CHAPTER 54

BENEATH THE WOOL HOOD and the blanket, Bree shook uncontrollably as the snowmobile dragging the sled she was on slowed and then accelerated rapidly up a steep hill. The sled went airborne and slammed down, blowing the breath out of her.

She choked and gasped, her body shivering and trembling, but finally calmed down enough to breathe. She’d never been so cold in her life. Her toes and fingers had lost feeling. She was sure she was developing frostbite and did not know how much longer she could take it.

Finally, after what seemed like a five- or six-hour trip, they stopped. There were voices, and the hood was pulled off.

Bree blinked against the light, turned her head against the bitter wind, and saw armed men in balaclavas, goggles, and snow camo removing the straps that held her to the sled. It was late in the day. There were flurries falling.

Bree’s ankles were cut free; two of the men lifted her up, but they left the wrist cuffs on.

Her feet felt frozen and then burned painfully as she took a few cautious steps in the knee-deep snow. When the men were sure she could stand, they walked away from her and got on their snowmobiles.

Bree, still shivering, saw Sampson about thirty yards from her, also shaking from the cold. His goatee was coated in frost.

The one who’d abducted them, Toomey, gestured toward a stand of fir trees. “Take the trail. Find the old metal building and do it fast. It’s going to get brutal out here.”

He whistled. The six snowmobiles started up and sped off, leaving Bree and Sampson in the fading light. John began struggling against his wrist restraints.

“John,” Bree said. “It’s too cold. We will die if we don’t seek shelter.”

Sampson gave up and stomped toward her. “Let’s go, then.”

He got ahead of her and broke trail down the path through the firs. It was dimmer in the trees, but there was more light when they got out of the woods. Sampson stopped, shaking his head. Bree stepped around him and gasped, not at the intensity of the frigid wind but at the scene before them.

They stood near the edge of a high cliff overlooking a stunning alpine valley with towering, jagged peaks on two sides and a broad, frozen river running through it. The last of the sun was playing on storm clouds that quickly swallowed the crags and blew toward them on a wind building up to a gale.

Bree tried to see if she could spot some kind of building down in the valley. But how would they get down there if they could see it?

“There it is,” Sampson said, nodding to their right.

She saw it then—a low building with a metal roof about two hundred yards from them and back from the rim of the bluff. Sampson broke trail through the snow again and within minutes they were at the door.

The knob turned. He pushed the door open, and they stepped inside.

There were windows below the eaves of the building that caught the last good light of the day and cast bluish beams and deep shadows across the space. They shut the door, which cut the wind, but they could still see their breath as they walked deeper into the structure, saw pieces of steel cable, several massive rusty gears on the concrete floor, and multiple iron things that looked like the seats of strollers mounted on railroad wheels.

“What is this place and where are we supposed to go?” Bree asked.

“Looks like part of an abandoned mine to me,” Sampson said, going to one of the gears and rubbing the plastic wrist restraints against the edge. “Those have to be ore cars.”

“How did they get into the mine?” Bree said, scanning the cavernous space that was getting darker by the minute.

Before John could respond, they heard a loud creaking noise near the far end of the structure. A light appeared from the floor itself, and an octagonal glass cylinder rose up out of the concrete.

“The weather report has just been updated,” said a man in a reasonable voice. “With the windchill, it will soon be sixty-two below zero. Even out of the wind as you are, you don’t stand a chance of lasting through the night. Get in, Bree Stone and John Sampson. Or die and we’ll cremate you both in the morning.”