He puts his mouth to my ear. “If we were anywhere but here, I’d still be in bed with you.”

His kisses are gentle now, but they weren’t last night. Every part of my body remembers the pressure of his.

He pulls away, regret in his eyes. “How’s the knee?”

I roll up the leg of my thermal trousers to see.

“Jesus.”

My knee is one and a half times its usual width.

“Can you bend it?”

Gingerly I try. Shit, that hurts. “Pass me the ibuprofen, could you? Oh crap. There’s only two left. Got any more?”

“No,” he says ruefully. “Sorry.”

“Brent might.”

Curtis raises his eyebrow. True; Brent’s not a first-aid-kit kind of guy. I wash the pills down. The tiny amount of relief they provide is going to run out in about six hours.

Curtis is wearing his snowboard stuff already.

I hobble over to the window. Curtis is right. Those clouds look menacing. “I need clothes from my dorm.”

“I’ll come with you,” Curtis says.

Screwdriver in his hand, he opens the door and we brave the corridor. My room looks just as I left it. I pull on my snowboard jacket and trousers over my thermals. And my snowboard socks, trying not to look at my blisters. My stomach rumbles.

“I would kill for a coffee right now,” I say.

“The power’s back on.”

“Really?”

Curtis clicks on the light to show me.

“Why . . . ?”

“Either they needed it on, or they’re playing with us.”

We exchange looks. His sister loved playing with people.

It’s taking all my concentration to blank out the pain of my knee. “So what’s the plan?”

That’s the good thing about Curtis. I know he’ll have one.

“We search for Dale, but quickly. Because if he’s been out there overnight . . .”

“Yeah.”

“Then we figure out if you can make the trek down. If you can’t, we could split up. Two of us head down and the other two wait for them to get the lifts going.”

There’s an obvious problem with that idea. He and Brent would have to go, leaving me here with Heather, and we’re still not sure about her and Dale’s involvement in this.

“Or I could go down on my own,” Curtis adds.

“No. No way.” In terrain like this, you ride with a buddy, because there are all kinds of dangers. Crevasses, avalanches, cliffs. The snow cover will be patchy, with jagged rocks poking through, and when that snowstorm hits, he won’t be able to see a thing. Plus we don’t know who might be out there. If he gets in trouble, nobody will know.

I pull the knee brace over my snowboard trousers. “I can make the trek.”

“Let me and Brent do the search at least.”

“No. I’m sticking with you.”