“Let me do that before you hurt yourself.” Ben stepped in and adjusted Waylon’s belt. “Better?”
“Much. This shit isheavy. I don’t know how you nerds walk around in it all day.”
“I’d explain the physics, but it might sprain your tiny brain.”
“Har har!”
Ben chuckled as he poured himself another coffee from the craft services table, then checked his watch. They'd all be heading up there in a Snowcat in another few minutes, depending on how quickly the crew could pack everything. They’d watch Rowan and Duke do one of Ben’s favorite scenes, then it would be their turn to pretend to march up the mountain and die beneath Lord Felldark’s snowy wrath.
Then back down and to a hotel in Georgetown. One day closer to Christmas and proposing to Charlie.
“Moose!” Elias called. “Come settle this. Bear says my cape is on upside down.”
“It is,” Bear rumbled.
“It's a cape! How can it be upside down?”
Ben walked over, grateful for the distraction. He helped Elias adjust the cape—which wasn’t upside down, but was inside out—while Gabe took videos for their extremely jealous women waiting back home.
Then he wandered to the crew, who were packing the last of the equipment from the avalanche shoot into a Snowcat. Four others stood empty, waiting to transport personnel. Ben checked his watch. Charlie and the others had been gone almost twenty minutes now.
Shane appeared at Ben's side, radio in hand. “Have you seen Maddie?”
“She took a snowmobile up to the site.”
“When? She was supposed to wait and go with the rest of us.”
Ben checked his watch. “About ten minutes ago. She said Viv needed something fixed.”
“Fixed? What could be broken? They didn’t take any real equipment up there.”
Shane's radio crackled just then. It was Charlie's voice, broken by static.
“Elk... send... early? Over.”
“Dammit. Mountains are blocking the signal,” Shane muttered. He keyed his mic. “King, confirm. Is Maddie there. Over.”
Nothing.
“Shit,” Ben said. “Unless it’s one of the snowmobiles. But, why would Maddie go up? This makes no sense.”
Shane looked at Ben. “Did Maddie say anything else to you? Before she left?”
Ben thought back.You never know when things can change.
“She told me her boyfriend broke up with her,” Ben said slowly. “She seemed... off.”
“Yeah, Charlie mentioned she was acting stressed.” Shane tried the radio again. Still static. “Who was her boyfriend? Did she say?”
“No.” But even as Ben said it, pieces were clicking together in his mind.
Maddie's reaction when Duke had flirted with that fan.
Her eyes looked the same right before she walked away from Ben a few minutes ago.
Fuck.
And, she was the biggest insider of all, at Viv’s side nearly twenty-four seven.
