The terrain under the snow is harsh. We’re in the deep Alps now, a place only seasoned mountaineers dare to explore when weather permits.
My phone!I whip it out.
No signal.Damn!
“Elise!” I shout. “Darrel!”
The storm picks up. More snow, more wind. I button up my coat.
“Elise!” I yell at the top of my lungs.
And then I see a parachute flapping in the wind on the ground. I rush over. It’s a female figure, lying in the snow, partially hidden by the chute.
ELISE
“Over here! I’m here!” I call out to Theodor, but my voice gets muffled by the parachute.
My body hurts in several places, but nothing seems broken. I wiggle my feet and hands again, move my arms and legs up and down, and try to sit up. But the tangled straps and ropes pull me back down. I swear and thrash in frustration.
Theodor takes the parachute off me. “Are you all right? Anything broken?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine.”
He helps me stand up. “You do look unharmed.”
Shivering, I tug the zipper of my down coat all the way up and pull the hood over my head. A gush of wind hits me in the face. It tastes like ice. My teeth are chattering and my hands are freezing. I shove them in the pockets of my coat.
“We need to move,” he says, nudging me to start walking. “Or else this snowstorm will finish what Kurt started.”
I fall into step beside him. “Who’s Kurt?”
“Doesn’t matter.” He points at my pockets. “Did your phone survive?”
I pull it out with a stiff, clumsy hand. “It did. But I don’t have any bars.”
“Me neither. We’ll try again later.”
“Any idea where Darrel and Jordan may have landed?”
He shakes his head.
We trudge in the snow, skirting boulders, sometimes helped and sometimes hindered by the wind that constantly shifts.
“Darrel is former special ops, trained to withstand anything,” Theodor says. “He’s indestructible.”
“Nobody’s indestructible.”
A very human, un-Theodor-like emotion flickers in his blue eye, making me regret my remark. He’s worried.
I shoot him a smile. “Let’s stay positive! We’re both unharmed, right? Hopefully, they are, too.”
“Darrel will find us.”
“Or we’ll find him.”
“Darrel will find us,” Theodor repeats, like a broken record. “He knows how much I’ve come to rely on him, and how much he’s needed now. He won’t let me down.”
Pardon me?
