Bastian's Storm

Chapter Fifteen

I rolled completely out of control. All I could manage to do was to tuck my head down and wrap my arms around myself to keep from slamming into the rocks with a vital part of my body. My vision was obscured by the snow, and the only perceivable change was seeing everything go from all white, to slightly blue, to white again, and then to black.

I kept falling. The back of my head hit something hard, and white flashes invaded my eyes, joining the darkened snow as my goggles first filled with snow and then flew off. I tumbled, tried to turn and straighten myself as the powdered snow deepened, and again I couldn’t breathe. Remembering everything Landon had ever told me about avalanches, I started moving my arms and legs as much as I could in a classic Australian crawl stroke—trying to swim up and out of the snow before I lost all my breath.

The movement worked, and grey snow turned back to white. For a moment, my head was out from under the snow, and I could take a deep breath. It didn’t last long, and I was buried again quickly. I kept swimming down the slope, gasping for air every chance I got.

The rumbling and shaking finally slowed and then ended completely as I came to a sudden stop when my lower body hit something hard. I couldn’t see a damn thing, and I realized I was totally buried in the snow. My head pounded, and I wasn’t even sure which way was up.

I couldn’t feel my legs at all.

First things first. I need to breathe.

I moved my head from side to side and then forward, making a small pocket of air around my face. It wouldn’t last long, though—maybe a minute or two—so I needed to get unburied as quickly as possible. To do that, I needed to know which way to dig. With my head still dizzy from the tumble, I had no idea.

Gathering saliva in my mouth, I looked down into my ripped up mask and let the spit escape from my lips. Following gravity, it dribbled straight down my chin, which meant my body was angled vertically. A damn good sign if I ever saw one.

I wriggled my arm up my body until my hand reached my face. I made a bigger air pocket before I continued to use my fingers to dig upward. The ice and snow weren’t too packed, and it only took a minute before my hand popped through the surface. I was under about a foot and a half of snow, but at least I could see out and, more importantly, breathe.

I took a deep breath of chilled, fresh air. I still couldn’t feel my legs, but at least I had oxygen. Step one accomplished.

I closed my eyes for a minute and tried to recall anything and everything I knew about avalanches. Everything I recalled just told me I was fucked. Normally in this kind of situation—not that being caught in an avalanche was normal—someone would be nearby, looking to help. In my case, I already knew there was only one person still out there looking for me, and I hoped to God Evan Arden was under ten tons of snow and ice right now. It wasn’t the way I wanted to kill him, but it would still do the trick.

Arden’s being dead didn’t help me get myself out of where I was though, and I couldn’t win if I couldn’t escape. The loss of my goggles in the avalanche also meant the loss of the camera and GPS locator attached to them. None of the investors back at Franks’ camp would be able to see what I could see. If Arden was completely buried, they wouldn’t have any way of finding him either.

With images of Raine and Alex in my head, I started fighting through the snow.

Moving my arms around in the hole I had made near my head, I widened the pocket around me as well as the hole a few inches above my head. Part of the snowpack around me fell, dusting me with powder but also clearing the space in front of me. The hole let in more fresh air and gave me the ability to observe a little around me. There wasn’t much more than sky to see, but it was a hell of a lot better than snow. What worried me the most was the view in front of me.

I was on my back at about a fifteen-degree angle with snow and ice all around me, but as the snow in front of my face fell away, I found myself looking out over a ravine. I was perched about a third of the way up the side of the mountain. Right below me was a wide rock ledge jutting out from the nearest mountain ridge. If I did manage to dig my way out, I was going to have to scale all the way down the cliff in front of me.

Thinking about scaling the cliffs also made me think about my legs. I was starting to be able to feel them again, and what I felt wasn’t good at all. The left one was starting to throb like a bitch, and I was pretty sure it was either broken or at least badly cut from striking a rock. I wouldn’t know for sure until I dug myself out, so I started scooping out the snow around my chest and stomach. It was slow going, and I couldn’t turn my head to look around or anything, so I just focused on the ice and snow in front of me.

