Dark Angel 03: Broken Dream (22 page)

‘Orlando. No, I’m not with him any more,’ I mumbled as the chairlift operator led the engineer up the steps on to the platform and showed him the problem with the bullwheel.

‘What happened? Did he get sucked in by the bright lights and glamour?’ Rocky asked.

‘You could say that.’

‘Sorry, I’m being too personal.’ He checked his own watch then asked the engineer how long it would take to repair the fault, before taking up the conversation where we’d left off. ‘It’s Tania, isn’t it? I just thought you looked like you needed someone to talk to.’

‘No, I’m cool, thanks.’

Luckily all the engineer had to do was switch to back up while he replaced an electrical fuse. ‘Ready to roll,’ he reported, flicking the switch to restart the motor.

‘But if ever you do need someone.’ Rocky insisted on me stepping into the first gondola while he waited for the second. ‘Remember I’m a pretty good listener.’

OK, so I’d be late. The gondola rose unsteadily up Carlsbad in the icy wind, moving slowly towards the first steel tower. But Holly and Grace would wait for me; they would understand. I looked down on the group gathered by the entrance to the old mine – technicians whose footprints had churned up the smooth surface of the snow and who were now crowded around cameras and sound equipment, plus a bunch of actors standing under a canvas shelter, taking direction from Lucy and Larry. I made out Charlie Speke heading with Adam towards the nursery slope then looked ahead to judge the distance up to the overlook. It was then that I felt the gondola jerk and come to a halt.

Crap – another fuse must have blown on the bullwheel and I was stranded high on the mountain. Wind rocked the car suspended from the taut steel cable and a sudden flurry of snow swept down from the summit. Fear seized me by the throat. I pictured the stretched wire straining, fraying and snapping. I saw myself plummet to an icy death.

I hear wings beating in a white wilderness. The world is ice bound and silent. I have come face to face with the first incarnation of my dark angel. Like an eagle with a sharp beak and cruel talons, his black wings spread wide
.

Sheer cliffs of ice tower to either side. I am alone in a deep, frozen crevasse
.

Stranded on the chairlift, I had plenty of time to remember Zoran’s final attack.

‘
Be brave. Find out the truth.’ Pale-gold light breaks through clouds. Adam’s voice is carried on the wind. It emerges from the snow flurry and chimes in with the sweet voices of Maia and Zenaida, my small team of good angels. ‘Catch the devil by the throat.’ They chant their mantra. ‘Be strong
.’

‘
Thank you,’ I murmur as their light warms my face
.

Then the overhead cable moved again and I was carried towards the terminal on the summit of the mountain.

The first thing I expected to see when I stepped out of the gondola was Holly’s car. It should have been in the parking bay backed by a rough fence, next to a sheer fifty-foot drop. But no. What I saw in its place was a familiar grey truck belonging to Orlando’s dad – the car Orlando had driven from Bitterroot to Mayfield last Tuesday evening.

Orlando was here on the overlook. Had he already seen Holly and Grace and said something that had made them turn around and head for home? Squashing the questions that fluttered inside my head, I grew angry at the idea that Orlando might have tricked them and, worse still, that they might have believed him. So I strode towards the truck and wrenched at the door handle. It was locked. I swept snow from the windscreen and peered inside.

‘Orlando!’ He was sitting at the steering wheel, staring out with the empty, blank expression I dreaded. ‘Open the door. What are you doing here?’

Still he didn’t react so I thudded my fists against the driver’s door until at last he unlocked it and allowed me into the cab. I climbed in, brushing snow from my jacket and shaking it from my hair. ‘How long have you been sitting here?’ I demanded.

Slowly he turned his head, his gaze unfocused and with a frown knotting his brows. I thought I knew every millimetre of his face – the smooth texture of his skin, the exact angle of his cheekbones and jaw, the way his lashes curled. But now as I looked at him, I hardly recognized him. What was different? Not the shapes and the angles, not the grey of his eyes and the forward sweep of his dark hair. No, the difference was in the stillness of his features, the paleness, the emptiness, the lack of life in his eyes.

‘Say something!’ I pleaded. ‘Explain why you’re here.’

Still moving slowly, he turned away, leaning forward to switch on the engine, turning on the wipers to clear the screen. They laboured under the heavy weight of settled snow as Orlando began to reverse the truck off the overlook on to the single-track road off the mountain.

‘Stop. Where are we going?’

