“No. I didn’t. I just can’t…” A wave of pain swept away Evan’s breath. He grimaced, bit his lip, waited for it to pass. “I can’t help you, okay? Can’t … help you.” The ground tilted around him, a roller-coaster loop through space and time, and he was talking to the kid and to Alison Siegler, to Jack on the floor of Parking Level 3 and to himself, trapped hopelessly in a valley fifteen meters from the summit.

“I can’t … help any of you … anymore.…”

It’s time to go.

Every breath brought pain. Evan said, “There’ll be … someone else.…”

“No.” The boy’s words faded in and out of static. “It has to be you.”

Evan felt himself seeping into the cold ground.

Some long-buried part inside him split open, a flood of emotion sweeping him down, down, plunging him into deep, freezing waters. A tear cut through the snowflakes, crusting his cheek, a single warm track across his skin and—

—a straw-thin spray squirts between Jack’s fingers—

—he was crying but felt something instead of sadness, something like liberation.

Time to go.

“… sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.…”

The phone died. Evan tilted it to see the screen, his hand trembling violently. No bars left.

“… sorry,” he told the ground. “I’m sorry.…”

Go. Leave me. Go.

“Okay, Jack,” he said. “Okay.”

He breathed wetly for a moment. Stared between the last tree trunks at that bare patch of earth just within reach ahead. The setting sun caught the rise of powder in all its creamy glory. Fifteen meters to the peak. He deserved at least that.

“I want to make it,” he told himself hoarsely. “I want to see the top.”

He shoved the phone into his jacket pocket—this piece of the kid he would not let go of—and placed his hand back over his shoulder. His grip was still loose, so he used his chin to pin his hand more tightly over the wound. Somehow he wiggled to his knees. Leaning into a pine, he found his feet.

His first step broke him through the tree line. The sudden openness made his breath catch. The pain ebbed, draining out of him. As he forged up the unmarred blanket of white, the world came into vivid focus. The saw-toothed edges of snowflakes. The violet spill of the sunset through puffy clouds. The air, so fresh it stung his throat, telling him that right now, in this moment, he was still alive.

A golden glow limned the mountaintop. His last steps would carry him there.

At once the horizon seemed to bubble up in one spot, the bulge taking shape as a human form—someone coming over the peak from the far side. The figure stood atop the crest, backlit. Evan squinted into the light, noted the silhouette of the rifle held across the man’s chest.

A .338 Lapua Mag.

The north sniper.