It felt like I was at it for hours though it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. The chill in my body had seeped into my core, and I was shivering, making it difficult to push the snow out of the way. There was a decent opening in front of me now, and I could see out a lot better. I shoved more of the snow behind me and away from my face, ending up with an icy pillow at the back of my head and added maneuverability for my neck.

Just as I thought I might get my shoulders free, I saw the slightest movement out of the corner of my eye. Near my right ear, I felt cold pressure pressed against my temple, followed by an audible click.

No.

Oh fuck no.

I couldn’t move enough to turn around and even see him, let alone try to fight him off. I could at least hope that the sound of the firing gun would be enough to trigger another avalanche and end his sorry ass as I died in the snow, but there was nothing I could do to stop him.

Evan Arden had a gun at my head, and I couldn’t do anything about it. My already cold body turned even colder.

Raine.

Fucking failed her.

Again.

Tensing my body in preparation for what was to come, I closed my eyes and tried to keep her face in my mind, but the business end of Arden’s Beretta was too much to ignore.

Fucker.

“Aren’t you supposed to give me some kind of ‘ha-ha-I-knew-I-was-going-to-win-the whole-time’ kind of speech first?” I asked with a snarl.

I heard him snort a little laugh behind me.

“Not really my style,” he said.

The barrel of the Beretta pressed a little harder against my skull, and without another word, Evan Arden pulled back on the trigger.

There was a click—louder than the one from the hammer—but that was it.

No gunshot. No continued avalanche. No bullet in my brain.

“Fuck,” Arden muttered.

I relaxed my muscles.

“Run out of ammo?” I asked. I chuckled softly because the fucking irony was perfect and because I figured it would piss him off.

“No,” he said in a deadpan voice. “Jammed. Probably from the ice or a rock or something.”

I felt my insides churn. Arden was way too good to be stopped by a jammed gun. He would have it working again in a few seconds, which wasn’t nearly enough time for me to get myself dug out enough to turn around, take the gun, and beat him to death with the blunt end. It was only a delay of the inevitable.

Raine.

I closed my eyes again and tried to be grateful that I had a little time to picture her face, think about the way she smelled, and remember how her skin felt in my hands. I hoped and prayed that Landon would just let her and Alex go, now that he had no use for them.

I took a long, shuddering breath and waited for the inevitable.

But it didn’t come.

“Motherfucker,” Arden mumbled, and I realized I’d been thinking about Raine for quite some time now, and I still wasn’t dead.

“Having a problem?” I hoped my smirk was evident in my voice.

“A bit,” he said bluntly but didn’t elaborate.

I had the feeling talking wasn’t one of Evan Arden’s strong points.

“Something I can help you with?”

Arden took a deep breath, and when he exhaled, the water vapor wafted over me. I heard and felt him shift in the snow, and I realized just how close to me he was. We had both been stopped by the rock ledge directly below us. If I could get myself turned around enough to reach back behind me, I might be able to snap his neck.

Why isn’t he just beating me to death?

Before I could act on one thought or consider the other, he bashed me in the side of the head with the blunt end of his weapon.

“Ow! Motherfucker!”

The angle was bad, or he would have knocked me unconscious. He smacked me again, but I managed to move my head a bit to the side at the last moment. Gritting my teeth, I listened to the scraping sound as he moved his arm. Concentrating, I waited for the sound of the crunching snow to enter my ears, reached up behind my head, and grabbed for his wrist.

I ended up with two fingers and part of the gun, which I twisted backwards in an effort to break his fingers. My wrist scratched against a rock, but my thick clothing preventing it from scraping off my skin. He tightened up, prepared for the move, and I waited for him to grab me with his other hand, but he didn’t. He tried to pull away, but I wasn’t having any of that. As painful as it was, I held onto his fingers and slammed my hand at an awkward, backward angle against the rock behind my head.

Arden grunted, our hands parted, and the gun fell from his grip, cascading down the cliff and bouncing high in the air as it hit a rock. Spinning silently, it dropped out of sight, no longer a part of Arden’s arsenal.

