Page 102 of The Lodge

“Can I help you?” he greets me.

“I’m looking for Julie Wu. Any idea where I can find her?”

A look of relief floods his face. “Can I just tell you how refreshing it is to talk to someone who’s not asking about when the hot water will return? One guy demanded I turn the snowstorm off.”He makes a face. “Sorry, though, I haven’t seen Julie since first thing this morning. I think she’s hiding from the guests.”

“Ah, thanks anyway. And just to be clear, youcan’tturn off the snowstorm?”

He laughs. “I’ll keep trying and let you know.”

I head back to the grand lobby. IthinkI remember how to find Julie’s place—I retrace my steps to the centermost elevator bank and take one all the way up to the top. As soon as I step out, I know I’m in the right spot—immediately confirmed by how I collide with Julie herself, her eyes glued to her phone.

“Aghh, I’m so sorry!” I say, and she looks up.

Her eyes brighten when she realizes it’s me. “Oh, hey, sorry about that—Riv told me about the tense moment you all had with Sebastian, and I was just texting him back. I tried calling Tyler, but he hasn’t picked up.”

That’s not a promising sign.

“He’s not answering his door, either. And, uh, he left me this note.”

I hand it over, watch as she reads, the concern on her face quickly shifting into a deep scowl.

“Yeah,” I say when she looks up, speechless. “I was coming to see if you know where he might have gone—he somehow got out of our building without anyone spotting him. I have no clue where to even start.”

Deep down, I think I was hoping he might be hiding outatJulie’s. Clearly, though, she’s just as much in the dark as I am.

She bites her lip, thinking. “It isn’t common knowledge,” she says, “but we’ve got an underground tunnel system connecting a few points of the resort for electricians and other maintenance workers to use—all the main buildings are on it, and so are the lifts. We used to get in trouble for playing down there as kids.”

“And there’s an access point from our building?”

Julie nods. “If you take the stairs all the way to the basement, there’s a way to get in from there.”

“I didn’t even know therewasa basement,” I reply.

“None of it is marked,” she says, grinning. “As for where hewent, though…”

“Think there’s any chance he’s just hiding out in the tunnel system?”

“Probably not? It’s not impossible—it’s just not the most comfortable place to hide out for a long time. I can check our security feeds, though, and I can also send some guards to do a sweep.”

Something pulls at my memory. “You said the ski lifts are also connected to the tunnel?”

This is where I go when I need to clear my head, I can hear Tyler saying the night he took me up to look at the stars. It’s too similar to what he wrote in his note to be a coincidence.

Julie’s eyes light up like she knows exactly what I’m getting at: that Tyler might have gone up to the mountaintop lookout.

“Can the gondolas even run in this weather?” I ask.

“They’re pretty tolerant of snow—it’s the wind that makes them dangerous.” She taps on her phone and pulls up her weather app. “We’re well under the wind threshold now that the worst of the storm has passed. They’d be fine.”

“Do they have power?”

“They’re connected to a dedicated generator that kicks in automatically,” Julie says. “If you want to go up and check, I can get someone to operate the lift for you.”

We exchange numbers so she can reach out—or soIcan—if I’m wrong. As we wait for the elevator, she dashes off a text to whoever will be helping me.

The elevator chimes, and we step inside. It’s a long, slow ride tothe bottom, both of us anxious and trying not to show it. When the elevator doors open again, we’re met with a riot of noise: every stir-crazy guest at this lodge has apparently made their way down to the lobby, and they’re all swarming the front door. There are so many smartphones obscuring my view that I can’t make out what—orwho—they’re filming.

My stomach drops.

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