02 Avalanche Pass Read Online Free PDF

the falls can be. He’d broken bones before too. But this had been worse. A whole lot worse.
    This had been a greenstick fracture, where the bone, instead of snapping clean, had reacted to the twisting force of the fall and splintered like a green, sap-filled stick.
    Jesse lay in the deep snow, waves of agony washing over him like an incoming tide. The sun dropped below the rim of the Yampa Valley to the west and the mountain was in deep shadow. Under the trees, where Jesse lay semiconscious and almost buried in the deep, soft snow, it was almost dark.
    In a lucid moment, Jesse realized he was dying. His body had refused to succumb to the inescapable pain of the shattered leg but the cold, the inexorable, subzero cold of the mountain, was gradually winning. He would die here before morning, he realized. Quietly. Unnoticed. Futilely.
    He tried to rise and the agony surged again, a savage burst of nausea hitting him in the belly as he felt the entire leg come throbbing to life once more—hurting indescribably badly. Hurting more than anything he could ever have imagined. Hurting so that tears sprang to his tight shut eyes and once again he was a little boy calling for his mom, knowing that only she could ease that pain. He whimpered, not even aware that he was doing so.
    “Mom’s here, Jesse,” a voice said inside his head. But it wasn’t his Mom. It was Death speaking, tempting him.
    “Just let go and relax, boy,” it said, “and I’ll make the pain go away.” And the temptation to do so was so strong… to just relax and escape that awful pain.
    I t was full dark when Pete Tolliver, a buddy from the ski patrol, found him.
    They brought him down the mountain in an aluminium rescue sled, pumped full of painkillers and wrapped head to toe in a space blanket. An ambulance was waiting on the snow-covered base, by the chairlift, to whisk him away to the medical center.
    That had been eleven months ago. Today, structurally, Jesse wassound as a bell. Unfortunately, the surgeon who repaired his leg hadn’t been able to remove one small remnant of the terrible injury. That was a shattered fragment that lay deep in Jesse’s psyche. And it surfaced whenever he faced the sort of steep, forbidding ski run that he once used to take in his stride.
    That was why, the day after his argument with Lee, he’d phoned for a reservation here at Snow Eagles, thrown some clothes into a bag, packed his skis and stocks into a canvas carryall and driven to the airport at Halley. He had to know if he could overcome this problem. But he couldn’t do that in Steamboat Springs. It was something he had to do on his own, away from Lee and friends he had known all his life. If he couldn’t solve this problem, he didn’t want to be surrounded by pitying looks and well-meaning attempts to help him face up to the fact.
    The trip to Utah, he reflected glumly, had been a failure so far. It had been a waste of money and time. Thinking of the money, Jesse glanced around the expensively furnished hotel room. On a deputy’s salary, he couldn’t really afford to stay in a place like this too long. It was probably just as well he was checking out the following day.
    As he thought about it, he decided he might as well head down to the reception desk and settle his bill now. That way he could save time in the morning. As yet he was undecided as to whether he should give The Wall one last attempt or just get back in his rental car and drive to the airport in Salt Lake City. He’d make up his mind in the morning. For now, he’d fix up his bill and make sure there were no loose ends.
    He looked at the moon again, and the way it flooded the snow-covered ground around the hotel with a brilliant light. It was a stunning view but it did nothing for his ill humor.
    “Goddamn it,” he said bitterly.

FOUR
    CANYON LODGE
    WASATCH COUNTY

    T ina Bowden counted out the last of the bills onto the marble top of the reception counter.
    “… one-eighty-five,