“Fuck,” he muttered, completely monotone.

“Why didn’t you just fucking shoot me?” I snapped.

“Still jammed,” he replied.

“I thought you were a fucking gun expert,” I challenged. “You telling me you can’t unjam a gun?”

“Not with one hand,” he replied in the same tone.

One hand…did he lose a fucking arm in the avalanche? It was possible, and I hoped it was true. In this cold, bleeding to death would take quite some time, but having him end that way sounded pretty good to me.

I shifted my shoulders against the snow behind me, trying to create a little wiggle room. I was only mildly successful, but it gave me just enough space to be able to turn and see him.

Evan Arden was lying on his side, facing me, with one arm not just below him but completely buried under rocks and snow. Unlike my icy tomb, Arden’s was made of more rocks than ice, and he was definitely pinned down. He had one leg trapped as well.

I let out a short laugh.

“Well, you’re fucked,” I said simply. I went back to digging at the snow around my lower half. If I could get out, I could finish him off without a lot of resistance.

A half hour later, I was panting, sweating, freezing, and still completely unable to dig myself out. I dropped my head back into the snow behind me and watched my breath rise in puffs around my mask and over my head.

I turned my head to see Arden’s stoic face as he laid his head against a rock and stared out over the cliff. There were a lot of marks in the snow where he had obviously tried to free his arm, but the rocks and ice were too thick there. He’d need a fucking bulldozer or at least some help, which I wasn’t about to offer.

His gaze shifted to me.

“This is supposed to be my fucking retirement,” Arden mumbled.

“Ha!” I snorted. “Mine, too.”

“Oh yeah?” He shifted his head lower to rest it on the snow and sighed again. “What are you doing here, then?”

“Killing your ass is the plan,” I answered simply.

“I’ve heard that before,” he replied. “Everyone who ever said it is floating in the Chicago river.”

“Everyone I’ve ever said it to is six feet under.”

He moved his eyes to me and gave me a slight nod.

“So I’ve heard,” he said, “but you’ve been out of the games for a long time.”

I didn’t comment. My leg was starting to throb, and I was convinced it was broken. Conversation was distracting, pointless, and pissing me off. I needed to get myself out of this and kill the guy beside me. Even then, my chances of getting back down the mountainside with a busted up leg were growing slimmer by the minute.

I was cold. Really fucking cold.

I closed my eyes and tried to think of Raine, hoping thoughts of her waiting for me would give me a little more motivation and maybe even warm me a little. Thinking just made the back of my head throb, and I reached up to rub at it. There was a good knot back there, and touching it made me dizzy.

Fucking fabulous.

I set my head back against the snow bank to catch my breath. I needed energy, so I dug down a little by my side until I could reach the pocket with the tubes of nutritional goo. I sucked it down my throat and then ate a few nuts to get rid of the taste of the overly processed shit in a tube.

“Why did you agree to play?” Arden asked. “If you’re supposed to be retired, why come back now? This is all about the Chicago war, not Seattle.”

“It wasn’t exactly by choice,” I said with a sigh. I was too tired to yell at him, and wasting energy was a bad idea anyway. “Why are you here? You were never a tournament player before.”

“Nope, never was,” he confirmed.

“So, why?”

“Rinaldo asked me to do it,” he said simply.

“You always do what he asks?”

“Pretty much,” Arden confirmed.

“Why you?”

“I killed the guy who would have otherwise done it,” Arden replied as he stared up into the sky.

“You killed one of your boss’s men?”

He moved his eyes slowly to mine. He didn’t need to respond verbally.

“You got balls,” I muttered.

“He was an asshole,” Arden said.

“There are plenty of those around. You can’t kill them all.”

“Maybe.” He kept looking at me, and his cold eyes reminded me a bit of Landon’s. They were the wrong color—much too dark. In fact, they were pretty close to the shade of blue in my eyes. “So why are you here?”

I ignored him. The last thing I wanted to do was have him thinking that I had someone out there to make me vulnerable. Not that it mattered at this point—only one of us was going to get out of this alive.

