Dark Angel 03: Broken Dream (23 page)

I shook my head and tried to hold her up, tried to think straight in a world that was falling apart. Snow blew into our faces and wind whipped through the trees where the search was concentrated.’ Did people stay behind to search the hotel?’ I asked Charlie, who took Natalia from me and held her close.

He nodded. ‘That’s our best hope – that somehow he made it to the lodge. The problem is there are no tracks to follow. The snow and the wind take them out in seconds.’

I took a deep breath to steady myself, closed my eyes and when I opened them again I saw Jack stumbling through the snow. He came up behind Charlie and wrenched him away from Natalia. Then he spun him round and threw a low punch, hitting Charlie in the stomach. Charlie staggered back but kept his balance. Jack swung his fist again. He toppled forward into the snow without making contact. Charlie stood over him, drawing back his foot, ready to kick out at Jack.

The fight lasted maybe ten seconds before two guys from the Starlite technical crew stepped in to restrain Charlie and drag Jack up off the ground. By now I was holding Natalia again, trying to lead her towards the hotel until Gwen stepped in.

‘It’s OK, Tania, I’ve got this.’ She put herself between me and a sobbing, shaking Natalia. Taking control, she gave me an intense, angry look that I fought against and then gave in to. I felt my willpower weaken and crumble under her dark angel strength.

So I stepped away and got drawn back into what was happening between Jack and Charlie.

‘Fuck you!’ Jack broke free from the cameramen and threw himself at Charlie, who stood his ground as Jack swore, grunted and swung wild punches. ‘Look what you did. First you wreck my marriage and my career and now you lose my kid.’

Charlie didn’t flinch under the accusation. His face was impassive as two more guys piled in on top of Jack and succeeded in dragging him away. It was me who went to pick Jack up from under the nearest tree while Charlie followed Gwen and Natalia towards the hotel.

‘Listen, Jack – you want to find Adam. We all do. So forget about Charlie. Think about your son. They say he crashed his skis into a tree then tried to make his way out of the gorge instead of waiting for Charlie. Does that sound like something Adam would do?’

Jack was back on his feet, but instead of listening to me and helping to figure it out, the very name ‘Charlie’ sent him crashing out of control again. He swore and pushed me away then staggered off deeper into the stand of snow-laden trees. Which left me alone and desperately wondering where my good angel had gone.

I close my eyes and open them on my parallel universe. I’m in a white world which sparkles in the sunlight. The surface of the snow glitters.

Adam appears surrounded by his halo of light. I walk towards him without my brain actually telling my legs to move, and it’s not really walking – more like floating. He’s smiling, telling me he’s not lost, holding out his hand.

I relax. I breathe again. My body tingles from head to toe
.

‘You will find me,’ Adam says softly. He looks incredibly young – hardly more than an infant. ‘The secret will be unlocked.’

‘
Thank you for being here,’ I whisper, and as I look up into the clear blue sky a flock of grey doves soars high overhead and a woman’s voice speaks though she remains invisible
.

‘Keep on searching,’ Maia’s slow, soft voice urges. ‘Rise to this final challenge. Be open to our voices, look around you with the innocent eyes of a child. Do not forget to reach out and take our hands.’

‘Where shall I look?’ I murmur. I want to find more than Adam’s disembodied, beautiful spirit – I need to find the boy himself.

‘In the place that you fear the most,’ Maia tells me. The doves swoop low. Sunlight catches their wings – the flashes of white, the soft greys and pinks of their feathers as they alight. ‘Evil dwells in the dark,’ she reminds me. ‘Deep in the ground the dark angels gather – fallen angels, devils in disguise. They exist in terrible, infinite darkness – the darkness of the soul.’

‘Under the ground,’ I murmur, and my heart quakes at the sounds of rockfall, the desperate voices of trapped men and the unnameable monsters who twist, writhe and crawl towards the light. ‘I have to search for Adam in the old mine?’

‘Have courage,’ Maia tells me as the golden vision of Adam starts to fade and the doves take flight. ‘Be prepared for anything.’

I shake with terror at the prospect of entering the mine. ‘Can’t you come with me?’ I beg.

We are always at your side. We are bound together by love.’

I know it in my heart but the fearful part of me casts a cold, deep shadow of doubt.

‘Go,’ Maia urges.

