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She picks up my ski pole and outstretches it. I can just grasp the pole’s end. Feeling my ploy starting to work, I want to prolong the conversation. Elwood is loosened up, cheerful and confident. Hammond looks… not entirely impatient.

Pole retrieved, I stay sitting in the snow, letting something daunted flash over my features.

Unsurprisingly, Hammond’s instincts for patronization and authoritativeness kick in. “You don’t look like you can make it down the mountain,” he observes. “Shall we call for help?”

I hesitate, inviting his impatience. Finally, I glance up, meeting Hammond’s unsmiling regard. “You can’t help me?” I challenge him.

He laughs the same laugh, his grudging chuckle. “Let the staff do what they’re good at. It’s what we’re paying for.”

“What your mother’s paying for, you mean,” I quip, unable to help myself.

Hammond’s eyes narrow. Even Elwood’s smile seems to strain with my first sign of impudence. “Your father never did teach you manners,” Hammond returns.

“I’m afraid not,” I say sweetly. “Mia, of course, is such a testament to yours. You must be so proud.”

“Olivia, dear niece,” Elwood interjects, inspired to inquisitiveness. “How is Dashiell?”

“We don’t speak,” I reply.

The response delights Elwood. She grins. “Maybe there’s hope for you yet,” she concedes. “Come to reacquaint yourself with the better part of your family? I understand completely,” she says, “but you should learn to respect the hierarchy here, or you won’t get very far.”

The hierarchy. Do they even hear themselves?

I restrain the comment. “Let me guess,” I say instead. “You’re at the top and I’m at the bottom.”

“Well, she’s smarter than her father,” Hammond mutters.

I don’t know how to explain the rogue indignation his judgment lights in me. The impulse to defend Dash Owens—who, despite his overwhelmingly numerous deficiencies, is not stupid, not next to his vapid siblings.

I hide the reaction under a look of naive emptiness. The part I need to play, I remind myself. “Do you think Leonie will really bury herself with the family fortune? Surely it’ll be both of yours by right,” I venture.

Hammond glares. Elwood stiffens, straightening up. It’s easy, honestly. Playing on what they just invoked to me. The hierarchy.

“It is ours,” Hammond declares. “It doesn’t matter what she has to say.”

I don’t know how he’s convinced himself of that, but okay. “The vault is yours ?” I inquire, incredulous. “So you have the combination, then?”

Silence greets me. They eye each other, their gazes quick. Furtive.

The moment I saw Hammond and Elwood conspiring over dinner yesterday, I knew Tom and Grace’s wasn’t the only sibling rivalry I could leverage for my own purposes.

Hammond wants to feel shrewd, intelligent, in control.

Elwood wants to feel cherished, included, important within the family. Collisions I can exploit.

Neither of them speaks—they don’t know if the other has the combination. Neither wants to show their advantage or their weakness.

“Surely she must have given one of you the combination,” I pry, playing on their rift. “I mean, you two are the closest to her, right? Her children?”

“Of course we are,” Elwood assures me with the first real edge I’ve heard in her voice. Her place in the family is her pressure point.

“Not close enough to learn the combination?” I press. I play my next move innocently. “I wonder if my dad knows it,” I speculate.

Checkmate. Elwood flushes. Hammond responds fast. “He doesn’t, I assure you,” he says. “She as good as told me the combination,” he adds.

Elwood is not to be outdone. Her jovial generosity has vanished, subsumed into the vicious, needy look she gives Hammond. What’s wrong, Elwood? Scared you’re not the favorite child? “She told you about her ring, then? I did wonder,” she challenges her sibling.

“Her ring?” I repeat. If I can just keep them going…

Eager to posture, Elwood elaborates. “Instead of her wedding anniversary, she had the combination to her vault engraved,” she announces, “inside her wedding ring.”

For reasons having nothing to do with ski slopes or mountainside winds, cold pierces me.

The combination to her vault.

I’ve planned this heist for months. I’ve coordinated my crew. I’ve ventured to Volenvell with a vault expert and a week of maneuvers.

And anyone could obtain entry to Leonie’s vault with a glance at her wedding ring?

No. I need to find that ring. It’ll disappoint Grace, whose expertise will go wasted. Nevertheless, I cannot let Hammond, Elwood, Hugo Berndt, or whoever else glimpses Leonie’s jewelry steal my score out from under me.

“Seems risky to keep something like that on the premises. She must have it somewhere very secure,” I ply my relatives innocently, needing to know more.

Neither of them responds. I would have expected at least Elwood’s frustration to produce leading comments or errant disclosures.

They don’t know where the ring is , I conclude. It’s equal parts relief and irritation. I’m glad Leonie has kept the combination out of the reach of her conniving children. However, information I can’t extract from them is information I don’t have.

“Of course she keeps it very secure,” Hammond replies, his sharpness a jab at Elwood.

“Yes, so secure she hasn’t told you,” his sister retorts.

Hammond sneers. “Has she told you, then?”

Elwood shifts her ski pole in the snow, jabbing the point several times into the frost. “Of course she has,” she promises loftily. “I’m her confidante in all things.”

When Hammond laughs, he manages to sound halfway pleased. “You know, sometimes I do miss Dash,” he replies. “At least he was a decent liar.”

While Elwood scowls, I decide I’ve wrought everything I can from this conversation. Ski poles in hand, I rise to my feet, swiping snow from my pants. “Thank you, both.” I interrupt their glaring contest. “I really have learned so much from you.”

Neither of them responds, preoccupied with their mutual enmity. I’m not certain either of them notices when I easily point my skis and shoot down the slope with none of the clumsiness I feigned earlier.

I hope not. It’s easier for me if neither of them recognizes their seventeen-year-old niece played them.

Wind-whipped and heart racing, I reach the foot of the slopes exhilarated.

While I didn’t figure out what’s up with Ernest Hensson, what I learned instead is much more valuable.

It’s information I need to convey to my crew covertly, then I need to reconfigure my plan for the new complication of the wedding ring.

I head for the chalet, ready for one more espresso to guide my intuition—then stop. Speaking of avalanches, my own mountain of worry hits me when I notice who waits on the chalet deck.

Jackson and Leonie have returned from the vault.