One by One - Ruth Ware Page 0,42

while no one asks the questions that are running in their heads. What has happened to her? Was she caught up in that avalanche? Is she dead?

“Wouldn’t she have, like, phoned, if she were okay?” Ani says at last, breaking the silence. Her usual diffidence is even more pronounced. “I know there’s not much signal, but just… like… a text, even?”

“She might not have been able to get through,” Miranda says, but I can tell she is trying to persuade herself, more than being convinced by her own argument.

Elliot is standing in the corner of the room, looking out at the darkening snow, and then he says something to Topher in his deep, abrupt voice and leaves. Topher gets up from the sofa and follows him without a word.

I frown, watching them go, watching their shadows leap and flicker in the light from the guttering candles. Where are they going? There is something in Topher’s expression I don’t like. A sense of sudden purpose. And it gives me a jolt of unease.

ERIN

Snoop ID: LITTLEMY

Listening to: Offline

Snoopers: 5

Snoopscribers: 10

“This is bad, Erin.” Danny is rummaging through tins at the back of the darkened kitchen. As I watch him, he straightens up, running his hands over his close-cropped hair. “This is very, very bad.”

“It’ll be okay,” I say, but the truth is, I’m lying, and I know it. My ankle has puffed up to twice its usual size and still won’t bear my weight properly. We have no lighting, and the only heat is from the woodstoves. Danny can’t even microwave a frozen curry for dinner. And Eva—but I can’t think about that now. I push the image of her white, cold face away from me, locking it behind the door in my mind where I keep images like that, frozen in ice. I have to hold on to the possibility that she’s okay, that she made it down into the village and just hasn’t been able to get through on the phone. God knows, the reception is bad enough.

“Your foot could be broken for all we know,” Danny says, but I shake my head, with a confidence I don’t feel.

“I don’t think it’s broken. I think it’s just badly sprained.”

“How the fuck would you know?” Danny asks, and then holds up a hand. “Never mind, I forgot you’re a bloody doctor. Tell me again what you’re doing cleaning up after posh wankers for minimum wage?”

I could give about eight different answers to this. I could remind him that I’m not a doctor, I’m a medical school dropout. I could tell him the truth about what brought me to St. Antoine. I could give him a lecture on greenstick fractures. But I don’t need to say any of this because he’s gone back to looking through the tins.

“I could heat up soup or something on the woodburner,” he’s saying, his brow furrowed as he tries to read a label with the aid of his mobile phone. “Jesus, what a carve-up.”

The knock makes us both jump, and we stare at each other, and then Danny goes to the door. It’s Topher again, but he’s wearing a very different expression to the ingratiating one he used to ask us to magically fix the lights. He looks… I’m not sure. I don’t know him well enough to tell. He could be pissed off, or gravely worried.

“Yes?” Danny says abruptly, but I heave myself to my feet and hobble past him. There is a reason Danny doesn’t deal much with front of house. He’s got no tact and no patience. But the fact is that however bad the situation is, Topher and Snoop are still our guests, and we still need to behave like we’re representing the company.

“Topher,” I say, and then I see Elliot hovering behind him. “Elliot, how can I help?”

“Elliot thinks he’s found Eva,” Topher says without preamble.

“What?” It’s the last thing I’d expected. Questions jumble through my mind. Where? How? “Is she okay?”

“We don’t know.” Topher pushes past me and Danny and unfolds a laptop, putting it down on the stainless-steel kitchen work top. It lights up the circle of faces with an unearthly glow as he taps in a password. A screen of garbled code comes up. It means nothing to me.

“To be precise,” it’s Elliot’s deep monotone, “we know the location of her phone.”

“Her phone?”

“One of the reasons I didn’t want to agree to the buyout,” Topher begins, “is because Elliot’s been working on a major update to help monetize