He didn’t reply until he’d completed the manoeuvre and we were pointing downhill. ‘Sit back,’ he muttered as he leaned forward to clutch the wheel and rev the engine. ‘Don’t talk.’

‘Did Gwen send you?’ I demanded. ‘What’s her plan here? Are you and I supposed to go through the whole thing again – me begging you to come home, you telling me I’m crazy, rejecting me, telling me it was all a mistake, that you never loved me? Is this where you finally break my heart? Don’t bother. It’s already broken.’

Part of what I said must have got through because Orlando took his foot off the accelerator and slumped forward.

I saw by the way his hands gripped the wheel that a struggle was taking place inside him and I reached out my own hand to try and reconnect.

‘Come back to me,’ I pleaded. ‘Orlando, it’s not too late. You must keep on fighting what Gwen is trying to do to you – please!’

He held the wheel so tight that his knuckles turned white. When he spoke, his voice was slow and slurred. ‘Tania, I can’t do this. She told me not to talk to you, said I can’t be near you any more.’

‘So why are you here?’

‘She wanted me— No, you don’t want to know,’ he groaned, stamping on the pedal, making the tyres spin and whine on the icy surface. His defensive barrier was quickly back in place as we slid sideways and the back end of the truck lodged in a gulley. He swore and put his foot down hard, only succeeding in churning up the snow and digging us deeper into the ditch.

‘She wanted you to do what – deal with me?’

He shook his head.

‘Yeah, that’s what she told you. She said, “Don’t let Tania come back down the mountain. Do whatever you have to do.”’

‘I can’t talk about it,’ he said as he wrenched at the handle and flung open the door.

‘What now?’ I cried as he jumped out, grabbed a spade from the trunk and started to dig. I followed him, sinking knee deep into a drift. ‘Getting stuck in the snow wasn’t part of Gwen’s plan, was it? She knew about the meeting with Holly and Grace – someone told her about it. You saw them, didn’t you and persuaded them to turn around? What did you tell them?’

‘Yeah, I saw the girls,’ he admitted as he dug. ‘It made me laugh out loud, the way they zapped in on their superhero rescue mission. But they were easy to fool. All I had to do was tell one big fat lie.’

‘You lied?’ I echoed faintly. Any hope I had that help was at hand was rapidly fading.

‘I told them your mom got sick again and you went home to take care of her.’

‘How could you say that?’

‘Easy,’ he mocked. ‘I said, “Tania’s mom is back in the hospital. Tania went to visit her.” It worked like a dream.’ Orlando laughed as he carried on digging us out. ‘Where are Holly and Grace now? Do you see them?’

‘They’ll soon find out it’s not true. They’ll be back.’

‘But not soon enough – not with thirty centimetres of snow forecast. It’ll block the road out of Bitterroot. Anyway, what did the dumbasses hope to achieve, coming back here to see you?’

‘Orlando!’ I cried. ‘Listen to yourself. These so-called dumbasses are our friends, not our enemies. They’re on our side.’

He cleared the back wheels then thudded his spade into the heap of dug snow. ‘We don’t have a side any more, remember. There’s you and there’s me. You’re in your own crazy little world, Tania, and finally I’m free. It took me a while but then I met Gwen and she knew how to put it into words for me – the doubts I always had about the whole dark angel thing, the way you manipulate me and make me feel guilty all the time. She made me realize I had to stop you doing that.’

‘By driving me off the track and abandoning me? Is that what this is about?’

‘Whatever it takes to be free,’ he muttered.

‘Please don’t,’ I begged, covering my ears to try to block out his stinging words.

‘Gwen showed me how far you’d dragged me down, how close you were to destroying me.’

‘No. You can’t trust Gwen. She twists everything. It’s what they do.’

Orlando seized the spade and threw it into the truck. ‘“They”?’ he challenged.

‘The dark angels. They’re beautiful on the outside – that’s how they seduce you and draw you into their world.’ I was in the last-chance saloon and I knew it, so I put everything I could into trying to convince Orlando that he was in deadly danger. ‘But listen to me. They play with your mind and trap you. They’re twisted by their desire for revenge and they want you to join them in hell for ever.’

‘Gwen said you would try this,’ he said scornfully as he shoved me back into the truck. ‘She warned me about the types of mind games crazy people like you use. But it won’t work this time, Tania.’

