Chapter Text
It was a perfect day for skiing. The sun was bright, the snow just right, and the weather destined to hold on for at least the next three or four days. Which was just fine with Wendy Avery, since that meant she got to ski all weekend…and then the train would still be running to take her sister home once their little ‘mini vacation’ was over. Wendy loved Jenny, she did, but being snowed in with her was no fun at all.
And if it was no fun for her, it was considerably less fun than that for poor Bob…
Wendy stopped herself. She did not want to think about Bob right now, she wanted to ski. Bob did not ski. Bob was back in Sunflower Valley, working. Probably drinking coffee like there was no tomorrow because she wasn’t there to stop him. Wendy made a face, absently brushing snow off her blue snowsuit. He knew too much caffeine was bad for him, but every time she left town…
“You know, you should have just dragged him up here with us,” Jenny chortled in her ear, startling her. The younger woman’s ski suit was white as the snow around them, with a hot pink racing stripe that matched the hot pink streak in her blonde hair. She looked like exactly what she was, an unrepentant ski bunny. “I’m sure these guys would just love to have ‘Bob the Builder’ up here for two days.”
Her sister rolled her eyes. “He’d need a vacation from my vacation, Jenny – they have an espresso machine, he’d never sleep at all!” Her frown became a scowl when the deep blue eyes so like her own began to sparkle with the kind of mischief that made Bob afraid of Jenny. “Don’t even go there, Jen, I mean it.”
Jenny winked. “I didn’t – you did. Would you just marry him already? You don’t have to wait for him to ask you…”
“He did.” It slipped out before Wendy could stop it, and she bit her lip, shaking her head at Jenny’s openmouthed look of pure astonishment. “Sort of, I mean. But we...got a little sidetracked.” Wendy had to look away from her sister’s suddenly narrowed eyes. The spy who’d snuck onto the island four months ago wasn’t something she was allowed to talk about with anyone, and especially not with someone from outside the Project. Jenny knew something had happened, knew something was wrong…but Wendy couldn’t tell her what it was. She shook her head again. “Are we going for another run?”
Jenny’s frown became a scowl, she started to say something else…and then she pulled the words back and let it go. Again. “Yeah, let’s do that,” she said, twisting the strap on her ski pole, not looking at her older sister. This chunk of uncomfortable silence between them was the Project’s fault, she knew, not Wendy’s. “Come on, while we’ve still got the light.”
The gratitude in her sister’s smile made Jenny grudgingly glad she’d let it go. They made the run again, and then took the lift back up to the top. Jenny was just chatting with the lift attendant and Wendy was checking the clamps on her boots when an out of place sound began to chatter through the air. It sounded like… “Oh boy,” the attendant said, grimacing. “Something big must be going on, we just about never see the ‘copters. That’s headquarters,” he informed the wide-eyed Jenny. “Last time they did a flyby on us was a few months ago. I wonder what they’re heading for this time?”
Headquarters, almost never, and a few months ago; Jenny connected those pieces of the Project puzzle with her sister’s unhappy silences over the last four months and then filed them away for later consideration. The helicopter, a white one with a stylized golden-yellow sunflower emblem on the side, drew closer and then dipped below the crest of the mountain, angling for its rocky treed foot. Just moments later, however, it rose again and headed straight for them.
Wendy stared at it, frozen where she stood; the last time she’d seen that helicopter, it had come to pick up the man who’d kidnapped her. Her heart almost stopped when the helicopter settled onto the snow on the opposite side of the lift. The rotors didn’t stop, but a door on the side opened and a man in a white flight suit got out, ducked, and ran over to her. Wendy kicked off her skis and ran to meet him halfway. “What…”
“You need to come with me,” he interrupted her, taking hold of her arm. “Right now! I’ll explain once we’re in the air.”
“My sister…”
“Your sister should stay here,” the man told her. “She’ll be safe here, you have my word.”
Wendy wasn’t inclined to argue with him. The fact that someone from Project headquarters was there in a helicopter to pick her up off the ski slopes in the middle of her weekend vacation told her that something awful had happened, and his saying that Jenny would be safe there implied that someone else or somewhere else wasn’t. She turned and waved to Jenny, who was standing near the abandoned skis, staring. “I have to go!” Wendy called out. “Stay here!” Then the man tugged her arm again, and she ran with him back to the helicopter and climbed inside.
Jenny stood on the slope and watched the helicopter take off, then picked up her sister’s skis and went back to the lift attendant. He was listening intently to his radio, which had gone off just before the helicopter had reappeared, and as she approached him he told whoever was on the other end, “Will do, we’re on our way down,” before tucking the radio back into his belt. “The island is in lockdown,” he told her, taking the extra set of skis out of her hands and moving her in the direction of the lift with a wave of his hand. “We’ll take the lift down to the lodge. I’ll answer all your questions once we’re on our way.”
“All?” She arched an eyebrow at him. “About what happened a few months ago too?”
“Yes.” He didn’t even hesitate, which surprised her; his expression, however, was grim. “You just got full clearance, I’ll tell you anything you want to know – or at least, I’ll tell you everything I know. But we need to get out of the open and back to the lodge right now.”
Jenny’s already bad feeling got ten times worse. She followed him to the lift and got on, taking Wendy’s skis when he handed them to her so he could get on himself, and then they were off – at double speed, she couldn’t help but notice. “So what’s going on?”
He made a face. “No one knows for sure, yet. But it looks like someone tried to kill Bob McKinney again.”