If even that.

Closing my eyes, I tried to find my focus again. Getting free was paramount, but my body was exhausted and half frozen. I licked my lips, and it felt like the cold was freezing the saliva to my mouth. I needed more focus to stop myself from giving in to the temptation to just give up and lie back in the snow.

Incentive.

Struggling a little due to my mitten-covered hands, I reached under my parka and into my breast pocket to pull out the drawing Alex had made. I unfolded it carefully and stared at the figures in the picture. I traced the bottom of the picture where Alex had drawn his feet in blue tennis shoes and long, crazy laces and then brushed the edge of Raine’s face with my thumb.

When I glanced back over my shoulder, Arden was still looking at me. From his vantage point, he would have seen the picture clearly. For a moment, I felt a touch of panic because every one of the people watching over the closed circuit had just seen it, too.

But Arden’s head was free of his goggles as well. We had both lost the cameras used to broadcast back to Resolute. There was no beacon being transmitted from our location at all. They didn’t know where we were or what we were doing. Their last images would have been the avalanche taking us both down the side of the mountain.

We were fucked—completely and totally. It didn’t matter what he knew now.

“They got my girl,” I said quietly. As the words came out of my mouth, something inside me flipped. It was over. There was no way I was going to be able to get out of this without help, and as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I was done. I couldn’t move. My leg was broken. This was going to be an all losers tournament.

Arden didn’t respond, and I looked over to him. He was staring blankly into the snow in front of his face with his jaw tight.

“You’re never going to see her again,” he said, “not the kid, either.”

My muscles tightened at his words. As much as I wanted to deny it, I knew he was right. I’d come to the exact same conclusion. I wasn’t about to admit it out loud, though.

“Fuck you,” I growled. “I’m getting out of this, fucking you over, and going home to them.”

“No, you aren’t,” Arden said. “You know it, too. You just figured it out.”

“How do you know that?” I snapped back at him.

He shrugged with his one free arm.

“Your posture just changed,” he said. “You slumped down, and your eyes dropped. There’s no way to dig yourself out, and we aren’t going to help each other, so there will be no winner for this tournament. You were looking at that crayon drawing when you realized you’d never see her or your kid again.”

I couldn’t hide the shock I felt.

“Wha…?”

He moved his shoulder up and down again.

“I’m pretty perceptive,” he said numbly.

I mentally gathered myself together.

“Well, it’s bullshit,” I said, trying to convince myself of the words. “I’m just giving myself a little break before I haul my ass out of this snow bank, beat you to death, and head back home. All I have to do is make it down that mountainside, and then I’m done for good.”

“You’ll fight again,” Arden said. “Well, you will if you ever get out of this, which you won’t. If you did, this still wouldn’t be your last tournament.”

“Fuck you,” I said with a snarl. “I don’t quit in the middle of a fight. This is my last tournament, and it ends in victory just like my first fight and every one of them in between.”

“It never ends,” Arden said. “Franks won’t let you go any more than Rinaldo will let me go. Once they got you, they got you. You never get away from them completely, even when they tell you that you can.”

I might not have been as perceptive as he was, but I still knew he wasn’t talking about me anymore. He was talking about himself.

“Landon isn’t going to fuck me over,” I said. Everything Arden was saying rang true, aligning with my own thoughts, but I refused to agree with him. “I know him. He told me this was it, and he wouldn’t go back on his word. He’s like my fucking father.”

Arden chuckled.

“Yeah, I got one of those, too. He’s the reason I’m here, retirement or not.”

Arden pulled his arm across his chest and placed his hand under his head to get it off the snow. He looked into my eyes again. For a second, he didn’t look quite as emotionless as he had before. His eyes tightened a bit, and his jaw flexed as he spoke.

“We’re too good for them to just let us go,” Arden continued. “Even if they really want to, they’re always going to need us for something one last time.”

I stared at him as the words sank in, and I knew deep inside that he was right. If I did get out of this, Franks and Landon would let me off on my own for a while, but eventually there would be something else—just one more thing they needed for me to do. One more favor. One more fight.