I fell against the steering wheel and he leaned in to pull me upright. Instinct made me grab his arm. ‘Stop,’ I pleaded. ‘Whatever it is Gwen has ordered you to do to me, you can choose to stop right now.’

He laughed in my face. ‘Watch out, here comes Tania’s paranoia! Now crazy girl lets her imagination off the leash. This is where she thinks I’m going to drive her over the edge of a cliff and finish it for good. Or would you rather I tie you up and dump you back on that overlook where you could take in the view and slowly freeze to death?’ Slamming my door, he walked round to the driver’s side.

I let out a sob of fear and frustration that the guy I was arguing with was no longer the Orlando I knew. He was a total stranger. Then I tugged at the door handle and scrambled out of the truck, aiming to reach the chairlift terminal on foot. But I didn’t get more than three steps through the soft snow before he caught up with me and blocked my way.

‘You’re not making this easy,’ he sighed. ‘All you have to do is sit in the car.’

‘I’m not coming with you,’ I said, pushing against him. By this time I could hardly make out the steel tower because of the blizzard driving in from the north, but I could hear the whir of the cable and the clink of metal as a gondola passed overhead.

‘And I’m not letting you get on that chairlift.’ Orlando refused point-blank to get out of my way. ‘We take the truck.’

‘I don’t trust you,’ I yelled. ‘I don’t want to go in the truck with you.’

Exasperated, he threw himself at me, wrapped both arms tight around my chest and hauled me off my feet. I kicked and struggled, knowing that even if Orlando failed in his mission and I made it back to the lodge, dark forces were gathering in the corridors of Carlsbad Lodge – Jarrold hiding round a corner, Daniel laying in wait in a room close to mine, Weller stepping out of the elevator.

A gondola clicked along the cable and paused at the terminal just long enough for a figure in a blue jacket to step out. As it emerged out of the blizzard and strode towards us, Orlando let me go.

‘So, Tania, you weren’t being straight with me,’ Rocky Seaton said. ‘You came to meet your boyfriend after all.’

He’d spotted us through the falling snow – Orlando dragging me towards the car, me fighting him off – and I guess he thought we’d had a typical lovers’ fight. In any case it wasn’t the reason he’d come up the mountain.

‘Something bad happened,’ he told us, his face deadly serious. ‘Adam Kane went missing.’

It was as if someone had shot me through the heart. It stopped beating and for a few moments I thought it would never kick back into life. ‘No, that can’t be right!’

‘It is. Everything’s crazy down there. They have everyone searching for the kid.’

‘I saw him heading for the nursery slopes with Charlie. He was totally fine.’

‘Charlie came back without him. He ran to the lodge to raise a search party.’ Rocky gave us the facts calmly, walking Orlando and me back towards the ski lift. ‘Natalia is asking for you, Tania. She’s half crazy but you were still the one she wanted.’

With my heart thumping against my ribs I stepped into the chairlift, hardly noticing when Orlando pulled back and told Rocky he would drive his truck down the mountain. ‘Did Charlie say exactly what happened?’ I asked Rocky, who climbed into the gondola with me.

‘Adam took off down the slope while Charlie watched. He saw him veer off track and disappear over a ridge.’

‘Did he follow?’

‘Charlie says he went right after him – he was only about thirty seconds behind. When he took the ridge he found the next gorge was lined with redwoods. He tried to follow Adam’s trail but it just seemed to end at the base of one of the trees. Then he found a pair of abandoned skis and started to yell the kid’s name – nothing. So he ran to fetch help.’

‘And that’s where the search party is now – in the gorge?’ I checked as our gondola reached the main terminal. I’d already seen that the entire film crew had come down from the old mine to join the search. Among them, Jack stood out at the head of the bunch striding across the nursery slopes towards the ridge where Adam had vanished.

‘The theory is he lost control and crashed into the tree. Then, instead of waiting for Charlie he set off on foot towards the hotel, but he didn’t make it.’

‘My God!’ I groaned. Rocky and I had joined the stream of people descending on the gulley where Adam had disappeared. ‘He’s a tiny kid. It’s snowing. What are his chances?’

‘Don’t even think about it,’ Rocky advised as he took me to where Natalia was standing with Charlie, Gwen and half a dozen other helpers, all gathered around her.

Natalia saw me and broke free from the group. She stumbled towards me and almost collapsed into my arms. ‘Is he with you?’ she pleaded. ‘Tell me you have him safe!’