Read Chapter 31: The Confrontation

The cold air hit Luc’s lungs like shattered glass as Karine stepped fully into the sauna’s doorway, the knife catching the weak emergency light. Her face was calm. That was the worst part. Not triumph, not panic—just the flat, patient calm of someone who had already decided how this ended.

“You moved fast,” she said, eyes flicking from Luc to Ali. “I thought I’d have more time to set the scene.”

Luc’s hand drifted toward the fire extinguisher mounted on the sauna’s outer wall. Not subtle, but it was the only weapon close. “You’re Marie-Claire,” he said, buying seconds. “You faked your death in the Grandes Jorasses fall. You’ve been laundering with Gaspard for years.”

Karine tilted her head. The knife didn’t waver. “Close. Gaspard was the laundering. I was the architect. You think a guide’s pension and a few luxury safety fees bought that tower in Annecy? No. Gaspard found the clients. I found the accounts.” She smiled, a thin, humorless cut across her face. “And when he got cold feet and wanted to confess to you—poor, guilty Luc Moreau, who couldn’t leave a body on the mountain—I knew he’d ruin everything.”

“So you stabbed him in the sauna.” Luc’s voice was flat. “You were still in the room when we found him. The blood pattern.”

“I was behind the door. You were all so busy gasping at the corpse you never checked the corners.” She took one step closer. The sauna bench creaked under Ali’s weight as he shifted, but Ali didn’t run. He was watching Karine the way you watch a fuse burn down.

“And Pierre?” Luc said. “He saw you near the kitchen before the power cut?”

“Pierre saw me checking the breaker box. He asked too many questions. Between you and me, I was doing him a favor—he was going to lose that job anyway once the resort went under.” She said it like she was discussing weather. “Now. Let’s not drag this out. You’re going to walk ahead of me to the main hall, Luc. We’re going to find that little insurance investigator and her tied-up partner, and I’m going to make this all look like a very tragic fight between the guests. The avalanche will bury the lodge within the hour anyway. Evidence will be frozen, then crushed.”

Luc shot a glance at Ali. Ali’s face had changed—the easy shrug was gone, replaced by something harder and older. Luc understood now. The sabotage, the secretive wandering, the way Ali always seemed to show up exactly when someone was about to confess. He wasn’t a saboteur. He was a trap.

“She’s not lying,” Ali said quietly, not to Luc but to the room. Karine’s eyes narrowed. “But she’s not telling the whole truth either. You want to know why she was so desperate to silence Gaspard? It wasn’t just the money. Gaspard was going to trade her location to my agency in exchange for immunity. The avalanche bought him time to think. She bought him a knife instead.”

Karine’s grip on the handle tightened. “You’re the investigator,” she said, the realization slow, ugly. “The insurance company didn’t send a surveyor. They sent a bloodhound.”

Ali stood. The movement was fluid, unthreatening—the kind of motion you use when you know a knife is in the room but you have a better plan than running. “The lodge’s device sabotage? That was me. Every tracker, every GPS, every phone with a signal. I fried them all because I needed everyone trapped. You can’t launder money on the move, and you can’t flee if the roads are buried.” He turned to Luc. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I needed the killer to think they were safe. If François here knew an investigator was in play, she’d have bolted the night the power cut.”

“Karine,” she corrected, her voice tight. “You’ll use my name when you’re dead.”

“It’s not going to happen,” Ali said. “You can kill one of us, maybe two. But you don’t have the blade for three, and you’re not going to outrun Luc on that hip implant of yours once you’re in the snow.”

Karine’s jaw worked. For the first time, her calm cracked—just a hairline, but it was there. Luc saw her glance at the sauna’s small frosted window, behind which the storm howled white and endless. She was calculating. The gap between them was six feet. Ali was to her left, closer than Luc. The knife was in her right hand.

Luc took the opening. He didn’t lunge for the fire extinguisher. He swept his leg low across the wet tile, the same trick he’d used a hundred times to teach clients not to overcommit on hard ice. Karine didn’t fall—she was too trained for that—but she staggered back a step, and Ali moved. He crashed into her at chest height, hands wrapping around her knife wrist, driving them both into the sauna’s cedar bench. The knife clattered onto the floor, skidding under the heater.

Luc dove for it, fingers brushing the handle a half-second before Karine’s kick caught him in the shoulder, sending him rolling onto his back. She was scrambling to her feet when the door behind her burst open. Victor and Patrice stood in the doorway, both holding ski poles like spears, their faces painted with the raw fear of men who didn’t know who was enemy and who was friend.

“She’s the killer!” Luc shouted. “Belmont! She’s Marie-Claire!”

Patrice didn’t hesitate. He swung the pole low, catching Karine across the ankles, sending her down hard onto the tile. Victor was on her in an instant, kneeling on her back, pulling her wrists together with a zip tie he’d somehow had in his pocket.

Karine went still. Her breath fogged the tile under her face. “You’re all going to die here anyway,” she said. “The avalanche read I checked before you destroyed the equipment—it’s not just a storm out there. The slope above the east ridge is already peeling. You have hours, not days. Even if you survive me, the snow will finish the job.”

Luc stood, wiping blood from his split lip. He picked up the knife and tucked it into his belt. The sauna smelled of cedar and sweat and something metallic that didn’t wash away. Ali was already on his feet, rubbing his wrist, watching Karine with the tired eyes of a man who’d played a long game and wasn’t sure he’d won.

“So that’s it?” Luc said to Ali, low, so the others couldn’t hear. “You trapped us all in here so you could catch her. But the phones—you didn’t just kill the signals to trap her. You killed them to keep *everyone* from leaving. Including Gaspard. You knew he was involved, and you were willing to let him die to get your confession on tape.”

Ali looked at him. He didn’t flinch. “I had a warrant. I had proof. What I didn’t have was a confession that would hold up in court. Gaspard was going to lawyer up the moment he touched a phone. I needed him cornered and talking.” He paused. “I didn’t plan for her to get to him first.”

Luc’s fist clenched at his side. But there was nothing left to hit. The storm shook the walls, and somewhere above them, deep in the mountain’s bones, the snow was already beginning to move. Karine’s words pressed against him like the cold, a deadline that had been ticking since the first power cut.

He turned to the group. “Secure her in the boiler room. Heavy door, no windows. Patrice, you stand guard. No one talks to her.” He looked at Ali. “And you and I are going to have a longer conversation about what else you sabotaged—because if there’s even a chance the avalanche has started, we need a way out faster than the road.”

Ali nodded, something sharp and new behind his eyes. “I might have saved one device. Tucked in a place no one would look.” He glanced at Karine, sitting now against the sauna wall, her wrists bound, her expression unreadable. “She thought she was the only one with a backup plan.”