“Fuck you,” I grumbled through clenched teeth. “I’ve got bigger priorities now.”

Arden nodded slightly, sniffed against the cold, and looked back to me.

“I got a girl, too,” he finally said. “Lia. Never thought that would happen.”

“Heh,” I chuckled, “tell me about it.”

The statement was rhetorical, but it seemed to put Arden in a more talkative mood.

“She doesn’t know where I am,” he said. “I sent her off to visit her mom for a couple of weeks. She’s going to come home, and I won’t be there.”

My mind played through the scenario he described, only with Raine and myself as the subjects. I pictured her coming into the condo and finding it empty. I thought about what she would do when it stayed empty through the night. I wondered at what point she would start looking for me and what she would do when she couldn’t find any trace of where I had gone.

She’d freak out. She wouldn’t know what to do, and there wouldn’t be anyone she could call to get any information. How long would it be before she gave up? Weeks? Months? Years?

“Lia came after me once before,” Arden said. “I ditched her in Arizona, but she still managed to find me again. She’s stubborn.”

“That sounds familiar,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone as stubborn as Raine.”

“Raine?”

I tapped the edge of the picture.

“That’s her name.”

Arden huffed a breath through his nose.

“At least she’ll have her kid,” Arden said. “Lia’s stuck with the dog.”

“He’s not her son,” I said quietly.

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

I remembered his words from our first meeting with all the families when he’d threatened to come after Alex when this was over.

“You knew that,” I said accusingly. “You knew his mother was dead.”

“Yeah,” Arden said. His eyes were blank again. “Forgot. My mind’s a little preoccupied.”

His eyes flashed over to the side, narrowed, and he shook his head slightly as if to clear it.

“Did you kill her?” I asked bluntly.

“No,” he said. “Franks put the hit on her. Rinaldo told me about it.”

I didn’t see any trace of a lie on his face. I clenched my teeth a bit. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Franks would choose profit over family, obviously.

“Fucker,” I muttered.

“He won’t be on his own,” Arden said as he nodded toward the picture.

“Yeah.” I shrugged though I wasn’t sure he could see the movement from where he lay on the snow. I stared back at the drawing for a minute. “She treats him like he’s hers.”

“Well, you got that at least.”

I didn’t want to go into the detailed story about Jillian and all that shit. He didn’t need to know any more than he already did, and I didn’t want to spend my last few hours thinking about that woman. I wanted to keep the image of Raine in my head, so I kept talking about her.

“She’s a fucking saint,” I said. “I suck at being a boyfriend. I can’t even get along with her friends.”

Arden nodded his head, and his eyes darkened.

“Lia doesn’t really have any friends,” he said. “That’s my fault. To keep her safe and away from all this shit, I had to isolate her. I did it to protect her, but…yeah, well, she doesn’t have anyone but me. Once she figures out I’m not coming back, she’ll probably move back to Arizona with her mom.”

Raine would at least know what had happened to me. Landon would tell her I was dead, and she could move on with her life. Lindsay would be there for her, and she’d have a shoulder to cry on if nothing else. I couldn’t even imagine how she would deal with it all if she didn’t have Lindsay around, and I felt like a shit for being nasty to her and Nick all the time.

At least they could take care of her and help with Alex.

“I don’t know if Lia is a saint or not,” Arden said, “but she puts up with me. Even when I’m…well, when I’m not the friendliest person around, she still hangs in there. It doesn’t seem to matter how fucked up I am in the head, she always stands by me.”

“Raine’s like that, too,” I replied with a nod. “I can be a total asshole, and she still has my back.”

“Lia knows just when to back off and when to be there,” Arden said. “She knows I’m fucked up, but I guess she just…I dunno…ignores it? She doesn’t like it, but she never gives up on me. She also thinks I don’t do hits anymore, but I do.”

“How do you do that without her knowing about it?”

“She’s in school,” Arden said. “It’s mostly online, but sometimes she has to go to conferences or meet with her professors in person. I plan my hits around those.”

