Read Chapter 35: The Arrival

The sound reached them first—a deep, rhythmic thumping that vibrated through the floorboards and into Luc’s chest. For a moment, he thought the ice cellar ceiling had finally given way, that the whole resort was coming down around them. But Patrice’s head snapped up, his eyes wide, and he shouted a single word that cut through the storm noise like a blade.

“Helicopter!”

Luc was already moving, shoving past the chef he’d just freed, who stumbled backward in confusion. The chef’s restraints lay coiled on the floor of the cellar where Luc had dropped them, and his face was a mask of fear beneath the grime of the kitchen. But there was no time for explanations. Ali was in the sauna corridor with Karine, and if the helicopter was close enough to hear over the wind, then Ali could hear it too.

Luc burst through the cellar door and into the service hallway, his boots slipping on the polished stone. The thumping grew louder, closer, a mechanical heartbeat pounding against the mountain. He could feel the vibration in his teeth. Hope surged in his chest—a thin, fragile thing—and then he rounded the corner and saw Ali standing in the middle of the main hall, staring up through the two-story glass atrium.

The helicopter hovered above, its searchlight cutting through the falling snow like a god’s finger. The pilot was fighting the wind, the machine tilting at a dangerous angle, but it was there. Help. Rescue. An end to the nightmare.

Ali turned. His face was pale, the scar along his jaw standing out like a white thread. For a moment, Luc thought he saw something flicker in the man’s eyes—not fear, but calculation. Then Ali’s hand moved to his belt, and Luc saw the flare gun.

“No!” Luc shouted, lunging forward.

But he was too far. Ali raised the flare gun, braced his stance against the shuddering floor, and fired. The flare arced upward, a streak of red fire against the grey gloom, trailing smoke as it climbed toward the glass. Luc watched it rise, his heart hammering, willing it to miss, to fall short, to be swallowed by the snow.

The flare struck the helicopter’s rotor housing. Sparks flew. The machine lurched violently to the side, its nose pitching down, and for one sickening moment Luc was certain it would spiral into the chalet roof. But the pilot recovered, wrestling the controls, the helicopter banking hard and sweeping away over the ridge. The thumping faded, swallowed by the wind and the falling snow.

Silence. Then the groan of shifting ice from somewhere deep beneath them.

Ali lowered the flare gun, his face unreadable. The searchlight was gone. The helicopter was gone. The only rescue they’d had was chased off by the man who was supposed to be saving them.

Luc stood in the doorway, breathing hard, his fists clenched. “You just killed us.”

Ali turned to face him, and there was no pretense left in his expression. The careful mask of the undercover investigator had crumbled, revealing something colder underneath. His voice was flat when he spoke.

“They weren’t coming to rescue you, Moreau.”

“Like hell they weren’t.”

“Believe me,” Ali said, a bitter smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I know who orders those flights. I know the chain of command. That bird was sent to do one of two things: extract the assets or confirm the site is sterile. This valley is a grave, and they were here to close the lid.”

Luc stepped forward. The distance between them closed to a few paces. He could see the flare gun still clutched in Ali’s hand, the metal glinting in the weak ambient light. “You said you were investigating. You said Belmont sent you.”

Ali laughed—a short, hollow sound. “Belmont. You think Belmont is a person? It’s a designation. An office. A desk with a mandate to clean up messes that could embarrass certain people. And this resort, this avalanche, that team you lost on the glacier—they were the mess. I wasn’t sent to investigate. I was sent to eliminate.”

The words hung in the air between them, heavy as the snow pressing down on the roof. Luc’s mind raced, reordering everything he thought he knew. Ali’s sabotage. His manipulation. The way he’d positioned himself as the moral center even as he cut the recording to hide his own coercion. He wasn’t a hunter of criminals. He was the cleanup crew.

“You were going to kill us all,” Luc said. It wasn’t a question.

“If the avalanche didn’t do it first, then yes,” Ali said. “The eastern slope is about to come down. The resort is buried in less than two hours. The only question was whether any of you would survive long enough to testify about what’s in that cellar.” He glanced at the folder tucked under Luc’s arm—the bank records, still damp from the ice. “I’d rather not leave witnesses. But I’ll take the records.”

He raised the flare gun again, leveling it at Luc’s chest. The range was close enough that it wouldn’t miss. Close enough that the flare would punch through fabric and flesh and set him burning from the inside.

Luc didn’t move. His eyes stayed locked on Ali’s, reading the twitch in the man’s trigger finger, the slight tremor in his arm. He’d seen men on the edge before, seen them decide in a fraction of a second whether to pull the trigger or fold. Ali was closer to folding than he wanted to admit. The helicopter had been his exit. His guarantee. And it was gone.

“You don’t have anywhere to go,” Luc said quietly. “The passes are closed. The slope is coming down. You fire that thing, you’ve got nothing left. No leverage. No escape.”

“I have the records,” Ali said. “And I have time.”

“You have less than two hours. And no helicopter.” Luc took a half-step forward. The flare gun didn’t move, but Ali’s eyes flickered. “Whatever your office promised you, it’s not coming. You’re already dead. You just haven’t stopped breathing yet.”

Movement in Luc’s peripheral vision. He didn’t look, didn’t break eye contact with Ali, but he saw the shadow shift behind the main staircase. Camille’s silhouette, stepping out of the service corridor, a fire axe in her hands. Her eyes went from Luc to Ali, and she understood in an instant what was happening.

Ali saw her too. The barrel of the flare gun twitched, splitting its aim between the two of them.

“Both of you,” he said. “Good. Saves me the trouble of hunting you down.”

From somewhere behind them, deep in the belly of the resort, came a sound like a gunshot. Then another. The building shuddered, and a cascade of snow spilled over the edge of the atrium roof, obscuring the sky. The eastern slope was coming apart, section by section, and the chalet was directly in its path.

Luc looked at Ali. Ali looked at the ceiling.

The flare gun dipped. Just an inch. But it was enough. Luc lunged, closing the distance in two strides, and his hand clamped down on Ali’s wrist, forcing the flare gun upward. They grappled, boots sliding on the smooth floor, Ali’s breath hot in his face.

“You don’t understand,” Ali hissed. “If they freeze the assets, they erase the evidence. That avalanche, your team, the ones who died—they’ll just be noise. Bureaucratic footnotes. Everyone who ever knew the truth is meant to be buried under this slope. Including you.”

Luc twisted Ali’s arm. The flare gun clattered to the floor, spinning across the marble and disappearing under a couch. Camille was there in an instant, the fire axe raised, her face white.

But Ali was already scrambling backward, toward the service corridor, toward the sauna, toward Karine.

“You can’t stop the mountain,” he called over his shoulder. “She’s been waiting for years to bury this place. All you’ve done is chosen your grave.”

He vanished into the darkness. And from outside, through the thin gap where the roof met the wall, came the deep, building rumble of an avalanche waking from its sleep.