Chapter 1

The air up here was thin, crisp, and tasted like pine needles and impending snow. I pulled my wool coat tighter around my shoulders, the heavy fabric doing little to ward off the chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. My breath plumed in front of me, a ghostly white vapor that vanished instantly into the twilight. This was it. The secluded mountain lodge I had read about in the discreet brochures, the place where the elite went to disappear, to be seen but not truly known. I had come expecting a crowd, or at least a few other guests lingering by the fire pits. Instead, the silence was absolute, broken only by the crunch of my boots on the packed powder and the distant, low thrum of a woodchopper somewhere in the distance. I pushed through the heavy oak doors of the main lodge, the hinges groaning softly in the quiet. The warmth hit me first, a physical wall of heat that instantly fogged my glasses. I blinked, wiping the condensation away, and looked around. The great room was vast, dominated by a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace that roared with a hungry, orange light. Logs crackled, sending sparks