Twisted Heart (18 page)

‘Where am I?’ she whispered in a weak, slurred voice that didn’t sound like her.

‘With me – Channing. You’re safe.’

‘What happened?’ She spoke like a heavy pebble weighted her tongue, slurring and stumbling over consonants.

‘You fell through the ice. You don’t remember?’

‘No. Not a thing.’

‘Cool,’ he murmured. ‘Everything’s good. No problem.’

I could see him cradling her, still holding her close. She was shivering and gazing up at him with a vacant look.

Why was it cool that she couldn’t remember? What did this remind me of?

‘All I know is, I woke before dawn,’ Holly whispered. ‘It was dark. I crawled out of the shelter. You were there.’

‘Hey,’ Channing said, rocking her gently. ‘Don’t try to talk. Ziegler will be here. He’ll bring a medic.’

I got busy gathering brushwood while Jarrold found a heavy stone and hammered stakes into the frozen ground. But when I glanced into the shelter, I swear I saw Channing kiss Holly’s shivering lips.

Grace and Ezra! I got it in a flash. Ezra, the dark angel’s henchman, had brainwashed Grace into falling in love with him on Black Rock. He’d created the same confused, empty stare I now saw in Holly. He’d smothered her in promises and kisses.

Dark angel – stealer of innocent souls, twisted tormentor. The love thief is back to claim another victim. He has risen again. Holly isn’t saved by Channing. It’s the total opposite – she’s in terrible danger
.

I broke into the shelter, spotted an angry look flash across Channing’s face when he saw me. ‘Try to remember!’ I urged. ‘Holly, it’s important. What happened when you crawled out of the shelter?’

‘Back off, Tania!’ In the small, dark space Channing put himself between me and Holly. ‘Can’t you see she’s confused?’

I argued back. ‘What do you have to hide? Was it you? Did you do this to her?’ I pointed to the broken zip, the ripped T-shirt. ‘Is this all down to you?’

‘I said, back off!’ he snarled. His temper snapped as he shoved me backwards out into the snow. I lost my balance and sprawled between the two girls, who were fanning the first flames of the fire.

Marta pulled me to my feet while Blake tutted then sucked air through her teeth. ‘You don’t want to argue with Channing,’ she advised. ‘The last kid who did that was Regan and he ended up in the ER.’

‘Holly is my friend!’ I protested. ‘Her clothes are ripped. There’s a big hole in her memory. I need her to tell me what happened.’

‘No, you don’t,’ Marta advised, standing back from the flames.

‘You definitely don’t,’ Blake agreed. ‘What you need to do is listen to Channing and act exactly the way he tells you to. If he says jump, you jump. If he says make a fire, you make – no question.’

I shook my head in disbelief. ‘What happened to trust? What happened to walking together?’ And to the peace and harmony I’d personally felt as I’d watched the sun rise.

The huge black monster slithers across the ice towards the fire. His eyes bulge and reflect the flickering flames, his body shines like burnished bronze – lithe and muscled like a giant cat – with claws and fangs and a foul breath. His wings cast a deep shadow over us
.

High in the morning sky, my glorious grey dove sails on an air current, keeping watch. Trust no one
.

Don’t believe Channing, I told myself. Or any of this New Dawn philosophy. Scratch the surface and what do you get? Secrets and lies.

Above the crackle of the fire Jarrold swore at me for not helping with the brushwood windbreak.

Richard Ziegler arrived with Regan and a woman I recognized as the paramedic who’d tried but failed to resuscitate Conner at the lakeside. It took me a while, but finally I placed the wide face and neat cap of mid-brown hair, the strong, capable hands as she entered the shelter and strapped a blood pressure cuff around Holly’s arm, listened to her heart and diagnosed atrial fibrillation. ‘It’s an indication of stage three hypothermia,’ she decided. ‘The patient needs an immediate shot of intravenous fluid – dextrose and saline.’

‘Did you bring some?’ Ziegler checked, standing by the entrance to the shelter.

‘It’s in the bag I left in your car,’ she told him.

I shoved my way past Ziegler on sentry duty, ready to stand up to Channing in spite of the warnings from Marta and Blake. ‘Did you talk to her?’ I asked the paramedic. ‘Can you get her to answer questions about what happened?’

‘Not right now. She’s too severely hypothermic, which means she’s likely to be incoherent and irrational.’

‘What about this?’ I demanded, pointing to Holly’s wrecked jacket and T-shirt.

‘Also typical,’ the woman explained. ‘The hypothalamus malfunctions and they start to take off their clothes.’

