Read Chapter 23: The Second Collapse

The rope bit into Élise’s gloved hands as she heaved, her back arched against the weight of Luc’s body swinging somewhere below the snowline. Her ankle screamed. The storm screamed louder. Behind her, Margaux and Klaus braced the anchor, their faces white masks of effort.

“He’s coming!” Élise shouted over the wind. She pulled again, hand over hand, and then Luc’s head and shoulders burst through the collapsed snow bridge. Johannes grabbed his harness and hauled him the rest of the way onto solid ground.

Luc lay on his back, gasping, snow crusting his beard. For a moment, Élise couldn’t breathe either. Then his eyes found hers, and something raw passed between them—something that said *you came for me* and *I never doubted you would*.

“Paul’s alive,” Luc rasped. “Sixty feet down. Wedged on a ledge. Conscious, but his leg’s broken.” He pushed himself up onto his elbows. “We need more rope. And a proper anchor.”

Orti was already pulling coils from his pack. “There’s a fix line on the west face of the old téléphérique pylon,” he said. “Thirty minutes round trip.”

“Go,” Luc said. “Take Johannes.”

But as Orti turned, the mountain groaned. It was a sound Élise had heard twice before in her life—once as a glacier calved into an icefall, once as the ground beneath her father’s hut gave way in a distant thunder. This was neither. This was deeper, longer, a bass note that vibrated up through her boots and into her teeth.

“Avalanche,” she whispered.

Luc was already on his feet. “Where?”

They didn’t have to answer. The western face of the valley lit up like a slow white curtain falling, a wave of powder and ice half a kilometer wide, moving with terrifying grace down the slope toward the resort base camp.

Élise’s heart stopped. “The base.”

They could see it from here—had been able to see it all along, the cluster of buildings at the valley floor now dwarfed by the advancing wall of snow. The base camp. The rescue station. The helipad. The tourists who hadn’t made it out. The team of volunteers who’d been coordinating the search from headquarters.

And the beacon.

Klaus was staring at his handheld receiver, his face drained. “We’ve got fourteen registered beacons from the base,” he said slowly. “Thirteen moving. One static.”

“They’re evacuating,” Margaux said. “The static one’s just a pack they left behind.”

Klaus shook his head. “This one’s transmitting a distress code. Someone’s still down there. Someone’s signaling.”

Élise took the receiver from his hands. Her fingers went cold as she read the ID code scrolling across the small screen. She knew that code. She’d programmed it herself, years ago, on a device she’d given as a going-away present.

“Who is it?” Luc asked.

Élise couldn’t answer at first. The avalanche was still falling, still devouring the base camp in slow motion, still burying everything she’d seen from this ridge a hundred times. And beneath all that white, someone was signaling.

“Chloé,” she finally said. Her voice felt like it came from somewhere else. “My friend. The climbing partner I left at the base. She was supposed to have flown out this morning.”

Luc’s jaw tightened. “She didn’t.”

“She stayed,” Élise said, more to herself. “She must have stayed to help coordinate the search.” Her eyes lifted to the valley floor, where the avalanche was now settling into a dead, silent pile of white. “She stayed because of me. Because this rescue was for us.”

The snow cloud was dissipating, revealing a scene that no longer resembled the base camp she knew. The main lodge was gone. The helipad was unrecognizable. And somewhere in that chaos, Chloé’s beacon blinked with steady, patient insistence.

“I have to go down,” Élise said.

Luc stepped in front of her, blocking her path. “No.”

“Don’t tell me no, Luc.”

“Look at you.” His eyes swept her body, lingering on her ankle, on the way she was favoring her left side. “You can barely stand. You’re not going down there.”

“That beacon is my friend,” Élise shot back. “She stayed behind because she was helping search for *your* tourists. For Paul. For all of us. She’s buried under a hundred feet of snow and she’s still signaling. And you’re telling me to what? Wait here?”

“Someone has to hold this group together,” Luc said, his voice dangerously calm. “Someone has to guide them back to the refuge. That’s not me anymore—Orti and I are the only ones cleared to work in this terrain. But you know these paths better than anyone.”

The argument died in her throat. He wasn’t dismissing her. He was dividing the mission. One group back to safety, one group down into the kill zone.

“Chloé’s signal could last another six hours,” Orti interjected quietly. “Could last two. The base has backup transmitters, generators, insulated shelters. She knew what she was doing when she stayed.”

Élise looked at the receiver again. The blinking dot was steady. Constant. Chloé was alive, and she was waiting.

“I’ll need the fittest of the tourists,” Luc said. “Anyone with mountaineering boots and a pulse. Johannes, Bea, Margaux—you’re with me.”

Klaus cleared his throat. “The weather window’s closing. If you go down, you might not make it back up tonight.”

Luc glanced at Élise. “Then we don’t come back up tonight. We dig her out and we shelter in the base’s avalanche-proof room until the storm breaks.” He reached for her hand, squeezed it once. “I’m not losing anyone else today. Not Chloé. Not Paul. Not you.”

Élise squeezed back, her chest tight with an emotion she couldn’t name. “Then don’t.”

They moved in opposite directions—Luc toward the valley, toward the blinking beacon and the buried friend Élise had promised to protect. And Élise turned back toward the refuge, where a group of frightened tourists and one injured husband waited for her to lead them home. Her ankle screamed with every step.

The beacon blinked once more, holding its signal steady against the darkening storm.