Free Final Resort by Dana Mentink

one and this place reminds youof your mother’s suicide. You need help. Your father agrees.” He turned sober green eyes on her and let out a breath. “I’m sorry. That was not kind of me to say.”
    He was right. She wondered why it hurt so much to have all the darkness pulled out and put on display. “If my life is such a mess,” she said through clenched teeth, “then why would you want to stay here and be involved?”
    “Because...”His voice trailed off and then he cleared his throat. “For whatever reason, our paths crossed and you need help. We’ll stay until the treasure business is wrapped up. Then I’m gone.”
    Cold. Detached. All business.
    How could he know what she was feeling? This man from a perfect family who never struggled with how to pay the electric bills? Who moved through the world with the confidenceborn of living in a stable family with loving siblings and a strong parent?
    “Forget it.” Ava turned away, staring out the window at the furious storm clouds marching in like soldiers across the dome of sky, the interlocking branches above sending bits of ice raining down on them.
    She wiped at a fogged-over spot on the side window. The view cleared for a moment, she peered out at theworld cocooned in white until the jangle of the phone disturbed the quiet.

SEVEN
    H e drove Ava back to Towers’s location, fearing what the next few minutes would hold. Ava stood rigid, eyes fixed on one particular tree a few feet from the road. The scent of pine became almost pungent.
    “They didn’t say he was dead,” she kept repeating. “They just said they’d found something.”
    “Ava, I think this is going to turn out to be bad news,” he said askindly as he could manage.
    At first he thought she did not hear him, her gaze remained riveted on the pale landscape. He wished he could read her mind.
    Towers appeared, walking through the swiftly falling snow. The ruined snowmobile had been located, he told them, but it was not safe to extract it until the weather cleared. The rest remained unsaid. It was not safe to continue searchingfor bodies, either.
    Luca did not have any greater optimism that Uncle Paul had survived than he had before.
    They drove back to the trailer park in silence.
    “He’s alive,” Ava said as he eased the car into the parking place outside her trailer. “There were no bodies with the snowmobile.”
    Her sudden comment startled him. “I know it must seem that way.”
    “You still think he’sdead?”
    He remained quiet, trying to decide on a gentle way to give voice to his thoughts. “I’m not sure what to make of it.”
    “Me, neither, but until they prove me wrong, I’m going to believe he is alive.”
    Ava was already out and heading up the trailer steps before he unbuckled his seat belt. A car he hadn’t seen before, a small white SUV, was parked nearby. Even though it was possiblehe was intruding, Luca followed her in anyway, exercising his “barrel right in, ask for permission later” philosophy.
    A slender woman with long black hair woven into a thick braid sprang from a chair. Worry carved deep furrows into her brow and around her mouth. She enveloped Ava in a hug and pressed a kiss on her temple.
    “What? Tell me,” Sue Agnoti said, her hands clutching Ava’s. “Didthey find him?”
    Ava led her back to the chair and gently pushed her into it. “Sue, this is Luca Gage, he’s...helping me work with the police.”
    Her gaze settled on Luca for the first time it seemed. She was probably in her mid-fifties, Luca surmised. She offered him a brilliant smile that Luca wondered if she reserved for male acquaintances.
    “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I heard thatPaul was in an accident. The police are mum on the details except to say they haven’t found him yet.”
    Ava explained what they’d been told.
    Sue chewed her lip. After a moment, she sighed. “I knew something was going on.”
    Ava sat next to her and Luca settled himself on the couch that