‘And after I find Adam in the mine and take him back to Natalia, what then? How do I overcome my enemy?’

‘Keep your heart open; be prepared,’ she insists. She points to Adam’s fading light. ‘You must hurry,’ she reminds me
.

The white world still sparkles but a sinking sun casts long shadows. The doves have disappeared.

‘Hurry!’ Maia urges.

I close my eyes and open them on the real world
.

Jack stumbled back towards me. He emerged from the redwoods, his lips stretched in what looked at first like a smile but which was really a sign of torment – gritted teeth, mouth sucking in air, black hair coated with snow. ‘I can’t find him!’ he cried.

I ran to meet him. ‘Come with me. We have to look inside the old mine.’ Setting off without waiting to see if Jack would follow, I struggled through snowdrifts until I reached the chairlift terminal and only then paused for breath. Then I turned and saw that he’d staggered after me.

Reaching one of the steel stilts that supported the weight of the platform above our heads, he leaned against it and tried to heave more air into his lungs.

‘Are you OK? Can you keep going?’ I asked.

Swearing and pushing me aside, he forced his legs to carry him higher up the mountain towards the entrance to the old silver mine. Now it was me struggling to keep up, feeling the burn of my thigh and calf muscles and the cold ache in my lungs. I’d fallen twenty or maybe thirty paces behind Jack when I saw him crouch and enter the dark tunnel then disappear from sight.

‘Wait!’ I yelled. Though my good angels had led me here, I was still scared that the roof would cave in if anyone disturbed the decades of neglect.

Jack took no notice. I reached the entrance and came up against a fug of stale air that carried the stench of the animals that had holed up here over many winters – mainly wolves and bears. Brushwood was scattered over the rough floor, mixed with dried animal droppings and lengths of old, rotten timber. I almost tripped over a coil of frayed rope, and then a large roll of rusty razor wire that had trapped an unwary wolf and held him fast until he starved to death and the flesh had rotted from his bones. I made out his ribcage, scattered vertebrae and yellow skull in the gloomy shadows, the long jaw, the curved canine teeth.

‘Adam!’ Jack was ahead of me, yelling his son’s name. His voice reached me, muffled and desperate. Seconds later he’d turned around and was stumbling back in my direction.

I put my arm out to stop him in his tracks. ‘Watch out for the razor wire.’

‘Adam’s not here,’ he cried. ‘The tunnel’s blocked. You were wrong – he didn’t come this way.’

‘Wait here. Let me take a look.’ I left him and ventured deeper into the mine, feeling my way. Twice I stumbled over loose boulders, knocking my shins. Once I banged my head against a sharp rock. ‘Adam?’ I called over and over, each time hoping for a faint reply. Then I came to the rockfall that Jack had described. I had to stop then and seriously consider my vision.

‘Maybe I just wanted it to be true,’ I muttered. Perhaps I longed for them to appear and tell me where to search, but it was only my mind playing a trick on me. The thought left me feeling confused and lost, opening the door to more dark doubts lurking in the underground gloom.

Then I heard Jack stumble towards me, felt him grab my arm and drag me towards the entrance. ‘I shouldn’t have listened to you.’

I resisted. ‘No, I do believe Adam headed this way. Maybe he found shelter here for a while and then moved off again.’

‘So where is he now?’ Jack stumbled against a boulder then caught his foot in the roll of razor wire. He stooped to tug at the wire with a gloved hand, swearing as one of the spikes pierced the glove before he managed to uncoil the wire across the shaft floor and step free, leaving me trapped behind it.

As he swore again and ran off, I felt my stomach twist and churn.

This is hell. Hell is total darkness – solid rock above my head and below my feet, in front and behind. There is no room to move.

I cry out but no one hears. There is no air left to breathe.

And this is how it will be if I let my dark angel defeat me. Trapped without oxygen, I will die in the dark and no one will ever find me. I will lie in this dark mine like the wolf caught in the wire
.

I gasped and blundered on, trampling the wire and stamping on the wolf’s skull as I went. I followed Jack out of the mine into the blizzard on the mountain.

The snow and the light blinded me. I blinked, then shielded my eyes from the flurry of white flakes, able to make out Jack about twenty metres ahead of me, running and falling, picking himself up, staggering on towards a small bunch of people – two adults and a child – huddled under the flimsy canvas awning erected by the film crew. I heard his voice croak out his son’s name – once, twice, three times – then I saw him reach the shelter and sink on to his knees, gather the child in his arms and hold him.

