I don’t look back until I reach the top of the mountain.
CHAPTER THREE
Frigid Escape
I reach the top of the slope and glance down at the dark shape of Sebastian Stark as he makes his way down the side of the mountain. I have no doubt that he’ll make it despite his injuries. He’s one tough bastard, and I admire him.
I sigh as I look down the side of the snowy ridge and swing my legs over to start my own descent. I need to find a good hiding spot until anyone who might be looking for me is gone. As I make my way slowly down the rocks, I wonder how long it will take for them to decide I’m buried in the snow.
There aren’t a lot of options for hiding, but as I hear the whir of helicopter blades, I duck behind a ridge and press my back against the rock. The movement jars my dislocated shoulder, and I have to grit my teeth against the pain. All things considered, I’m lucky to be alive. I know it, but I don’t feel it. Just an hour ago, I was ready to die. It would have been a relief. Giving up, even briefly, had felt good.
I probably just need a decent night’s sleep.
A vision moves beside me, and as much as I want to ignore the specter, he stays in my sights, looking over at me with dark hair hanging in his innocent eyes.
He’s not there. I know he’s not really there.
Even with the intense cold, his presence makes my palms sweat. I let myself look in his direction even though I don’t want to. The kid looks the same as he always does—disheveled, dressed in a simple cloth shirt and trousers, no shoes. There is fear in his eyes as if he knows exactly what is about to happen to him.
“Don’t you have some other poor asshole to harass?” I ask aloud.
The kid tilts his head but doesn’t speak. He rarely does.
I use the back of my glove to rub at my eyes. The snow melts on my skin, causing a chill as the wind hits my face. I need to stay dry, so I use the strip of cloth covering my mouth to wipe the melted snow away and then yank up my gloves.
The helicopter passes over my head and out of sight. I glance over my shoulder at the icy mountain behind me. Mt. Windsor is the only actual land formation that makes up tiny Buckingham Island in Canada’s unorganized Nunavut territory. On a good day, the temperature might reach zero, but it’s not a good day.
Soon, it’s going to be a really shitty night. I don’t think I’ll live through it.
Shuffling away from the rock, I rub at my sore shoulder and start down the side of the mountain again. It’s slow going. Balancing with one arm basically out of commission isn’t easy, and the terrain is rough. The wind is at my back, trying to push me over, but I manage to stay on my feet.
The vision of the kid, occasionally kicking at rocks that don’t move, follows me all the way down.
My head pounds along with my heart. I close my eyes and shake my head, but he’s still there. It doesn’t seem to matter what I do anymore. I can’t get rid of him. When I first started seeing him, before I realized what he was, he would disappear soon after I first saw him. Now he lingers, taunting me with the memories of the boy I killed overseas.
He doesn’t bother to hide when the helicopter passes over again, but I have to duck underneath a rocky outcropping. When I drag myself back out, he still stands there, staring at me. Maybe he’s feeling bolder since I told Stark about him.
“Fuck you,” I mutter.
Before I trudge on, I pull a small black box from my pocket. I have to take off my glove to tap at the keys, and my hand is nearly frozen by the time I’m done.
“Always have a contingency plan.” I nod to the kid. The words make me tense as I listen to myself say them. Maybe if the kid had bothered with Plan B, he’d still be alive. I close my eyes and rub my temples as I keep walking down the slope.
Exhaustion is setting in. With all the hours trapped and immobilized, I should feel rested, but I don’t. The cold is seeping into me. I barely notice wh
en I reach the bottom of the mountain, and the terrain levels out. My eyes burn from the sting of the frigid wind. I can no longer tell if I’m shivering or not; my body is too numb. That’s probably for the best, all things considered. My shoulder has definitely popped back out of its socket again though I can’t remember what I did to make that happen. If circumstances were less lethal, I might have thrown myself against a rock to get it back in place, but if I pass out from the pain, I’m screwed. I’ve tried to wrap my arm up as best I can to keep it close to my body and unmoving, but the flashes of sharp pain I had been feeling before have been replaced by the slightest of aches.
I have to keep moving. I know if I stop, the cold will kill me.
It’s been hours since I used a small satellite transmitter to send a single, coded message. I have no idea if it reached its intended recipient or not, and all I can do is wait.
The kid keeps pace as I walk toward the ice, look out as far as I can see, and then walk back toward the foot of the mountain. Because there is nothing else for me to do but wait, I pace back and forth across the rocks and think about how I got here.
Tournament games—organized crime’s favorite pastime. Each of the organizations’ best fighters battle against those from the other groups. In the end, there should be only one man standing, but this time there were two: me and Bastian Stark, my half-brother.
I smile to myself and shake my head at the ludicrous circumstances that have finally brought us together.
Weeks ago, I’d been so tempted to end Stark on the beach in Miami from a quarter mile away. From the rooftop of a construction site, I’d had my finger on the trigger of my sniper rifle, and he’d been in the crosshairs. I hadn’t done it though. The night before, I had learned about our shared lineage, and I wondered if that was going to change how I felt about killing him. It hadn’t. At least, I didn’t think it had. Regardless, I didn’t shoot him. I’d gone down to the beach to taunt him instead. I’d sat in the sand with the sound of the waves surrounding me, trying not to think of the hole in the desert where I’d spent eighteen months of my life as a POW.