“No,” Grace answered calmly. “But we occasionally get a visit from Superman.”

Grey stopped his snowmobile several hundred yards down from the crash site and walked the rest of the way. He circled first, making sure no one was waiting to surprise him, then finally approached the plane.

He dug his flashlight out of his pocket and shone it over the ground. It was pitch-black now, with the moon hidden by cloud cover and fog, and without the light he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

What the light did show him were tracks, two distinct sets of creeper-covered boots that had churned up the ice and kicked it away from the gaping hole in the fuselage. Grey noticed where someone had dug a burrow under the plane, and he guessed that Grace’s missing disks had slipped under it four days ago.

He trailed his flashlight beam along the forest floor until he found where his stolen snowcat had stopped long enough for the engine heat to melt the ice. He sent the beam upward, letting the light follow the track the snowcat had made and decided that he was right. They were now headed toward West Shoulder Pass and would try to pick up the snowmobile trail on the other side.

Grey walked back to his own snowmobile, turned the machine northwest, straight toward the summit of TarStone Mountain. He could make better time despite the steeper terrain and be over West Shoulder Pass before Grace and her kidnappers. Ian and Callum and Morgan were approaching the pass from the south and should have arrived there by now. Grey knew he was betting Grace’s life on his gut instinct, but eight hundred years ago it was his gut that had most often kept him and his men alive. He’d been sure of very few things in these last four years, but tonight every drop of sweat pouring from his body screamed that he was right.

And his instinct would have been perfect if he had remembered the long, deep, high mountain pond carved into the southern slope of West Shoulder Pass.

Grace balked when Frank tried to pull her onto the frozen pond. It was still the dead of winter, but she knew these high ponds were usually spring-fed. The ice could be three feet thick in one place and two inches in another.

“Wait. It isn’t safe,” she said, finally getting him to stop. “There are springs.”

“It will hold us on foot,” Frank said.

He had taken the duct tape off her hands so walking wouldn’t be so awkward, but his grip on her wrist was unbreakable. And his sense of urgency was palpable. He looked down the ridge at their back trail through the weak dawn light, then turned and glared at her. “And I’m not going back empty-handed,” he finished, scanning the opposite shore.

“It won’t do you any good if we all drown,” she said, trying to reason with him. She used her free hand to tug on his sleeve and get his attention again. “The disks are all you really need. Your scientists can unscramble the transmission. Leave Jonathan and me here. You’ll travel quicker without us.”

Frank stared down at her, his eyes narrowed as he thought about her offer. He slowly smiled. “I’m getting an extra half million for you, sweet buns.” He shrugged. “Make me an offer I can’t refuse, and I’ll think about it.”

Frank started to pull her onto the ice then, but Jonathan, whom Tom was holding at gunpoint, finally spoke. “She has a five-week-old son, Frank. What if you take the disks to AeroSaqii and I pay you for Grace?”

Frank turned to face Jonathan. “How much?”

Jonathan straightened and stepped forward. “One million,” he said.

Frank laughed. “How about two?”

Jonathan paled but nodded. “Two,” he agreed. He reached out for Grace’s hand, but Frank pulled her away.

“No. You’re both going with us,” he said. “We get off this mountain and back to civilization, then we work out the details. You get the money, Stanhope, and then I’ll turn Grace over.”

That decided, Frank pulled her forward again, ignoring her now frantic struggles. “We’ll go with you,”

Grace said, “but at least go around. It’s not safe to walk across the pond.”

“There they are,” Frank said, not paying attention to her. “I can see the snowmobiles.”

Grace squinted through the increasing daylight and scanned the opposite shore. A good quarter-mile away she could just make out three snowmobiles with sleds attached to them, parked on the edge of the forest by the pond. But she didn’t see anyone standing beside them.

Grace sat down. Frank wouldn’t shoot her; she was worth too much money to him. He skidded to a halt and nearly fell backward because he wouldn’t let go of her wrist.

“Dammit. Get up.”

“No.”

He pulled a gun from his pocket and set the barrel in front of her nose.

She sneered at him. “Two million bucks, Frank.”

“Dammit to hell.” He shoved his gun in his pocket and grabbed her by both arms, lifting her up and tossing her over his shoulder.

They made it almost to the middle of the pond before the ice cracked. Frank suddenly stilled, slowly setting Grace on her feet and then moving several steps away. She immediately lay down on her back, hoping to distribute her weight over as large an area as she could.

“Shit,” Jonathan whispered on an indrawn breath, also stilling at the realization they’d overtaxed the ice.

Tom, still holding his gun trained on Jonathan, moved several steps away, his eyes wide with terror.

Wayne, who had run ahead only a few yards, also stopped and whirled to face them, then suddenly started inching his way backward to the opposite shore.

Grace turned and looked back in the direction they’d come from. Where was Grey? He was not being a very good Superman. She caught sight of a movement just off to the right about a hundred yards away.

Father Daar stepped out of the woods and onto a boulder by the edge of the pond.

Grace blinked. Twice. It was the priest, all right, but he wasn’t wearing his usual black wool cassock. He was dressed in a long, billowing green robe, and his crooked cherrywood cane was now taller than he was.

Where had he come from?

“You lie still, girl,” the priest said to her, his voice carrying over the surface of the pond with gentle strength. “Don’t you move so much as a muscle,” he added, lifting his cane and pointing it at the five of them.

There was another sudden pop, sending a wave of vibrations through the ice. The entire pond shook.

Grace snapped her head around and saw Wayne inching his way to shore. “Stand still,” she said, spreading her arms and legs wider.

“Holy shit,” Frank said, backing up another step.

“Hold still!” Jonathan hissed at him.

“Grace!”

Grace lifted her head at the sound of her name being bellowed with a force that vibrated the air around them. It had come from someplace past her feet. She squinted through the drizzle and saw Grey, a good two hundred yards further down the shore from Father Daar, step onto the ice.

“Go back!” she yelled at him. “You’re going to drown us!”

Grey wasn’t paying attention to her, though. He was pointing his sword at Daar.

His sword? Superman hadn’t brought a sensible weapon to fight off the villains; the man was charging to the rescue with an antique sword. Grace didn’t know whether to scream or cry.

“Back off, old man,” Grey shouted, walking over the ice toward Father Daar. “Don’t do it.”

The priest either couldn’t hear him or didn’t care. Daar chanted loudly, his eyes closed and his stick pointed at Grace and the four men with her.

The mantle of ice under her back suddenly shuddered, and Grace watched in horror as Grey fell into the freezing water. He disappeared for a few seconds before he shot back to the surface and stood in water only as deep as his waist. The ice beneath her rippled again in undulating shock waves, and Grace took a large gulp of air and held her breath, gritting her teeth to prepare for a dunking that didn’t come.