“So you hide it from her?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re crazy.”

Arden laughed.

“Yeah, I’ve got the diagnosis to prove it.”

I stared at him a minute. It didn’t seem like an off-hand remark; it seemed like he meant it. He looked back at me and nodded.

“PTSD,” he said. “I’m a certified nut.”

“From being in the Marines?”

“From being a POW, yeah.” He was silent a moment. “Why are you such a dick to your girl?”

“I just…have a nasty temper. I used to drink to make up for it.”

“Not anymore?”

“That’s the one thing she’d leave me for,” I admitted. “If I drink, she’s gone.”

“And that’s enough to keep you off it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, mostly. I’ve fucked up but just once.”

“She forgave you?”

“She did.”

Arden pondered a minute.

“I don’t think Lia would be so forgiving if she knew I was still in the business.”

“If she’s anything like Raine, she’d have your balls.”

Arden laughed.

“Sounds like they are a lot alike,” Arden mused.

I had the feeling we were both thinking it, but neither of us said anything about how that probably meant he and I were a lot alike as well. I thought about how he fought—as if none of the blows I’d made to his face mattered. Arden really believed that as long as he was alive, there was still a chance.

If we were so much alike, why wasn’t I thinking the same thing? I wasn’t dead yet, dammit. I was just in a totally fucking hopeless situation with no conceivable way out. I’d been in similar situations before.

“Fuck that,” I muttered.

“What?”

I didn’t answer him.

Reaching down with my hand, I dug at the space near my hip. It was nearly frozen solid, and I couldn’t get much of the ice away from my body. I placed both hands against the frozen ground and tried to push myself out of the hole, but I couldn’t get enough leverage, and my legs wouldn’t budge.

Pain rippled through my left calf as I tried harder. As I attempted to move, it became clear that my leg was not only broken but also turned backward at a nasty angle, further securing itself inside the bank of ice and rock below.

Exhausted, I dropped my head back in the snow and tried to breathe through my nose. I could hear Arden behind me, shuffling against the ice, but he wasn’t trying anymore either.

He kept thinking about giving up; I could see it in his eyes.

Normally, that would have been good news for me, but I didn’t feel particularly happy about his predicament. Maybe I was just too tired to give a shit anymore, but the idea of beating his head in wasn’t as attractive as it had been an hour ago.

“I want a fucking cigarette,” Arden said suddenly.

I laughed. I paused for a moment and then dug through my pockets. I had three smokes wrapped up in a plastic baggie—my usual emergency supply—and I pulled two of them out. Moving my torn facemask to the side, I stuck both Marlboros in my mouth. I grabbed one of the matches from the bag and leaned down into the hole and away from the wind to strike it against the rock. I ran the flame across the ends of each cigarette until they blazed.

Reaching out over my shoulder, I handed one to Evan.

“Damn,” he said, genuinely surprised. “Thanks.”

I inhaled deeply and watched the smoke flow out around my face.

“If I get out of this, I’m going to end up running that whole organization when Rinaldo retires,” Evan said. “I don’t want it, but the war has made it clear that his daughter can’t handle the pressure. Lia wants nothing to do with it. I’m going to lose her over the whole thing, and there’s no other path before me. I think I’d rather die on the edge of a mountain than lose her over that. I’d rather she just wonder why I never came home.”

“That’s fucked up,” I replied. “Raine would go bat-shit if I just didn’t come home one night. She’d drive herself to an early grave wondering what happened to me. I may be a dick, but I wouldn’t do that to her.”

“I don’t know what Lia will do,” Evan said softly. “She’ll be upset, but she’ll get over it eventually, right?”

I looked over my shoulder at him and raised my eyebrows. I didn’t know this chick, but she did sound a lot like Raine. Raine wouldn’t just get over it. I knew that much. I figured Evan’s girl wouldn’t either.

“Fuck,” Evan muttered. He took a long drag off the cigarette and stared out over the ledge. “I can’t leave her like that.”

