In the Alps, a caravan burns, enclosing a seasonal worker in its flames. Emilie Karras, a young gendarme from Lyon, originally from Les Clairies, leads the investigation, forced to collaborate with Major Servoz, a disillusioned local gendarme.
Boris Arnoux, international ski champion and darling of the Clairies, returns to the village for the Christmas holidays after winning a Crystal Globe race. His wife organises a party at the Isba Hotel to celebrate his victory.
Corto is found alive and interrogated; following a neighbourhood investigation, the caravan's body is identified as an employee of the hotel of Boris Arnoux.
Tiphaine, who was thrown from the balcony of her building, is in critical condition; Emilie pursues the attacker, but the man slips through her fingers as he crosses the Swiss border.
Emilie is furious with Major Servoz's brigade because the requests for intervention in Switzerland to question Fauvel are not moving forward.
The mayor is found dead following a fall from the Clairies Bridge; Servoz, in shock, absolutely does not believe in the theory of a banal accident.
Unlike Servoz, Emilie does not believe in Boris's complete guilt and replays all the surveillance videos from the evening.
