Page 18

I RETURN TO THE SKI SLOPES, HEAD SPINNING, HEART POUNDING. HOPING the steep slope under me and the feeling of winter wind whipping my face will help me outrun Leonie’s vicious judgment.

My grandmother’s opinion of me, I remind myself, is not why I’m here. It means nothing. I withstood worse from my father during the wedding heist, didn’t I? His impatience, his criticism. Leonie is just another sculpture from the same glacier.

The problem, Olivia, is you.

Well, this problem is going skiing. Then she’s getting more coffee.

I find Jackson perusing the skis. “You catch Grace?” I ask when I come up next to him.

His smile is instantaneous when he hears my voice. Then he focuses on my words. “Just ran into her on her way back to the castle,” he confirms.

I nod. “Done skiing for the day?”

“Winter break homework, she said,” Jackson replies.

Perfect. The coded conversation pleases me. Winter break homework. Jackson has conveyed the information Grace needs to plan her infiltration of the vault. Now she’s gone to do whatever math or diagramming her job entails.

Jackson hesitates over the rack of rented skis. He finally selects a silver pair. “Want to hit the slopes?” he asks. “I have the strangest urge to celebrate.”

I grin.

Strapped back into my skis, I wait with Jackson for the chairlift in line with my impatient family.

Ernest Hensson waits several groups ahead of us.

While he doesn’t look exactly comfortable, his frantic manner has subsided into watchfulness.

He continues to avoid my gaze, ignoring our quick and rather one-sided interaction on the mountain.

When the chairlift comes for Hensson, he seats himself next to one of the non-Owens guests enjoying the mountain.

Curious. I keep my eye on him. In the meantime, I want to share everything I’ve learned with Jackson. However, the place for those conversations is high above the mountain. The same secrecy I sought when I was young and grieving.

We inch forward on the packed snow with the line’s progress. “I didn’t know you knew how to ski,” I say.

“I’ve only gone a couple times,” he replies. “Not the most affordable family activity, but we got lessons as kids. You?”

I stare up the mountain. Remembering my uncle dropping off us kids on the mountaintop to figure it out for ourselves. “I didn’t exactly have lessons,” I say. “We skied here when I was a kid.”

Jackson nods. He knows me well enough to know there’s more I’m not saying. “It’ll be more fun with me,” he says. “Promise.”

His words scatter the unhappy memories. “Hardly a competition,” I note.

“Doesn’t mean I don’t intend to win it,” Jackson replies. He leans on his pole to steal a kiss, which I grant him freely. Despite the day’s weather, his lips meet mine warmly, and I wish they would linger. “See,” he murmurs when he withdraws. “I told you we’d have time for romance on this trip.”

We position ourselves for the chairlift, waiting for the lift’s mechanical momentum to take us up—off the ground, high overhead, far from the world of secret subterfuge, Owens schemes, and endless infighting.

The moment before we do, I hear the swooshing of speeding skis. Someone knifes up next to me right as the lift meets us.

“Room for one more?” Tom interrupts.