‘Tania, we’re over here!’ Grace called.

Confused, I waited for Holly to come up and meet me.

Jack was on his knees, hugging his son. Adam cried. Jack cried. We all hugged each other and let tears of relief flood through us.

Adam, my angel of light was safe.

‘What did you think – that we’d believe Orlando’s crappy message about your mom and drive the hell out of here?’ Holly demanded as she dragged me under the awning.

I
 kept in mind what Maia had said and held it close to my heart: ‘Prepare for anything to happen.’

The last thing I would have predicted was Holly and Grace staying on Carlsbad and being in the right place at the right time to rescue Adam.

But if you stop and think about it, no way would they have taken on board Orlando’s b.s. message without checking it out.

‘We drove down Carlsbad to where we could get a signal on our cell phones,’ Grace explained from the safety and warmth of the Carlsbad Lodge bar. Owen was serving drinks as usual while Macy perched on a stool chatting with him whenever business grew slack. ‘We had to drive almost into Mayfield Old Town. Holly called your dad from there and asked him was it true that your mom was sick again?’

‘I’d already wagered a million bucks he’d say no,’ Holly told me.

‘Which you don’t have,’ Grace pointed out sweetly.

‘So anyway, your dad said no, your mom was currently on a plane back from China. He wanted to jump in his car and drive up here to talk with you and Orlando, check you were both OK. But they already have thirty centimetres of snow in Bitterroot. They closed all the highways until the graders can clear them.’

‘We swore to him we’d hang around here in case we were needed,’ Grace went on. ‘Actually, we had no choice. The snow got worse; we’re trapped here. So Holly parked her car on the hotel parking lot and we set out on foot to find you.’

‘That’s when we ran into Adam.’ Holly gave a broad smile. ‘It turns out we saved the day. We’re the heroes!’

I smiled back warmly, remembering how we’d hugged and cried, how Jack had promised Adam that he would never let anything bad happen to him ever again. Adam had kept his arms locked tight around his dad’s neck as Jack had carried him down the mountain.

We’d reached the hotel in the heaviest snow of the winter so far. Total white-out.

Jack kept tight hold of Adam as Amber called from reception for the hotel medic and news of the rescue spread fast. Charlie ran in out of the snow and tried to share with Jack how relieved he was that everything had turned out OK, but it was obvious that Jack still blamed him. He’d blanked Charlie and carried Adam to the elevator.

I could only imagine the reunion between Natalia and her son as the lift door opened on the penthouse suite and she learned that he was safe.

‘We’re the heroes, so now they throw us out into the cold,’ Grace warned as two security guards appeared at the door of the bar. ‘We don’t have passes, remember.’

But the men stayed where they were and gave way to Rocky Seaton, still wearing his blue jacket and black hat. ‘I just heard what you girls did,’ he beamed as he strode to join us.

‘They’re not going to throw us out?’ Holly jerked her thumb towards the guys guarding the door.

‘Let them try.’ Rocky put on his best menacing-cop scowl then broke back into a grin. ‘Actually, no. I just spoke to Jack. He’s convinced you saved Adam’s life – five more minutes out on the mountain, hypothermia would have set in and it would have been too late.’

‘Is that what the doctor says?’ I asked.

Rocky nodded. ‘Jack wants to show his gratitude.’

‘Adam’s doing well?’ I checked as we left the bar and went up together in the elevator. It stopped before we reached the penthouse to let Charlie and Gwen step in.

‘Adam will be totally fine, thanks to you,’ Rocky assured us. The ‘thanks to you’ was delivered with one eye on Charlie, no doubt as a strong rebuke. ‘What the hell were you doing, letting a five-year-old kid out of your sight in the worst snowstorm of the year?’ Unspoken, but clearly understood.

Charlie didn’t react, and neither did Gwen. They stood facing the door with their backs to us, but I could see their reflection in a full-length mirror – their faces stern, their eyes unblinking. Half expecting Gwen to zap me with her dark angel eyes, I quickly looked down.

‘So did Orlando make it down the mountain in his old truck?’ Holly asked Gwen straight out, no beating about the bush.