I don’t look back—I don’t dare—but I hear it coming up behind me, a fucking freight train tumbling off the mountain as the cornice crumbles straight into a fucking avalanche.
Goddamnit.
I swerve, try to get off the path, but it’s impossible. I’m more than halfway down the mountain at this point and it’s all wide open chute heading straight down. A fucking perfect roadmap for the avalanche. Shit.
Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do but fucking ride this bitch and hope I’m going as fast as I think I am.
I bring my arms in, tuck low to the ground, do everything I can to increase my speed. If I can get close to the bottom it’ll be okay. The slope’ll even off, slowing down the snow until I can get clear of it.
But the base of the mountain’s still quite a ways away, and there’s another cornice in my very imminent future, one that the avalanche is sure to trigger even if I don’t. Fuck.
I pull up a little, try to hit it just right, and then I’m going off. Seconds later—fuck, it’s getting close—I hear it break under the weight of the pouring snow, and then the freight train is right behind me, nipping at the fucking edge of my board.
I can see the base of the mountain now, the chute widening hugely into a valley lined with gigantic boulders arranged in a haphazard line. Thank God.
I aim for the rock farthest to the left, angling my board straight at it. The ground is rockier here, though, the snow looser, and it slows me down, trips me up. I pray my board can handle the rough terrain—if it can’t I’m dead and I know it—and I just throw myself into it.
The boulders are coming up fast and any other time I’d be stopping, pulling back, trying not to careen straight into them. But if I stop now, the avalanche fucking wins and I’m not doing that. I’m not fucking leaving Logan alone, not after everything that kid has fucking been through.
Not going to happen.
Thirty seconds before I hit the boulders, I pull out of the tuck. I keep my muscles loose, my knees bent, and just before I’m there—just before I become a fucking hood ornament to a rock the size of a Mack truck—I jump.
Thank God for Luc and his obsessive love of street style.
Thank God for all the hours he dragged me to practice jumping rails and Dumpsters with him.
Thank God seven months isn’t long enough for my body to forget fifteen years of training.
I clear the top of the boulder, scrape against it on the backside. But that doesn’t matter. In fact, it’s better, because it brings me down. I hit the snow left shoulder first, feel the jarring impact of it through my whole body before I start to roll.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I’m kicking out of my board even as I’m spinning ass over teakettle. The second I’m clear, I reach out, hands like claws, and try to dig into the snow. Try to stop. But I’m going too fast. Goddamnit.
The freight train is closer and I know this is it.
Like I don’t have enough problems, another row of boulders looms fifty feet ahead of me—huge, imposing, immovable. I’ve got the fucking avalanche behind me, nipping at my ass, and the boulders in front of me just waiting to pancake me. Neither is a particularly pleasant image, so I shove them both out of my mind and try not to panic.
Every survival video I’ve ever watched is running through my head at the same time, a bunch of white noise that makes no fucking sense to me at all. But instincts I didn’t even know I had kick in and I stop clawing at the snow and start trying to control my random tumbling. I aim between two of the biggest—and closest—rocks and pray I’m not so dizzy from the spinning that I’m seeing an opening that isn’t fucking there.
The rocks are getting closer and I know this is it, the last chance I’ve got. The fucking avalanche snow is too close—it’s right behind me—and there’s nowhere for me to go. Nothing left for me to try.
Somehow—I don’t know how—I manage to squeak between the two boulders. I throw my hands out, claw at one of them, feel my gloves rip against its rough surface. At the same time, I dig in with my feet, punching them straight down into the snow beneath me.
It works. Somehow it fucking works and I careen to a stop. The world is spinning around me, but I’ve got no fucking time for that. No fucking time to catch a breath or think or do anything but scramble to my knees and try to make it behind the boulder before all hell breaks loose.
Because the fucking avalanche is on me and I’m about to get buried.
Eighteen minutes. Eighteen minutes. Eighteen minutes.
The words are a fucking mantra in my head. That’s how long I’ve got. Eighteen fucking minutes to get myself out or for them to find me. Eighteen fucking minutes before my chances of survival go way the fuck down.
Goddamnit.
I duck behind the boulder, just as the fucking avalanche hits. It crashes over me, around me, filling my fucking senses with snow, snow, snow. It’s all I can see, all I can feel, all I can hear.
All I can breathe.