I glanced up at Channing, who returned my stare with a blank expression.

‘OK, let’s go.’ Ziegler moved in, as calm and decisive as he’d been at the triathlon tragedy. He instructed Channing to wrap extra sleeping bags round Holly then help him carry her to the Jeep. The paramedic followed close behind.

‘She’ll be OK?’ I asked her, hesitating as they loaded Holly into the back of the car.

‘She’s young, she’s healthy,’ was the non-committal answer.

‘She’ll be fine,’ Ziegler assured me. ‘You could drive with us if it’d make you feel better.’

Inside the car, Holly shook her head. ‘I want Channing to come with me,’ she murmured.

My heart jolted. In that shuddering, fearful heartbeat, Channing had pushed me aside and climbed into the Jeep beside her.

‘Stay with the band,’ he told me with a smile he definitely didn’t mean. ‘Your buddy will be cool with me.’

And that’s how I had to leave it – doors slamming, an engine starting up, Holly being driven away and me left there by the lake with Marta, Blake, Regan and Jarrold.

‘Form a new group,’ Ziegler told us as he leaned out of the driver’s window. ‘Call yourselves the Wolf in the Snow band. Jarrold, you’ll be leader. Tania, you’ll be their Friend. I’ll see you in thirty-six hours at Spider Rock.’

‘See you,’ I agreed, trying to ignore my hammering heart as Holly was driven away.

‘What did you expect?’ Blake asked as we shouldered our backpacks and walked on. ‘Life’s not a beach – not around here anyway.’

I looked straight ahead towards the stand of dark redwoods laden with snow.

‘So accidents happen all the time?’ I muttered.

‘Hypothermia, busted legs and arms, cracked ribs, emotional meltdown – yeah.’

‘Perfect.’

Blake laughed. ‘It’s not meant to be easy. Amos’s system follows a military model. Quote: “It’s tried, tested and proved to maximize deterrence.”’

‘You follow orders, ask no questions?’

‘Right.’

‘And you can do this?’ For myself, I had a thousand questions buzzing around my brain.

‘Some of us can. Me and Kaylee, but not Regan or Ava, for example.’

‘How about Jarrold?’ I spotted him ahead of us, already deep in the shadow cast by the trees.

‘Jarrold still has some aggression issues to work on,’ Blake told me in that deadpan, between-quotes way that allows cynicism to filter through. She still reminded me of Kaylee minus the piercings – tough and in-your-face, totally at ease with physical challenge. Taking the camera from its case, she began to shoot our new surroundings – the ten-metre-high, dome-shaped rock to our right, covered in unmarked snow, Carlsbad in the distance, Regan and Marta bringing up the rear, Jarrold up ahead and disappearing into the shadows.

As Blake filmed, Marta picked up speed to walk beside me. ‘Cowboy up, Tania,’ she teased as we ploughed through a deep drift. ‘Only four hours to go until we stop and make camp!’

Our Wolf band walked all day under a clear sky.

It’s indescribable. You put one foot in front of another, hour after hour. You don’t talk. In spite of all the high drama that happens, you become at one with the space around you.

We were at ten thousand feet with the sun in our eyes, crunching through a frozen crust of sparkling snow, sinking into the soft stuff, climbing higher, away from Lake Turner towards a peak, a fourteener, which according to my map, was named Melrose Mount after a Presbyterian preacher who scaled it solo in 1856.

No one spoke and the silence was a big part of growing closer to the people I walked with. I learned that words can distract and disguise, that not speaking and walking together was what bonded me with Regan, Marta and Blake. As for Jarrold – he was out of sight, following his own star.

‘Tired?’ Regan asked me with massive understatement when at last we put down our bags.

I eased my back, hands on hips. A groan was all I could manage by way of reply. And my exhaustion meant I wasn’t good with the shelter-building and fire-making on this second night so I was given the task of getting it all on camera.

‘Has anyone seen Jarrold lately?’ Blake asked once camp was made and we all sat around the fire in the fading daylight.

We worked out that we’d lost track of our Outsider around three p.m. ‘No problem,’ Marta insisted. ‘Jarrold can take care of himself.’

‘He’s tough but not that tough.’ Regan argued that Jarrold had better show up before nightfall if we wanted to avoid a second hypothermia crisis. ‘So, Tania, how was your day?’ he asked, making space for me so that I could get closer to the fire. ‘Come on – stay warm.’

‘Actually, awesome,’ I confessed.

‘You let go of your burden.’ Marta put her arm around my shoulder and grinned at me. ‘You forgot about your problems, lived in the moment – am I right?’

