CHAPTER 17 : The Man in the Snow
Emergency lights illuminated the lobby.
Daniel ordered everyone away from the windows.
Ethan moved Marissa and the children into the protected residential wing while Rachel contacted local authorities.
Sophie remained beside her father.
“You should go with the others,” Ethan said.
“So should you.”
“I need to help Daniel.”
“And I need to know why someone took my picture.”
Ethan wanted to argue.
Then he remembered how many adults had once kept information from her because they believed silence would protect her.
“Stay behind me.”
Daniel restored the interior camera system, but every exterior feed remained black.
“The cables were cut manually,” he said. “Someone knew exactly where they were.”
“How close?” Ethan asked.
“Close enough to touch the building.”
A side door alarm sounded.
Daniel and Ethan moved toward the eastern corridor.
Snow blew through an open service entrance.
Footprints led away from the lodge and disappeared among the pine trees.
Daniel grabbed a flashlight.
“I’ll follow them.”
“You’re not going alone.”
Ethan turned to Sophie.
“Stay with Rachel.”
Sophie did not protest this time.
Ethan and Daniel entered the storm.
The footprints continued down the mountain slope toward an abandoned maintenance road.
They followed them for nearly half a mile.
The tracks stopped beside an old stone structure almost completely buried beneath snow.
Daniel cleared ice from a rusted metal sign.
BLACKWOOD MOUNTAIN UTILITY STATION
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
“I thought these buildings were demolished,” Ethan said.
“So did I.”
The door stood slightly open.
Inside, the air smelled of damp concrete and old electrical wiring.
A narrow staircase descended underground.
Daniel examined fresh marks in the dust.
“Someone came through here recently.”
They reached a lower chamber containing broken control panels and empty shelves.
At the center of the room stood a wooden chair.
A man’s coat had been placed across it.
The coat was still warm.
“He was here,” Ethan said.
Daniel searched behind the shelves.
“Not anymore.”
Ethan noticed something beneath the chair.
A silver ring.
He picked it up.
The ring carried the Vale family crest.
A small drop of blood marked the inside band.
Daniel shone his flashlight toward the far wall.
Someone had pinned photographs across the concrete.
Sophie entering school.
Rachel driving Addison home.
Mia leaving the courthouse.
Olivia meeting with federal prosecutors.
Marissa walking into the hospital three days earlier.
The final photograph showed Ethan standing beside Laura’s grave.
A black line had been drawn through his face.
Daniel pulled one photograph from the wall.
“Ethan.”
It showed Laura outside Blackwood Mountain Lodge.
She was standing beside a teenage girl whose face had been scratched away.
Laura wore the same coat she had been wearing the week she died.
A date had been printed at the bottom.
Three days before the crash.
On the back, Laura had written a message.
Ethan recognized her handwriting immediately.
THE CHILD HAS BEEN FOUND.
DO NOT LET VICTOR KNOW.
A sound came from the staircase.
Daniel raised his weapon.
A shadow moved across the upper landing.
“Stop!”
The figure ran.
Daniel followed, but the outer door slammed before he reached it.
Ethan turned back toward the wall of photographs.
One picture had not been there moments earlier.
It showed Sophie standing inside the center during the blackout.
Someone had taken it only minutes ago.
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Beneath the image was a message.
YOU ARE WATCHING THE WRONG DOOR.
