Read Chapter 6: First Light

The wind had stopped. That was the first thing Luc noticed when he came down the stairs at dawn—not the pale light leaking through the shuttered windows, but the silence. For two days the chalet had groaned under the storm’s weight, timbers complaining like old men. Now nothing. The world held its breath under three meters of new snow.

He moved through the main room, stepping over a sprawl of sleeping bags and limbs. Henrik and Petra shared a corner near the fireplace, their blond heads close together. Pierre the chef had curled up in the kitchen doorway with a knife within reach, a habit Luc recognized from his own guiding days—always sleep between your supplies and the door. Viktor snored on the long couch, mouth open, one arm flung over his face as if warding off a blow.

Eight people. Eight mouths. And no way to feed them for more than a week, maybe less, if Pierre’s pantry math was right.

Luc had made his decision sometime in the gray hours before dawn, lying awake while the silence settled like a second snowfall. He couldn’t wait for a rescue that might never come. He had to reach the patrol hut on the east ridge. The cached flare gun, the emergency transceiver, the solar battery—all of it up there, a forty-minute skin in good conditions. In these conditions? An hour, maybe two. Doable if he left early and moved fast.

But he needed a weapon first. The flare gun was a tool, not a threat. If Henri had taken the satellite phone, if someone had cut the radio and sabotaged the weather station, they wouldn’t hesitate to stop him from leaving.

He’d checked the obvious places the night before. The equipment room, the mudroom, the ski locker—nothing but wax, tuning tools, and a box of expired signal mirrors. Henri’s locked room had its own door, solid oak, and Luc hadn’t been able to force it without making enough noise to wake the dead.

But there was one room he hadn’t searched. The sauna, tucked off the mudroom at the far end of the building, almost an afterthought of the chalet’s luxury layout. Luc remembered passing it on his first walkthrough with the owner—a sleek cedar box with a wood-burning stove and a view of the valley through a floor-to-ceiling window. The kind of place wealthy clients sat naked in, sipping champagne and watching the snow fall.

The door had a small lock, the kind you could break with a screwdriver if you were quiet about it.

He found the screwdriver in Pierre’s tool drawer and slipped through the mudroom, past the rows of parkas and the rack of skis standing like silent sentinels. The sauna door was closed. The lock was a simple brass latch mechanism, and he worked the tip of the screwdriver into the seam, twisting slowly until something gave with a soft *click*.

He pushed the door open.

Cold air hit him, damp and stale. The cedar interior was dark, the only light coming from the mudroom behind him, casting long shadows across the benches. The stove sat cold and empty. A coil of rope hung from a hook by the door—emergency kit, probably, placed so guests could find it in the dark.

Luc stepped inside. His boots echoed on the wood slats, and he felt the slight give of the floorboards beneath his weight, the way they flexed over the drainage system. He ran his hand along the bench, searching for any hidden compartment, any flash of orange plastic—

His fingers brushed something tacky.

He pulled his hand back. In the dim light, his fingertips were dark. He raised them to his nose and smelled iron.

Blood.

Luc crouched, running his fingers over the bench slats more carefully now, finding the source. A smear, thick and half-dried, spread across the wood grain in a rough arc, as if someone had tried to wipe it away and only succeeded in making it worse. More flecks on the floorboards beneath, dark droplets caught between the slats.

He pulled out his phone—dead, as useless as everything else—and used the pale light from the doorway to trace the pattern. The smear was centered, about chest-height for a seated person. Defensive, maybe. Someone trying to brace themselves. Or someone dragged backward across the bench.

A sound behind him. Luc spun, hand going to the screwdriver in his pocket.

Camille stood in the mudroom doorway, wrapped in a fleece blanket, her dark hair loose around her face. She looked at him, then past him, at the blood.

“What did you find?” she asked. Her voice was flat, careful.

Luc’s jaw tightened. “Get the others.”

---

“This is what you were doing? Breaking into the sauna?”

Viktor’s voice pitched with theatrical outrage, echoing off the cedar walls. He’d wrapped himself in a monogrammed robe, his broad chest hair curling over the collar, and he stood with his arms crossed, blocking the doorway like he owned the place. Which, Luc remembered, he very nearly did—Viktor had put up the capital for the chalet’s renovation, a fact he mentioned at least once a day.

“I was looking for emergency supplies,” Luc said, keeping his voice level. “I found blood.”

“So you broke the door down?”

“The lock was already broken.” It wasn’t entirely true—Luc had forced it—but the mechanism had been cheap and worn, and he wasn’t about to admit to vandalism in front of a man who treated property like religion.

The rest of the group had gathered in the mudroom, a ragged half-circle of anxious faces. Henrik had his arm around Petra, who looked pale and hollow-eyed. Pierre stood off to one side, arms crossed, studying the scene with the detached interest of a man who’d seen worse in professional kitchens. Jules hovered near the back, wringing his hands. Only Henri was missing.

“Where’s Henri?” Luc asked.