“Well, why don’t you help me get out, and then I’ll make sure to let her know you’re dead when I’m done with you.”

“Thanks a lot,” he said as he glared over the burning tip of the smoke. “I’m sure having the dude who killed me tell her all about it would be a great comfort to her.”

“Just tryin’ to help,” I snickered.

“Yeah, I can do without that type of assistance.”

“Wouldn’t Moretti tell her what happened?” I asked.

“He doesn’t know where she is.”

“He knew how to find you, though,” I said after a moment’s consideration. “Are you saying he can’t find her?”

“Rinaldo has people who could locate her,” Evan said with a deep breath. “She’d be able to move on then, I guess.”

He didn’t seem convinced as I watched him drop his eyes to the ground. He blinked his frozen eyelashes a couple of times, and with a shiver, took another long drag off the smoke. I might not have been as perceptive as Evan was, but I could see it in his face—he didn’t have any hope left. He was done. I wasn’t even sure he wanted to survive.

The knowledge should have spurred me on. It should have encouraged me to listen to Landon’s voice in my head and get my ass moving, but it didn’t. For some reason, I didn’t want Evan to give up though I wasn’t sure at what point he became Evan in my head instead of just Arden.

“Landon’s always told me that victory is in your head first,” I said. “If you decide that’s how it’s going to be, then that’s how it will be.”

Evan took another hit on the smoke and tried to shift himself into a more comfortable position. He looked straight at me.

“Let’ go over the possibilities, shall we?” he suggested.

“Okay.”

“Most likely—we freeze to death right here,” he said. “No winner. I don’t know how this shit works when there’s a tie, but it won’t matter to us because we’ll both be dead.”

I didn’t agree with him—what happened to Raine and Alex mattered a fucking hell of a lot regardless of how things turned out for me, but I didn’t feel like arguing the point.

“Next option—one of us manages to get free, and the other one is still trapped,” he continued. “Easy enough kill for either of us.”

I had to concur with that one.

“They don’t know where we are at this point,” Evan said. “Neither of us has our cameras anymore, and they’d have to come looking for us. My guess is they’ve already decided to do that but are probably waiting until the wind dies down. I don’t know what the protocol is. Rinaldo only filled me in on standard procedure, not exceptions.”

“There aren’t usually any exceptions,” I said. “The tournament goes until there’s only one player left. I’ve never been in the situation where the investors don’t know what’s happening, but I can guess. There was a tournament once—not one I was in—where the last two people were fighting with knives. They both cut each other fatally. The investors waited to see which one died first and declared the other guy the winner even though he died a few minutes later.”

“What if they find us both dead at the same time,” Evan asked, “or if they find us both alive?”

“As far as I know, that’s never happened.” I thought about it for a minute. “They might decide to start the whole thing over again.”

My stomach churned a bit. The idea of having to do it all again actually sounded worse than losing. It would mean breaking one more promise to Raine. She’d never trust me again.

“How about we make a deal?” Evan said quietly.

I turned a little farther to get a better look at him. He was watching the cigarette burn as opposed to looking back at me, but his expression was quite serious.

“A deal?”

“Yeah,” he said. “A deal where we both end up retired for real with the women we fight for.”

“The only way that happens is when one of us dies,” I reminded him. “There isn’t a prize for second place.”

“Yeah, I get that.” Arden rolled his head to the side and stared into my eyes. “You can have the trophy—I don’t give a shit about that. I just want to walk away with people thinking I’m dead.”

I knew exactly what he was suggesting. Normally, it wouldn’t be an option because the audience would be aware of any allegiances formed between tournament players and would put a stop to it. This time, they had no idea what we were doing. I still didn’t see how it would work—they’d have to have a body to prove I’d won.

“Don’t you think that kind of alliance has been tried before?” I asked. “They watch for that shit.”

“Not if they think I’m buried on the side of the mountain. They’ll only look for me for so long before they have to take your word for it”

“You’re crazy.”

“Already established.”

“I mean really crazy,” I countered. “You’re living in some kind of fantasy world.”

