Dana Mentink - Final Resort

She blushed. “It drives him crazy that his bum leg keeps him down there while I’m up here, so I suspect he’s strong-armed someone into giving him a pair of skis. I’d better get back before he thinks he’s ready for the expert slopes.”

“You go on,” Luca said with a chuckle. “I’m going to take it slow. Meet you down there.”

“Take it slow? Since when?” Stephanie cocked her head and gave him that look. “Sure?”

“Sure.”

“All right, but don’t do anything crazy on the slopes. There’s a storm coming in. Remember, you’re a treasure hunter, not an Olympic athlete.” She swished away down the hill, skis gliding smoothly over the sparkling ground.

She was right, he was a treasure hunter at heart and it had been his idea to form the Treasure Seekers agency in the first place. He’d told himself it was to help his brother Victor deal with his first wife’s sudden death, but it was more than likely a way to soothe his constant restlessness. In the off season when he wasn’t piloting a helicopter for the U.S. Forest Service, there was not enough to keep him busy and busy was the only thing that kept him sane. He was the kid in grade school who could never seem to stay in his seat. Some things hadn’t changed.

He and his siblings had found treasures, all right, everything from lost masterpieces to priceless stamps, yet he always experienced a letdown after each case, as if the treasure, rich though it was, was somehow not the prize he was meant to be looking for.

“Earthly treasures aren’t going to satisfy,” he could hear his father say. But he felt so alive when he was deep in the throes of a search, however dissatisfying the ending might be.

He shook the thoughts away and pulled his goggles into place.

One more run.

He shouldn’t be skiing here, so close to the shut-down Whisper property. He puzzled over why the fond memories of his past there felt so strong. Idly he wondered what Ava would do after her family’s property was sold. At least the sale might afford them some security. That’s what Luca’s father believed when he proposed buying it pending Luca’s report.

Head out of the clouds, Luca.

He mentally picked out the path he intended to take down the mountain and readied himself to push off.

A streak of black caught his attention.

He jerked toward the movement, thinking he had imagined it until the shape zinged again through the white-robed trees finally coming to a stop on a flat rock that protruded above the snow. The dog barked, a loud, agitated sound that cut through the quiet of the snow-covered hollow.

Luca stared at the animal. Even though he could not figure out what a dog would be doing alone out here on the slopes, he was far more surprised by one particular detail. The animal was big, a scruffy black-and-tan creature that spoke of German shepherd parentage with something fluffier mixed in, but the strangest thing about him was his left ear, the top of which had been cut off somehow long ago, leaving a flattened tip.

Luca had known a dog with just such an ear, but he could not believe it. Ava’s dreamer of an uncle owned a critter that answered to the same description, but it could not be one and the same. Uncle Paul, last Luca had heard, was lying low to escape a group of unsavory folks from whom he’d borrowed money.

“Mack Dog?” Luca yelled out, amazed that he remembered the name.

The dog jerked as if he’d gotten a shock, stood up and wagged a tentative tail in Luca’s direction.

A noise from over the hill made them both tense. Luca was not sure but it might have been a shout or maybe just the echo of some agitated bird.

Mack Dog leaped from the rock, floundering in the snow before he began an awkward journey in the direction of the noise, bulldozing his way through the frozen piles, standing every few feet on his rear legs to get his visual bearings.

Luca watched the dog in amazement.

How could it be Mack Dog?

He listened again, heard a snowmobile engine. Just someone enjoying the slopes like himself, who had probably lost track of his dog. He should ski on, go to meet his sister, but something turned him in a different direction, toward a smooth section that would take him to the source of the noise.

Mack Dog, or whoever’s dog it might be, wouldn’t survive long left alone on the mountain. Luca poled out to a promising spot and skied as quickly as he could manage downslope, where he edged into a turn that would take him toward the hill. He could make out Mack Dog barreling through the trees in the same direction.

The slope was not as smooth as he made the turn, the snow uneven and bumpy. He had to use his poles vigorously to keep the momentum, and his breath came in white puffs. Finally he made it to a spot where he could see the terrain. Through a curtain of whirling flakes, he spied a road winding below him and beyond that, at the bottom of a steep drop-off, was the lake that he would forever think of as Ava’s.

Mack Dog erupted from the trees and skidded crazily to the road below before trotting around the corner. Luca shuffled carefully on his skis a few feet to the left which gave him a better view of the road below the hill on which he stood. He saw now where the dog was headed, to a battered pickup truck, the front driver’s-side door open. Papers and an overturned cardboard box lay on the snow, as if thrown there along with a messy coil of rope and a toolbox with assorted wrenches scattered about.

He stood, mouth open as the man he knew as Uncle Paul burst out of the trees, cheeks flushed with exertion.

A second figure ran into view. Drawing close, she reached up a hand and stripped off her knit cap in irritation. The blond hair shone brilliant against the red of her jacket.

He did not hear what she said to her uncle nor did he need to. Ava Stanton, no longer an awkward teenager, stood just below him, like some strange memory come to life before his eyes. There was such intensity on her face, such rigidity in her body that his breath caught, nerves tingling.

As if she heard his thoughts, Ava tipped her head up.

Her blue eyes met his, widening, probably lost in the same incredulity he felt.

So riveted was he by those blazing eyes that he did not register the engine until a blue snowmobile appeared, the driver’s face obscured by a helmet with a mirrored visor.

While Luca looked down at the bizarre scene, Paul’s mouth rounded in shock. The machine roared closer.

Something odd and out of place appeared in the driver’s hand, something black and shiny.

A gun.

Luca’s pulse hammered.

No, not a gun, something different.

Luca’s brain produced the fact even as his body pushed forward, hurtling down the icy hill as the snowmobile closed the gap to Ava and her uncle.

TWO

Ava tore her gaze away from Luca’s face in time to see the snowmobile zooming toward them through a gap in the trees. She had no time to puzzle over Luca’s sudden appearance. Feet frozen in shock, she felt the snow tremble under her boots, as the engine noise pierced the air with the intensity of a buzz saw. Ava had seen people do crazy things on the slopes before, something about the combination of speed and snow seemed to rob them of their senses, but this was different.

Her suspicions were confirmed when she saw something appear in the driver’s left hand while his right still gripped the accelerator. It was squat, compact, unfamiliar, but her instincts screamed in fear. The machine closed in, and she shouted to her uncle.

“Uncle Paul!” Her words were lost in the scream of the engine.

Paul raised an arm to his head as if to ward off a blow, Mack Dog barking wildly at the approaching threat, unsure whether to make for his master or the oncoming mechanical monster.