David Gilman - Ice Claw

Three other figures lay on wooden loungers in the late-winter sun, their injured legs propped up. Sophie Fauvre had had the best orthopedic surgeon in Switzerland work on her damaged knee. She had beamed when Max arrived, but she saw his weariness. Battle fatigue, Corentin told her. Max had been through something huge. Probably something he wouldn’t be able to talk about for a long time.

Sophie understood. She would go back to her father and help with the endangered species. She hoped Max would return home and find a way of talking to his dad.

She had hugged Max. “Hey?”

“Yeah. It’s cool,” he had said, smiling.

Bobby Morrell had been brought to the clinic from a French hospital. His broken arm, leg and ribs would heal in time, but the pain he felt over his grandmother’s death would take much longer.

But as far as Max was concerned luck had been the most generous to Sayid. Not since a Japanese man had recovered from being frozen on a mountaintop some years earlier had anyone survived such intense cold. The doctors agreed-Sayid had fallen into a hypothermic state similar to hibernation. His brain and organ functions had been locked away as if in a cyberspace retrieval system, and had been protected without being damaged. He’d made a complete recovery.

They all sat wrapped in blankets, gazing out across the clinic’s gardens towards the snow-capped mountains.

“I don’t know how you found me,” Sayid said to Max, knowing Max would tell him the whole story one day.

“I heard you snoring,” Max replied.

The others laughed, but Max soon fell silent, letting them talk and shout each other down as they excitedly told how each had survived their own experience.

Farentino had disappeared in the confusion of the rescue operation by the Swiss and French forces, but his words were as sharp and hurtful as when they were first spoken. What had really happened to Max’s mother? Did his dad know about Farentino’s love for her? An uncertain future faced Max. He had to find the truth behind his mother’s death.

And discover whether his father had lied to him.

Max heard the distant, echoing roar of a bear, and the answering howl of a big wolf. It made him shiver. It was as if they called out to him.

“Did you hear that?” he asked the others.

“Hear what?” they said.

Max shook his head and gazed back into the mountains.

“Nothing.” Max smiled. “It must be my imagination.”