He glared at me a moment.

“Look over there,” Evan said. He pointed with his finger out near the top of the ridge. “You see anyone?”

I glanced over for a second then looked back at him with narrowed eyes.

“There’s no one for miles,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, I know,” he said softly, “but I still see him.”

“Who?”

“A kid I killed in Iraq. He follows me everywhere. He’ll go away for a while—sometimes for months—but he always comes back when shit gets real.”

I stared at him for a moment until I realized my mouth was hanging open. I closed it quickly.

“Dude—there’s no one there.”

He shrugged.

“I know. I still see him. I have nightmares about killing him all the time. Not just him, but being in the desert, tied up in a hole for months. Sometimes I can’t stop thinking about it, and when I do, I can’t sleep at all—sometimes for days.”

I could certainly relate to the nightmares. Before I had met Raine, I could only avoid them with alcohol. With her around, I slept better than I had since I was a kid. She drove the nightmares from my head.

The next phrase out of Evan’s mouth would have knocked me to the ground had I been standing.

“When I’m with Lia, I sleep better.”

I looked over to him quickly, trying to figure out if he had somehow used his skills of perception to know what I was thinking, but he seemed completely inside of his own head.

“Fuck,” I muttered. “Seriously?”

“Yeah,” he said. His eyes darkened as he looked at me.

“It’s just…well, Raine helps with my nightmares, too.”

Our gazes locked as we both considered this. I thought it was just me, and from the look on his face, Evan had thought the same thing about himself. Knowing we had such an odd similarity struck me right in the gut. I didn’t know what to make of it.

“I couldn’t deal with it if it wasn’t for her,” Evan said quietly.

“Me either,” I said. “With Raine, I mean.”

“All the more reason I should stay away from Lia,” he said. “She deserves better, but I can’t let her go. I also can’t get out of my debt to Rinaldo. At some point, it will become either her or him, and I can’t choose between them.”

“You are fucked up.” I took in a long breath and thought about it for a minute. Evan was fucked up because of a war and whatever happened to him over there. None of that shit was his fault. What was my excuse? Crappy childhood and a woman running out on me? It all sounded kind of lame to me now.

I was trying, though. I tried to keep myself off the booze even if I had failed. I wanted to be better for Raine, and I wanted to be a good father for Alex. I didn’t have the slightest fucking idea what that entailed, but I fully intended to figure it out.

Evan was different.

He’d been cheating on his girl. All right, maybe not with another woman, but he was doing what she didn’t want him to do with full knowledge that he was going against her wishes. I had the feeling that he would ultimately side with Moretti, if it ever came to that. It wasn’t the same situation as mine. I’d had a momentary lapse of judgment under a stressful situation and taken a drink. He was actively planning his deceptions.

“That doesn’t end my relationship with Franks,” I pointed out. “Maybe that would secure your retirement, but I’d still be in the same situation.”

“I’ll kill Franks,” he said simply.

I stared at him, unblinking, and considered what he was saying.

If I acted on my own, there was always the risk of being caught. If everyone thought Evan was dead, and Franks got knocked off a while later, it would never be traced back to me. As long as he was gone, Franks would lose his hold over me, and the organization would be in a total uproar as they tried to figure out who would be in charge. All my past transgressions would be forgotten.

“So, what do you think? Evan asked.

“Dude, I think you make me sound like a fucking angel,” I said. “When this is over, I’m going to tell Raine how much worse it could be.”

“You can’t tell her that if you don’t get out of this,” he pointed out.

“True.” My mind was spinning. What he was suggesting could actually work. It was fucked up and insane, but it could still work. It meant trusting him, which was probably a mistake, but I was out of options.

“So we should find a way to end it?” he pressed. “We both come out alive, but as far as anyone else is concerned, I’m dead.”

I looked at him carefully. There was no deceit in his eyes. He was being perfectly straightforward with me. He wanted to figure out how to get both of us out of this mess and didn’t give a shit about winning.

That’s how we were different. I had to win.

There was no choice. At least for now, we were going to work together.