‘Totally. Only …’

‘Now that we made it through the day and you can relax, you have some questions?’ Blake interpreted. ‘I’m not mind-reading. It’s just that we all go through the same process the first time we wild-walk. So go ahead, ask.’

‘OK.’ Checking that the camera was off, I rushed to share. ‘First thing on my mind is Holly. I know the paramedic explained about the memory loss and stuff, but I want to know how come she did the stupid thing on the zip-wire in the first place. Did any of you see?’

Marta shook her head. ‘We were asleep.’

‘And what about Holly and Channing – how did that happen? I mean, she only knew him a couple of days.’

Blake grinned at me from the far side of our tight circle. Firelight flickered and played across her face. ‘Yeah, but this is Channing we’re talking about – right?’

‘Babe magnet,’ Regan sighed.

‘But what about the guiding principle – the no-romance one?’

‘Only between Explorers,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t apply to Friends.’

‘So, Tania, you could fall in love with Regan, no problem,’ Blake joked, and she shoved him sideways against me.

He sprawled across my lap and drew down one corner of his mouth. ‘Except I don’t work out and have a six-pack like these other guys, huh?’

I started to lie to him to make him feel better, said stuff like that wasn’t important to me when Marta interrupted.

‘But Regan’s brain is amazing,’ she insisted as he pulled himself upright. ‘As soon as he gets out of here, he’s going to start inventing and selling apps for smart phones. He’ll be a zillionaire by the time he’s twenty.’

‘But no more hacking into government computers and leaking national defence secrets, you hear me, Regan?’ An unrepentant Blake wagged her finger then turned to me. ‘More questions!’ she demanded. ‘We’ll give you the truth – trust us!’

‘Conner,’ I said, taking advantage of Jarrold’s absence and screwing up my courage to ask the big one. ‘Was that really an accident?’

The fire crackled, sparks flew up and logs shifted. There was a sudden tension in the air.

It was Regan who finally broke the silence. ‘You’re talking about a cover-up?’

‘Don’t listen – Regan sees a conspiracy around every corner,’ Marta interrupted. ‘That’s how he arrived here in the first place.’

I leaned forward to share my suspicions. ‘We – that is, Holly – thought Jarrold might have got too close. There were arms and legs thrashing about in the water – maybe Jarrold kicked Conner in the head, but Ziegler, Aurelie, Amos – they don’t want to focus on that?’

‘Wow – that’s why they changed Jarrold’s status to Outsider?’ It was obviously the first time Marta had heard the theory. She sat back and thought it through. ‘And we all figured it was because of his thing with Kaylee.’

‘Jarrold had been fighting with Conner,’ I explained. ‘Conner had challenged Jarrold over his relationship with Kaylee – that’s what I heard.’

‘This stupid, stupid no-sex rule!’ Regan muttered. ‘It’s unnatural. Who does Antony Amos think he is – God?’

‘Hush!’ Blake warned him again, narrowing her eyes. ‘The point is – Conner should never have been in the water in the first place. It’s not Amos I blame – it’s Ziegler!’

‘Why? What do you know that we don’t?’ Regan demanded.

‘Ziegler is the one who’s covering stuff up,’ Blake insisted. ‘He holds all our personal details, including our medical records.’

‘And?’

‘And he knew Conner had major heart surgery when he was fourteen years old.’

‘Whoa!’ Marta sprang up and backed out of the firelight, almost bumping her head on a low branch. ‘He had a weak heart?’

Blake nodded. ‘I talked with Ava. She says his doctors gave him a programme of exercise, diet, et cetera. They put Conner on a list for further surgery, maybe even a transplant. They made it clear he shouldn’t put too much strain on his heart.’

‘But Ziegler ignored their advice?’ I asked.

Blake spread her hands, palms upwards. ‘Well, he makes Conner enter the triathlon and the poor kid’s heart can’t take it. Conner drowns and Ziegler’s in big trouble. It’s just a typical example of the way they run this place.’

‘It must be part of the reason why Jean-Luc is quitting.’ I broke the conversation-stopping news without warning. ‘Even I can see he doesn’t fit in around here – there are too many big egos; he can’t make himself heard.’

‘Jean-Luc is leaving?’ Regan said at last, his voice filled with disbelief. ‘You know for sure?’

‘He’s going to live in Paris with his dad,’ I insisted as I saw a tall, dark figure step into our small circle of firelight. ‘He told Jarrold early yesterday. Ask him. He’ll tell you it’s true.’