Read Online Last Resort of Murder (A Lacy Steele Mystery Book 9) by Vanessa Gray Bartal - Free Book Online Page B

dressed to the nines in
expensive skiwear and goggles. They looked cool and sporty. Lacy, with her
fluorescent yellow snowsuit, sunglasses, and purple toboggan—the only one
she had been able to find in her grandmother’s odd assortment of winter
paraphernalia—looked out of place. Not just out of place—she looked
mentally ill, as if the resort had decided to let a homeless person ski for the
day as some sort of community service.
    “Are you sure you don’t want me to
stay with you?” Jason said.
    “I’m sure,” Lacy said. Not only did
she not want to hold him back from a fun day of skiing, she didn’t want people
to think he was her keeper, the person assigned to keep her from harming
herself or others. “I’ll be fine. Believe me, I have extremely low
expectations. All I want to do is ski down the bunny hill a few times and call
it a day.” She glanced at the hill. It was shallow, barely registering as a
rise. What looked to be a five-year-old little boy was swooshing down it like a
pro.
    Jason still seemed reluctant.
Either he felt bad about teasing her or he was genuinely worried. She stood on
her toes and pressed a reassuring peck against his lips. “Really, go. You’re
free.”
    “You say that like freedom is a
good thing. I’ll meet up with you later. Don’t break anything important.”
    She didn’t ask him what he deemed
“important,” but she doubted it had anything to do with her arms or legs.
    Once he was out of sight, she
turned bracingly toward the bunny hill. Since they agreed to the weekend, Jason
had started showing her the basics of skiing. She knew how to plant her feet to
slow herself and how to make the skis parallel to go forward. At least in
theory she knew those things. In reality the skis were longer and less
maneuverable than she had imagined. She laid them on the ground and stepped
into them, trying to snap her boots in place as Jason had showed her.
    Almost immediately she lost her balance
and fell over. She wasn’t in the skis yet, so standing up was no problem. She
got to her feet and tried again. The second time she snapped into one ski
before falling over, which made getting up again trickier but not impossible.
She hobbled in a circle, the ski-trapped foot lying listlessly on its side
while the booted foot attempted to vault her to a standing position.
    After two more tries, she was
successfully snapped into the skis. She looked up, beaming, hoping for someone
to share in her triumph. But all around her everyone was already locked in
their skis, and it probably hadn’t taken them four tries.
    There was a line now at the
towrope. Lacy breathed a sigh of relief that the bunny hill didn’t require her
to ride the ski lift. Her courage would have failed her, probably at the exact
moment it was her turn to get off. Now all she had to do was grab a rope and be
hauled to the top. It was like an escalator for the snowbound.
    Her turn came at last. She grabbed
the rope with both hands and immediately face planted into the snow. She
couldn’t get up, and there were people behind her. Panicked, she rolled to the
side and slid back to the end of the line.
    After much struggle, she finally
got to her feet again. What had gone wrong? She analyzed her first attempt and
realized that the rope went faster than she realized it would. Her feet hadn’t
been prepared for the sudden movement. Caught unaware, the top half of her
jerked forward while the bottom half remained stationery. Next time she would
have her feet ready to go the moment her hands touched the rope.
    It was her turn again. Her hands
touched the rope, jerking her forward. She willed her feet to move. They did,
only not in the right direction. Each leg decided to go a separate way so that
she was almost doing the splits by the time she let go of the rope and fell
over. Once again she rolled to the side and slid back down the hill. At least
she was becoming a pro at rolling with skis on.
    She maneuvered herself back