Page 22 of Hero's Prize

“Shit, Colton, you’ve got a fucking avalanche!” Tony’s panicked voice squeaked in his ears.

Yeah, already aware.“Roger.”

Tony was screaming other stuff at people, but Colton tried to block it out. He needed to focus on what he was doing.

Suddenly, there was blessed silence over the comms unit. Colton didn’t know why, and he didn’t care. Nobody could help him right now. He was on his own.

“Son, listen, it’s right behind you.” Dad. He’d switched to a private channel. “It’s going to take you under. You’ve trained for this. Swim. Air pocket. Stay alive. You have the beacon. We’ll come for you?—”

His dad’s voice was cut off as snow slammed into Colton, knocking him forward off the snowboard. Immediately, he used his arms in a swimming motion to try to remain toward the top of the tidal wave of snow.

The sheer force of Mother Nature’s power was humbling. He could do nothing to get out of it. All he could do was try to stay alive until it slowed.

The few seconds it took felt like an eternity, but finally, the deafening momentum eased just slightly. Using all his strength, Colton flipped himself over onto his back. He wanted to be faceup for what he knew was coming next.

The snow was going to bury him.

The thousands of pounds of snow slowed further, but that meant it would pile, trapping him. Sure enough, a moment later, a blanket of icy white poured over him, like freezing concrete.

White. The entire world was white.

The snow’s movement was almost stopping. This was it. He had to create an air pocket for himself as he came to a halt. It was going to make the difference between suffocating and maybe being able to stay alive long enough for rescuers to get to him.

The roar of the moving snow lowered as it halted. Coltoncouldn’t see anything but white all around him. He thrust up an arm and expanded his chest to create as much airspace as possible. As he came to a complete stop, he angled his head around to try to make even more space between him and the deadly frozen white.

And then he couldn’t move. Not even one inch of his body. There was absolutely nothing he could do.

Don’t panic. Stay calm.

That was part of the avalanche survival training—hyperventilating was just going to cause you to use up oxygen more quickly. But staying calm was much fucking easier said in a ski classroom than done when your body temperature was plummeting, you couldn’t move, and you knew the oxygen was extremely limited.

He could still see the light coming through the cracks in the snow, but only for a few seconds. It got darker as the snow filled in even the tiniest crevice.

And then there was only blackness—the whiteness gone. It was one hundred percent dark.

He had no idea if he was buried six inches or ten feet under the snow. Ultimately, it didn’t matter; either one would kill him if rescuers didn’t get to him in time.

Colton was completely entombed.

CHAPTER

NINE

Ella hefted the last of her boxes onto the luggage cart and eased it out her hotel room door. She had no idea why she was doing it herself. She could’ve paid someone to do all this—brought an assistant from Oak Creek or even given the bellboys here at the resort a large tip to load it for her.

It wasn’t like her family didn’t have the money. Ella and her sister Jess had grown up with money. Their dad, Cade Conner, had been a huge music superstar when they were young. Some of Ella’s earliest memories were of her family sitting on a giant hotel bed together, eating room service breakfast—she and Jess laughing their heads off at something their dad said, their mom’s quiet smile and gentle eyes taking it all in.

They’d spent a lot of Ella’s youth traveling around with Cade Conner’s tours. Luxury had been part of that. But her parents had also taught her to value money and never take it for granted. Taught her that the hard work she did herself would always mean more than what she paid others to do.

Loading up boxes after a catering event probably hadn’t been the hard work they’d meant, but Ella still didn’t mind doing it herself.

Plus, it gave her an excuse not to talk to anyone or sit and gawk over Colton’s stunt like everyone else would be doing. She’d already heard the commotion in the lobby as she’d supervised the pack-up of the kitchen items. Everyone had been there for hours, waiting for the start of the stunt.

Which should be about right now. Ella didn’t have to check her watch to know. Colton was probably in that helicopter heading up the mountain right at this second.

She wasn’t going to watch. She knew all her friends from Oak Creek were in the lobby too—probably with a prime viewing location on some large screen. But she didn’t want to talk to them. Didn’t want them all studying her a little too closely like they did whenever she was watching anything Colton.

And she definitely couldn’t take a chance on running into those two women she’d met outside Colton’s door last night. Couldn’t risk word spreading that she’d been in the suite with him at that hour of the night.

---