“Still asleep.” Viktor waved a dismissive hand. “He’s not young, that one. Needs his rest.”

“Or he knows something about this.” Camille’s voice cut through the murmurs. She had her notebook out—an old habit, Luc guessed, or a way of holding power in a conversation where she otherwise had none. “The sauna’s right next to his room. If someone was in here, bleeding, he would have heard something.”

“That’s a stretch.” Viktor turned on her, jabbing a thick finger in her direction. “And you—you’ve been awfully interested in all of this since the beginning. The radio, the satellite phone, now the sauna. What are you really doing here, journalist?”

Camille went very still. “I’m trying to survive. Same as you.”

“Is that all?” Viktor’s eyes narrowed. “Or are you looking for a story? A big scoop about rich people dying in the mountains? That would look great in your little paper, wouldn't it?”

“My ‘little paper’ is *Le Monde*.” Camille’s voice had gone cold as the ice outside. “And I was invited here by the owner to write a profile on the chalet’s architecture. Not that it’s any of your business.”

“Enough.” Luc stepped between them, palms out. He could feel the heat radiating off Viktor’s bulk, the tension in Camille’s coiled frame. “We’re not doing this. We’re stuck here together, and if we start turning on each other, we’re all dead.”

Viktor’s face reddened. He wasn’t used to being talked to like that, not by a hired guide, not by anyone. “You know what I think?” He pointed at Luc, his voice rising with the confidence of a man who’d never been wrong, not once, not ever. “I think you’re hiding something. We all see it. You found this blood, sure, but where’s it from? Who bled? And why were you snooping around in the middle of the night when you should be—I don’t know—fixing the radio, digging us out, doing your actual job?”

“I was doing my job,” Luc said quietly. “My job is to keep you alive. That means knowing what’s here. That means trusting no one.”

A heavy silence fell. Petra made a small sound, somewhere between a sob and a gasp. Viktor’s eyes blazed, but he didn’t speak.

Luc turned back to the blood. He crouched down, peering closer at the smear. It was still tacky. Fresh—maybe hours old, maybe less. He’d searched the chalet top to bottom the night before, every room, every closet. He hadn’t checked the sauna.

Someone had been in here after his search. Someone had been in here while the others slept.

A floorboard creaked behind him.

Luc straightened and turned. Henri had appeared at the far end of the mudroom, wearing a threadbare cardigan over his pajamas, gray stubble shadowing his jaw. His eyes went to the open sauna door, then to Luc, then to the blood. Something flickered across his face—recognition, Luc would have sworn—before the mask came down.

“Morning,” Henri said mildly. “I see you found the sauna.”

“You knew about this.” It wasn’t a question.

Henri’s gaze was steady. “I know a lot of things, Moreau. The question is whether you’re ready to hear them.”

Viktor started to protest, but Henri cut him off with a raised hand. The old man’s voice was soft, almost gentle, but it carried a weight that silenced the room.

“The blood is mine. I cut myself two nights ago, in the dark, during the storm. Thought I’d cleaned it up, but I suppose I missed a spot.” He gestured toward his hand, where a fresh bandage circled his palm. “I’m sorry for the alarm. My mistake.”

Luc stared at him. The bandage was clean, too clean, the white gauze crisp and untarnished. A cut from two nights ago would have soaked through by now, the edges yellowed with dried serum. Someone had redressed that wound recently. Within the hour.

But he couldn’t prove it. Not in front of the others. Not without revealing that he was already suspicious, already tracking Henri’s movements, already planning to abandon them.

So he nodded.

“Thank you for clearing that up.” He turned to face the group, raising his voice. “It’s nothing. False alarm. We’re all on edge.”

Viktor snorted, clearly unsatisfied, but the tension had already begun to deflate. Petra sagged against Henrik. Pierre retreated toward the kitchen. The group dispersed, muttering, casting glances back over their shoulders.

They didn’t believe it. He could see that much in their faces.

Camille lingered, meeting his eyes. There was a question there, sharp as a blade.

Luc shook his head once, almost imperceptibly. She pressed her lips together and turned away.

When the mudroom had emptied, Luc crouched by the bloodstain one more time. He touched it with his fingertip, still tacky, still fresh.

Henri’s bandage was clean. The blood was wet. The numbers didn’t add up, and they hadn’t from the start.

He rose, slipped out of the mudroom, and walked to the east window. The sky had cleared, hard and blue, the sun burning off the last of the cloud from the peaks. The ridge stretched away to the east, smooth and white and utterly deserted.

He’d leave tonight. Walk out under cover of darkness, ski to the patrol hut, raise help. He’d force Henri’s hand—whatever the old man was protecting, whatever he was hiding, Luc would find it on the other side of that ridge.

But as he turned from the window, he caught a flash of movement at the edge of the chalet grounds. A shape, low and dark, slipping between the snowdrifts.

The orange light—the one Camille had seen in the valley—was gone.

But someone was out there.

And they were watching the chalet.