Keeping his hand lightly on the handrail, Cole made his way to the two-way and pulled it from its bracing. Just like the kid, he’d worked the lifts on this mountain and plenty else besides. He knew the drills. ‘Hare, you there?’
But Hare did not reply, and neither did the operator supposedly manning the base station. Not good. The kid said nothing, just watched him through those blasted ski goggles and chewed on his full lower lip. Cole’s own lips tightened in reply.
‘Hare,’ he barked. ‘Can you hear me?’ And when there was still no reply he shoved the two-way back on the wall and fished his mobile phone from his coat pocket. No signal. Not that he’d held out much hope for one. White-out did that.
Damn.
The kid dug a mobile phone from amongst his layers too, and started pressing buttons with a gloved hand. ‘No signal here, either,’ he murmured.
‘I’ll call Hare again in a minute,’ muttered Cole.
They gave him ten. Ten minutes of uneasy silence, punctuated by a fascination with this boy that Cole didn’t even want to try to define.
‘Someone should have contacted us by now,’ said the youth finally.
What the kid didn’t say was that not following procedure meant that in all likelihood Hare had problems of his own up there, and heaven only knew what was happening down below. Base station should have been manned or the gondola should not have been running. Standard Operating Procedure.
‘The two-way’s not dead,’ he said. ‘I’ll try some other channels. Might raise someone.’ Anyone would do.
But there was nothing on the other channels except for static.
Another five minutes passed. Another gust of wind slammed into the gondola, stronger now than it had been. The kid’s hands went to the handrail and stayed there as he looked up, always up, to the cable that held them up, his scarf falling away from his face to reveal flawless ivory skin and a jaw that had sure as hell never seen a razor.
Ivory skin? On a ski-lift operator?
‘How old are you?’ The words were out of Cole’s mouth before he could call them back. ‘Fourteen?’ The kid hadn’t even reached puberty. ‘Fifteen?’
‘Older,’ said the boy.
‘How much older?’
‘Considerably.’
Considerably? What the hell kind of answer was that?
‘Nineteen,’ said the kid quickly, as if he had a mainline through to Cole’s brain.
‘Really,’ countered Cole, and the coat shrugged. Cole was beginning to think there was far more coat and hat and scarf than there was kid. Nineteen, my arse.
He ran his gaze over the youth again as if looking for … what exactly? Answers? A reason for his fascination? Because he didn’t swing that way. Never had before. Didn’t think much of starting now.
More minutes passed in uneasy fashion. Not silence—the battering of the wind and the straining of cable fixtures saw to that. But there was no more conversation. And the radio to the outside world stayed ominously silent.
Finally Cole glanced at his watch. Then he glanced at the youth. The boy was still all bundled up, which Cole could fully understand given the plummeting temperature, but what was with the ski goggles staying on? It wasn’t as if the kid was going to be getting out of the gondola any time soon.
‘You live in town?’ asked Cole.
The youth nodded.
‘You live alone?’ Not a pick-up line, may the devil come for his soul if he lied. He needed to clarify his question, clarify it now. ‘Anyone likely to notice you’re missing and raise the alarm?’
‘I wouldn’t count on it. My—’ The boy hesitated. ‘My roommate’s out of town this afternoon and she’ll be working tonight. I come and go as I please.’
Cole sighed and jammed his hands in his coat pockets. So much for the boy’s mommy waiting dinner on him and getting anxious when he didn’t show. Maybe the kid was nineteen. Nineteen, small grown, shacked up with a pint-sized waitress, and perfectly happy with his lot.
Good for him.
‘What about you?’ asked the youth. ‘Is there anywhere you have to be?’
‘Yes.’
‘So … you’ll be missed?’
‘I doubt it,’ he muttered. And if his mother and sister did miss him, the next thought that ran through their minds would probably be relief. ‘I wouldn’t count on anyone being alarmed by my absence, put it that way.’
More silence, broken only by the patter of wind driven snowflakes against the shell of the gondola. ‘At least we have shelter,’ he said. Pity it was fifty metres up and hanging from a cable, a very strong cable, mind. In a blizzard. ‘What’s in the box?’ he said finally.
‘What?’ said the kid, looking startled and scared along with it. So much for idle conversation.
‘The box,’ he repeated gruffly. ‘What’s in it? Anything we can use?’
‘Like what?’ said the boy, and his voice was back to being muffled and scratchy and his face was back to being hidden almost entirely by goggles, hat and scarf.
‘Like food and blankets,’ said Cole. ‘If God was good there would also be Scotch.’ Although given how muddled Cole’s thinking had grown since he’d stepped into this gondola, the lack of fortified beverage probably wasn’t such a bad thing.
‘There’s no Scotch,’ muttered the youth. ‘It’s just some stuff of mine. Mostly junk. I’m finishing up on the mountain today.’
‘Mid-season?’
The kid nodded.
‘Were you fired?’
‘No.’
‘Got a better offer?’
‘Yes.’
‘Somewhere around here?’ It was part of Cole’s job now, to oversee the running of the ski field. It was the only part of the business empire that James had kept tight control over, the only business operation Cole wasn’t wholly up to speed on. If there were staffing problems on the mountain, or if they were losing experienced workers to neighbouring ski fields, Cole wanted to know about it.
‘Christchurch,’ said the kid.
No ski fields in Christchurch. ‘What doing?’
‘Not this,’ said the kid.
So much for the boy being a dedicated snowboarder, following the snow from season to season in search of the perfect run.
Conversation stopped again. The kid eventually sat on the box and pulled his phone from his pocket. Judging by the tightening of the boy’s lips there was still no signal to be had and nothing to do but sit and wait. Or stand and sigh.
‘Are you sure there’s nothing in the box we could use?’ asked Cole eventually. He wasn’t usually one to harp but they’d been stuck here for over an hour now, he wasn’t getting any warmer, and he was definitely looking for a distraction. ‘Even junk has its uses.’
‘Not this junk,’ said the kid. ‘Trust me, there’s nothing in this box you want to see.’
‘Is that statement supposed to make me want to know what’s in the box less?’ asked Cole. ‘Because—trust me—it doesn’t.’
The kid shrugged and declined to answer. Cole studied the boy anew and wondered