Read Chapter 20: The Missing Link

The wind had found a new voice, a high, thin whistle that threaded through the cracks in the refuge’s stone walls like a living thing searching for a way in. Élise sat closest to the stove, her wrapped ankle propped on a pack, watching the flame gutter. Luc stood by the window, scraping frost from the glass with his thumbnail, peering into a world that had become nothing but moving white.

“You can’t see three meters,” he said, more to himself than anyone.

The door to the sleeping quarters banged open. A woman—mid-fifties, wind-reddened face, coat half-zipped—stumbled into the common room. Her eyes were wide, scanning the faces around the stove.

“Where’s Paul?” she asked.

No one answered. Élise looked up. The woman’s name was Margaux. She and her husband had been part of the tour group from Lyon, the quiet ones who kept to each other.

“Paul?” Margaux said again. Louder this time. “He went to the bathroom. That was—that was fifteen minutes ago. He said he’d be right back.” She looked at the door to the outhouse, visible from the window—a low wooden box forty meters from the main building. The path between was already buried under fresh snow.

Élise moved before she thought about it, pushing herself off the bench. Her ankle screamed. Luc was already reaching for his jacket.

“Wait,” Élise said. “You can’t go out there alone.”

Luc turned. “I’m not going alone. You’re going to stay here with them.”

“Like hell I am.”

The others were stirring now. Orti stood, dusting breadcrumbs off his sweater. Anna looked at her hands. Klaus and Marta sat in the corner, watching with the flat, calculating stillness of spectators at a car accident.

“I’ve walked that path,” Élise said, pulling on her own coat, ignoring the throb in her ankle. “There’s a rope line between the buildings. He can’t have gone far.”

“Then why hasn’t he come back?” Margaux’s voice cracked. “He hates the cold. He wouldn’t—he wouldn’t just stand out there.”

Luc held up a hand, a gesture Élise remembered from a dozen other emergencies—the pilot’s calm that made everyone else’s panic feel like noise. “We’ll go. Two people, clipped to the line. No one else leaves this building.”

Klaus cleared his throat. “And if the powder hit him? If he’s buried?”

“Then we find him faster,” Luc said flatly, and the room went quiet.

Élise reached for the coiled rope by the door, but Luc’s hand was already on it. He clipped one end to his harness, then held the other out to her.

The rope was alive with tension as they stepped outside. The wind hit like a wall, and for a moment Élise couldn’t breathe. Snow granules stung her cheeks like sand. The rope line stretched from the refuge door to the outhouse, sagging under a fresh load of white.

They moved in silence. Élise kept her head down, watching the rope, her ankle screaming with every step. Luc moved ahead, his tall frame leaning into the wind. They reached the outhouse. The door was half-open, swinging on its hinges.

Empty.

Élise’s stomach dropped. The snow inside the small box was barely disturbed. Paul had opened the door—and never come in.

“Tracks,” Luc said. He was already crouching, pointing at the snow beyond the outhouse. The wind had already begun to erase them, but there was a trough, a suggestion of movement leading away from the path, toward the ridgeline that dropped off into the valley below.

Élise followed his gaze. “That’s not the way back.”

“He wasn’t heading back.” Luc stood, squinting into the storm. “People get turned around in whiteout. They think they’re going forward and they’re walking sideways.”

“He was here for a toilet break,” Élise said. “He wouldn’t have wandered.”

“Unless he heard something.” Luc’s voice was flat, controlled. “Or saw something.”

Élise thought about it. The wind. The deep quiet between gusts. A man alone in the storm, hearing a sound—an animal, a shift of snow—and turning.

The tracks didn’t stop at the ridgeline. They went over it.

Élise’s heart seized. “Luc.”

“I know.”

They stood at the edge. Below them, the slope fell away into a bowl of white—a terrain Élise knew from her maps, a drainage basin crosshatched with crevasses, hidden entirely by the new snow. Paul had walked straight into the most dangerous ground in the valley.

“He could have made it fifty meters before the slab gave way,” Luc said. “He could be under two meters of powder.”

“Or he could be in a crevasse.” Élise’s voice was quiet. “And if he went in headfirst, he could be down there alive, with maybe an hour of air.”

Luc turned to look at her. His face was a mask of frozen breath and windburn, but his eyes were clear. “You’re thinking about the search.”

“I’m thinking about Margaux,” Élise said. “She’s shaking in there. If we find him now, we bring him back. If we wait until the storm eases—” She stopped.

“It won’t ease for three days,” Luc finished. “And if he’s in a crevasse, three hours is already too long.”

The wind tore at them both. Élise could feel her body fighting the cold, the steady hum of her pulse doing double time. Her ankle was a dull, persistent fire. She looked back at the refuge, its windows glowing orange in the white gloom. Inside, there were people crowding the glass, watching them. Margaux among them.

“If we search now,” Élise said, “we do it properly. Acoustic probing. Snow science. We don’t just walk over that ridgeline and yell his name.”

Luc shook his head. “We don’t have the gear for a proper crevasse rescue. The probe is in the other refuge, with Philippe’s group. We have rope, ice screws, and a radio that barely reaches base.”

“So we do it with what we have.” Élise met his eyes. “We’ve done more with less.”

For a moment, something softened in his face—a flicker of the man who had once stood beside her at dawn on a summit, telling her it wasn’t about the photographs, it was about showing up to see what the light revealed.

Then the moment passed. “We can’t take you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you can’t walk on that ankle,” he said, gesturing down. “And you know it. Out there, on an unstable slope, moving fast, you’d be the second casualty.” He paused. “I won’t lose you again.”

Élise felt the words land like a physical blow. She opened her mouth to argue, but nothing came. Because she knew he was right. She’d known it since she’d stood in the outhouse doorway, her leg burning, her balance already compromised.

“I’m not staying behind to knit,” she said finally.

“No,” Luc said. “You’re staying behind to hold the group together. Because if I go out there with Klaus and Marta still watching the door, I need someone inside who can read the room.” He looked back at the ridgeline. “I’ll take Orti. He’s strong, he’s calm, and he’s not going to panic when the cloud comes down.”

“And if you don’t come back?”

“Then you’re in charge,” he said. “And you know what to do.”

He pulled her close, his gloved hand against the back of her neck, forehead against hers. The wind howled around them.

“I’ll come back,” he said. “I’ve got something to finish.”

She watched him walk back and saw Orti gather at the door to meet him. Klaus and Marta had drifted closer to the window, their faces expressionless.

Margaux was no longer watching. She was sitting by the stove, her head in her hands, weeping without a sound.

Élise crouched awkwardly beside her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “We’re going to find him,” she said. “Luc knows this terrain.”

Margaux looked up. Her eyes were raw. “You don’t understand,” she said. “Paul didn’t tell anyone before we came. He’s been following the news about a man named Jasper de Vries. He was there—years ago, on the mountain. Paul was caught in the avalanche that de Vries was blamed for. He saw what happened.” Her voice dropped. “Paul didn’t come here for the views. He came to find him.”

The wind shook the windows. Élise looked at the ridgeline, where Luc and Orti were already vanishing into the white.

Paul hadn’t wandered.

He had gone looking for a dead man.