New Year’s Eve arrived, clear, cold, and magnificent.
Riley could taste and feel the excitement filling the air, and Angels Resort was still resplendent with the colored lights and decorations from Christmas a week earlier. Riley had finished her assignment in the First Aid office, and before she took the lift up to her assigned piste to patrol, her heart lurched at the beauty of the orange flares from torches carried by skiers skimming down every trail on the mountainside. They were the only lights moving in the dark velvet night while stars winked like tiny diamonds overhead.
This was her second run with a torch, and the last load of the night. Guards were closing the lift now. Content to keep her place in line and not move to its head as she had permission to do, she was aware that Je
