head. “It didn’t work. He was too damned determined to end the whole thing, no matter what I offered.” His teeth showed briefly. “An idealistic man, our Tucker.”
“You should have known,” I said blankly. “You couldn’t push Tucker. He always went the other way.”
“I tried something else,” Brandon admitted. “You.”
I stared at him.
“Jazzmine,” he explained. “You didn’t know Walkerton owned Jazzmine Cosmetics, did you?”
“Jazzmine? No—”
“I told Tucker if he went to my father or did anything else to shut us down, I’d have your contract cancelled. I’d see to it you never worked for Jazzmine—or any other cosmetics firm—ever again. Can’t you see it? The huge hunt for the new Jazzmine Girl. Kelly Clayton would have been finished for good.” He shrugged. “It wouldn’t have been that hard.” My head jostled on a rubbery neck as the chair ground over the cogwheels. “Oh God—”
“Tucker was furious,” he said reminiscently. “He even threatened to kill me, but I told him to save the dramatics; he did it better on the screen. I knew he couldn’t do it. He didn’t have it in him.”
I shivered convulsively.
“I didn’t want to.” He didn’t sound a bit sorry, just puzzled that he hadn’t found the key to unlock Tucker’s integrity. “Oliver pressured me to do something, so finally I arranged the accident. I made sure he would meet a car coming the other way on a rainy canyon road, and then I made sure he was angry enough to drink too much. It wasn’t that difficult. Do you remember how angry he was, and how he kept pouring the booze down?”
I remembered. It had been very unlike Tucker.
“Well,” Brandon said, “it worked.”
I stared dry-eyed into the darkness. “Tucker,” I said, “and Drew.” I paused. “Now me?”
“I don’t want to,” he said gently. “I really don’t. But if I have to—” He paused. “Just do as I tell you. Don’t be stubborn, like Tucker. Okay?”
Like Tucker. Who was dead. And Drew, who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Like me.
The chair ground its way upward, jiggling and rattling as it passed over the cogwheels at each tower. I sat against the padded back and stared into the darkness, trying to gauge the distance to the top of the mountain. It rose above us in the moonlight: a white-flanked, conical peak surrounded by lesser slopes, all clothed in black trees. The moon, round and full, rose above the peak like a cyclopean eye.
We would have to get off the moving chair. Lift ramps were designed for skis, not feet and, if I were lucky, Brandon might handle the unorthodox unloading awkwardly. I had a chance.
We ground endlessly on toward the midway point, passing signs advising beginners and intermediates to prepare to unload. A small wooden shack stood at our left overlooking the liftline. Rope netting extended outward from the ramp as a safety feature, designed to catch the clumsy skier who unloaded prematurely. Normally the ramp, snow-packed, provided an easy exit from the chairs. But now the raw wood gleamed in the moonlight, lying some five feet below my dangling legs.
A rumbling, jerky motion in the cable startled us both. The chair stopped abruptly, swinging just over the safety net. Brandon wrenched himself around and stared down the mountain, but there was nothing to see. We hung helplessly, suspended three feet from the edge of the ramp.
“We’ll have to jump for it,” Brandon said briefly, turning around again. “We’ll have to try and hit the ramp from here. ”
I gaped at him. “Are you crazy? I can’t make that jump from here!”
“Of course, if you managed to break your neck you’d be off my hands…”
“Point taken,” I said grudgingly. “I’ll jump.” And I’d run like hell when I landed.
Brandon shifted his weight repeatedly until the chair swung. The cable creaked. At the apex of the sixth swing he pushed me toward the edge of the chair. “Now.” The gun muzzle bit into my spine.
I jumped. But my leap was awkward and unbalanced, sending me flailing backward into the rope netting after a brief, painful landing on the ramp’s edge. Numbing pain shot through my body. Thoroughly tangled, I looked up in time to see Brandon’s dark shape thump down in front of me, safely on the ramp. He landed on the balls of his feet and one hand, absorbing the shock easily. And then he was up, turning, facing me almost instantly with the gun still in his hand.
I stopped moving. He reached down