybe a few grand when he wins a contest. Not as impressive as his brothers, that's for sure.”

“So he did it for the money?” I was not understanding this. Sam looked at the sky.

“He told me he thought it would make his father see him differently. See him as someone intelligent enough to pull off a kidnapping, extort money from him and get away with it. Maybe it will, who knows. Or maybe it won't. At the very least, he will have his father's attention. And maybe that's all he wants.” Sam grabbed the back of his head. “Man, you really hit me. Why'd you do that?”

“You had a gun!” I yelled. “You were chasing Dave!”

“I just didn't want him to get messed up with those guys. Those are, like, bad guys.”

“But you were working with them?”

He shook his head. “Not really. Bryce came to me and told me what he was going to do. I told him it was stupid and then…” Sam looked at the sky.

“And then Bryce said he'd give you some money if you helped him out.”

“Well, yeah. That was part of it.”

“What was the other part?” Hope asked.

Sam looked down at the blood-sprinkled snow. “Come on, Sam. We have the gun here. Tell us what you know.”

“Bryce had found out something about me that I'd rather people didn't know.”

“What?”

“The reason I disappeared.” He looked up again, though this time his eyes were directed toward the mountain. “I lost a friend on this mountain. A good friend. He wiped out on a ledge, and I wasn't able to save him. I wasn't able to do anything at all for him. He died out here.”

“But there would be reports and everything from that, right?” I said.

Sam shook his head. “I never told anyone we were here.”

“What? You left your friend out here to die?”

“He was dead.” Sam stared at me. “He was dead with his board on his feet, and that's all that mattered. He was doing what he loved. My friend, Mike Carolina, wanted to be the best snowboarder there was. And it killed him. He didn't have any family. No sisters or brothers. His parents had died years before. Mike had this, this
drive
to just go that step further. To prove something. And it killed him.”

I could understand why Sam had never told anyone. This kind of information could ruin him in any number of different ways. At the very least, he would be fired as a Backcountry Patrol trainer. It explained a lot as well. His disappearance for all those years. The flask he kept in his pocket. Losing a friend that way must have been incredibly difficult. Even so, he should have told somebody what had happened.

“How did Bryce find out?”

“I don't know. Sometimes when I drink, I talk too much. He might not have known everything, but he knew enough. I'm thinking of making a comeback. That kind of information would kill it for me. And I didn't do anything wrong. I left my friend right where he would want to be. This whole mountain is his coffin.”

“What about the kidnappers?”

“They got in contact with me. I didn't really have to do anything.”

I shook my head. Then I opened my jacket and put the flare gun inside.

“You believe him?” Hope said.

“I do.”

“Why?”

“Because I remember when he was on the circuit. Other riders said he was the best. But they also said he was the most honest. Back in the day, there were different ways down a mountain. You could cheat. Sam never cheated in a competition. Not once.”

“No,” Sam said. “Not once.”

“And remember what Dave said before about Bryce hanging out with those guys who steal boards?” I said.

“Those are the guys,” Sam said.

“And Bryce wasn't tied up in the cabin,” Hope said. “I should have known.”

“So how do we get him back?” I said.

“What's going on up there?” Dave called up from below.

“We'll be there in a minute, Dave. Just chill out,” Hope said.

“I heard him talking on the satellite phone with them!” Dave yelled. I looked at Sam.

“Yeah, that happened.”

“So the phone wasn't broken?”

“No. That was a bit of a lie. I kind of took the battery out.”

“But it doesn't matter, right? Because Bryce will be fine? These guys'll just hand him over to his father?”

“That was the plan,” Sam said, standing up. “But the plan has changed.”

“How so?”

“They want to keep the money. So now they've actually kidnapped Bryce.”

chapter nineteen

“So what do you think they'll do now?” I asked.

“They wouldn't tell me. They just said I'd been paid. That my part was done.”

We boarded down to where Dave stood. He stared at Sam.

“I heard him on the phone with the kidnappers,” Dave said. “He's in on it. What are you doing with him?”

“It's not that simple, Dave,” I said.

“It seemed that simple to me. He is in on it.”

“Listen, these guys weren't going to kidnap Bryce. Bryce
wanted
to be kidnapped. He set the whole thing up. But now they actually
have
kidnapped him.”

“What?” Dave said.

“Sam explained it.”

“Of course he did. Don't believe him. I heard him on the phone. And you should have seen him last night.”

“What?” Hope asked.

“He was drunk. He thought I didn't notice.”

I didn't even look at Sam. “It doesn't matter, now, Dave. We have to save Bryce.”

Dave gave me a funny look. “Who made you boss?”

“Stay here then. I don't care.” I turned back to Hope. “So what do we do now?” The storm had passed. It was almost three, and the sun was still high in the sky and warm. If we had had nothing else on our plates, a nice day of boarding would have been ahead of us.

Instead, we were trying to save a friend from a mess he'd got himself into.

“Sam,” Hope said, “where were they supposed to meet this car?”

“At the bottom,” Sam said.

“Yeah, but where?”

“There's a logging road that winds along here. The car was going to pick them up at the northern tip. That's why they called before. They needed directions.”

“All right,” Hope said. “Do you still have that phone?”

“Yeah,” Sam said, digging around in his jacket.

“Okay, here's the plan. But we have to work fast.”

The plan was simple enough. Sam called the kidnappers and told them that he had some information about the pickup. That someone knew. That he couldn't talk on the phone because the line wasn't secure. He told them to stop and wait for him.

The kidnappers said they would wait, but we couldn't trust them. We had to get to the car before they did, or the rest of the plan wouldn't work.

“They have a major head start on us,” Dave said.

“Yeah,” Sam replied. “But they had to wait out the avalanche. On the phone, they said that someone had gone down and they were trying to dig out his snowboard. If we go fast, we'll beat them to the bottom. I can call my friend, the pilot, and get him to bring some police out here.” Sam looked at the phone. “I don't have much juice left though. This'll be the only call I'll be able to make. Then we'll have to hold the kidnappers off until the police show.”

“All right,” Hope said, taking control again. “You and Dave go that way and try to follow them. Alex and I will shoot straight down and get to the car. When we get there, we'll take care of the driver. You guys be ready to do something with the kidnappers.”

“Listen to her,” Dave said. “Take care of the driver. What are you, a gangster?” Hope leveled a cold stare at him. She put her goggles on, and a second later she'd jumped into the air and was tucking down the mountain.

“See you on the other side,” I said, as I leaned into the hill.

“You go,” Sam replied. “Clean up this mess.” I was twenty feet below them when I heard Sam yell out, “Be safe, man.”

I tucked hard down the mountain, making long turns when I had to. The avalanche had flattened everything out for us. It was like riding down a construction site at times though. At one point I noticed a woodstove stuck against the side of a tree. It looked like the one from our cabin. It would have made me laugh at just about any other time.

I caught up with Hope, and we boarded side by side for a while. Then we came over a ridge and could see the logging road in the distance. It was flat and wooded. It was a welcome sight, all that flat land.

“Go over there,” I said, pointing to some tall trees that had survived the avalanche. Hope cut hard to the right and I followed. Once we were stopped behind a tree, I said, “Look for a car.”

The sun was coming in hard from our right. We cupped hands above our eyes and started to search the land beneath us.

“Right over there,” Hope said. I looked where she was pointing. A car was parked beside some trees at the bottom of the hill. Someone was standing beside it.

“How do we get down there without whoever that is seeing us?” I asked. Hope took a glove off, undid the zipper of my jacket and reached inside.