Avalanche (A Stone Mountain Mystery Book 3) Read Online Free

surface. Dropping to his knees, he dug with his hands, feeling for Roy’s face. “Step back. I need some room. We don’t know which way his body is oriented.”
    A few more scoops of snow out of the way, and Ben stopped digging. He leaned his head into his hands and closed his eyes.
    “What?” Oliver asked.
    Ben turned to his boss. “It’s his transceiver. It’s been ripped from him.”
    Oliver leaned over Ben’s shoulder. “Is the whole pack there?”
    “Just the pocket.”
    Several members of the rescue squad were perched on snowmobiles at the top of the bowl, waiting for instructions from Ben. He waved them over and showed them where to probe. “Concentrate on any change in texture below the surface.”
    Infused with the energy of desperation, the rescuers formed a line crossing the run. With heads down, each person pushed a probe carefully through the snow.
    Down slid the probes. Up came the probes. One careful step forward, down slid the probes again. A dance of grace in grim circumstances.
    Frozen breath puffed in front of Oliver’s face, hiding his expression. “Call Roy again. That could be anybody’s gear.”
    Ben did as his boss instructed and tapped Roy’s name on his cell display. The call switched to voicemail. He looked at the team and shook his head. Closing his eyes for a moment, his eyelashes froze together. He pinched his lashes between his thumb and index finger and melted the ice. A gust of wind, bringing in a storm as if it were a bad omen, stung his cheeks.
     
    * * *
     
    Ben leaned close to Oliver, cupped his hand around his mouth and said, “We’re only focusing on Roy, but what if two people were up here?”
    Oliver lifted the earflap of his helmet. Ben knew since he’d lost his lobe, the cold bothered him. He’d had extra thick flaps custom made to protect his ears. “There’s been no sign of anyone else.”
    “I think we need to expand the search, just in case.” Using his radio, Ben asked the team on the upper quadrant to return to where he sat on his snowmobile. Once every member waited before him, he checked his watch and wrote the time in his notebook. “Let’s start the grid search again but a little farther up.”
    If the avalanche buried Roy, he’d run out of time, but they had to try. Even if it was only to find his body. Fucking hell. Why had he argued with Roy?
    “Hey,” a shout came from the dog handler. “We found part of a backpack.”
    The temperature on the thermometer attached to Ben’s jacket zipper read minus twenty-seven degrees Celsius. The burn of frostbite stung his cheeks. Without thinking, he took a deep breath, and the cold air made him cough.
    The dog handler passed Ben the scrap of backpack.
    Ben worked his jaw in frustration. The scrap had a Canadian flag sewn onto the canvas. A beaver was embroidered onto the corner of the flag. Without the beaver, the flag could have belonged to anyone, but Kalin and Roy had a tradition of putting the flag together with the beaver, representing Canada. Their stepdad had started the tradition when they were young, and they’d carried it on as they grew older.
    His training taught him that once buried, the heat of a person’s breath solidified the snow, cutting off the air supply. With each passing minute, the ice surrounding Roy’s face became thicker. The rescue team continued the search, just not as frantically as before. No one mentioned the words “recovery mission”, but they were probably all thinking them. Ben eyed the weather. Safety first.
    A patroller radioed Ben from higher on the mountain. She’d been searching the terrain above the avalanche. Between heavy breaths, she said, “There are tracks directly above where the slide started.”
    “How close?”
    “Close enough that the avalanche could have been triggered by a person.”
    “Roy?” Ben asked.
    “We’ve no way of knowing.”
    “Did you follow the tracks to see if they disappeared into the avalanche’s path?”
    “The