Read Chapter 33: The Ice Cellar

Luc found Camille in the main hall, her back to the fire, Henri still tied to the chair. The relief that flickered across her face died the moment she saw his expression.

"He's not the only one who's been hiding things," Luc said.

Camille's eyes went to the door behind him. "Where are the others?"

"Karine's in the boiler room. Patrice is guarding her. Ali—" Luc made a decision he'd been circling for an hour. "Ali is not who he says he is either."

Henri made a sound through his gag. Camille ignored him. She was already reaching for her coat and the headlamp that sat on the bar.

"Where are we going?"

"The ice cellar." Luc looked at Henri. "After the avalanche, the authorities will clear the valley. They'll excavate the resort. They'll find whatever's hidden underneath it. The only reason Gaspard bought this place, the only reason anyone is here during the worst season in a decade, is because there's something they didn't want found."

Henri's eyes went wide. He started shaking his head violently, grunting through the gag. Luc pulled the cloth down.

"The cellar's off-limits," Henri said. "Even I don't have full access to it. That's Gaspard's private space—" He stopped. Corrected himself: "It was. The man who ran this place before us, the Russian—he kept his own lock on it. Gaspard never changed it."

Luc was already moving. "Maybe that's exactly why."

---

The corridor to the ice cellar ran along the resort's eastern foundation, past the old generator room and the staff quarters that had been empty since the previous season's collapse. The storm had shrieked through the cracks above them, but down here, it was still. Too still.

Camille walked close behind him, her breath fogging.

"There's a lock," she said, playing the beam over the heavy steel door. It was new. A keypad box, flush-mounted, with a small red LED blinking in the dark. "That's not rust-aging. That was installed recently."

"Gaspard." Luc ran his fingers over the casing. "He didn't trust keys. He used codes for everything."

Camille pulled out the dead man's phone, still wrapped in its plastic bag. She'd kept it, even after Karine's capture. She tapped through the last messages—all deleted except one, sent three days before Gaspard's death, a single word: "BURIED."

"That's not a threat," Luc said. "That's a location."

He hit four digits into the keypad: the date of Gaspard's daughter's birth. The door clicked.

Camille looked at him. "Know your mark."

The cold hit them like a wall. The cellar was deep, cut into the hill itself, the walls raw rock and ice. Shelves lined the left side, stacked with dry goods and aging wine. But the floor was the story. Dust had settled over most of it, undisturbed except for a wide trail leading to the far corner, where a tarp was laid over something tall and rigid.

Luc crossed the room slowly. He pulled the tarp back.

The Russian wasn't missing. He was there—frozen solid, face preserved in a moment of surprise, a single bullet wound neat as a star in his forehead. Ice crystals clung to his eyebrows and beard.

"That's—" Camille stopped. "That's the resort's owner. The one Henri said 'left' last January."

"He didn't leave. He was buried, same as we're about to be." Luc crouched. The man's coat was open, and his shirt exposed a chain with a key on it, still tucked beneath the fabric. Luc worked it free, then looked around the cellar. A small safe was bolted to the floor near the tarp, the combination dial dusty except for the edge, which showed recent prints.

"Henri hid the body," Luc said slowly. "Or Gaspard did. But someone's been down here since."

"Karine?"

"Or Ali." Luc turned the key in the safe's lock. It wasn't a combination dial after all—it was key-locked too. The mechanism turned with a satisfying click, and he swung the door open.

Inside were bank records. Paper, physical, old-fashioned. Gaspard hadn't trusted digital trails either. There were statements from three accounts—Swiss, Cayman, Andorran. Transfers in and out, timed to the arrival of each new "guest" to the resort. The amounts were staggering.

Luc picked up the top sheet. "This isn't money laundering. Well—not just. This is a holding account. They moved money here to freeze it."

"Is that a pun?" Camille was holding the beam steady, reading over his shoulder.

Luc shook his head. "Ali said the investigation was about laundering. But look at the dates." He pointed at the transfer records, each matched to a name. "These aren't clients. These are people. Gaspard, Karine, and Ali's boss. The ones who—" He stopped. "The Avalanche."

Camille looked at him. "What?"

"The avalanche. The one that killed my climbing team two years ago. The one that almost killed Gaspard's daughter." Luc's voice went flat. "That wasn't an accident. It was triggered. Someone set charges up on the ridge. I read the report after. They ruled it natural, but there was an anomaly—a seismic reading, too clean for a natural slide."

"You think Gaspard paid to have it done?"

"No. I think Gaspard was *paid* to make sure the bodies were never found. This resort is the cover. The valley shifts, the authorities dig, but they find nothing because everything is buried deep enough to never surface." Luc stood, the paper crumpling in his fist. "When the snow clears, they're not going to find anything. Not the money, not the body, not the truth. Unless we make it out to tell them."

Camille's face was pale in the headlamp glow. "Then we're not just running from the killer anymore."

"No." Luc turned toward the door. "We're running to make sure there's someone left to explain all of this. And Ali—" He looked at the sweating wall where ice was beginning to form along the seams of the ceiling. "Ali knew about this cellar. He knew where to find the truth. That means he's been down here before. He's not just after Karine. He's after everyone who knows what happened that day."

The ice ceiling above them groaned. A crack spidered across the surface, thin and black.

Camille grabbed his arm. "Luc. We need to move."

He looked at the frozen body one last time. Then he pocketed the bank records and ran.