Chapter 36 - The Safehouse at Donner Pass
I bypassed the main Tahoe highway, hotwiring a battered snowmobile abandoned behind a forestry cabin. The machine roared to life, spewing blue exhaust as I cut across the untracked powder of the backcountry trails toward the resort perimeter.
The storm had escalated. Whiteout conditions enveloped the ridgeline, the wind screaming through the mountain passes like a jet engine.
I spotted the silhouette of the maintenance shed near the eighth hole of the snow-covered championship course. The perimeter was quiet, but boot tracks—fresh, sharp vibram lug prints—marred the pristine snow leading away from a black SUV idling on the service road.
They had beaten me there.
I cut the snowmobile engine fifty yards out, sliding off into the deep drift. Drawing my combat knife and my sidearm, I moved through the blizzard, a phantom wrapped in white powder.
A guard stood near the rear door of the shed, his thermal goggles sweeping the open fairway. He never heard me approach from his blind spot. I stepped out of the whiteout, locked my forearm across his throat, and brought the pommel of my tactical knife down against the base of his skull with surgical violence. He slumped limp into my arms. I dragged his body behind a stack of snowplow blades, stripping him of his encrypted com-set and his MPX submachine gun.
Kicking the shed door open, I raised the weapon.
Chloe was curled beneath a rusted workbench, trembling violently, wrapped in a grease-stained burlap tarp. Her manicured nails were broken and bleeding; her designer fleece was torn to shreds. The spoiled, arrogant sister who had sneered at my military service three days ago was gone, replaced by a hollow-eyed child waiting for the slaughter.
May you like
She looked up, saw my weapon, and recoiled in terror.
"On your feet," I said, offering no embrace, no comforting words. "We move now, or we die together."
