Melting the Ice Page 7

  She stood up from the desk and walked over to the French doors. She pulled them open with both hands, and the scents of the mountain immediately blew into the room in a rush of fragrant air. It smelled of straw and honey and earth.

  Hannah stepped out onto the small balcony. Six floors down lay the sparkling pool. There was nothing between the back of the hotel property and the ski slopes. In winter, skiers and boarders carved their way right down to the hotel doors, or they crunched along the pathway to the village as steam rose from the heated pool.

  Hannah drank in the late-afternoon air. She could see why the hotel was a favorite of honeymooning couples and why the White River marriage commissioner did such a brisk trade. People came from all over the world to tie the knot in these mountains, hoping their love would be as enduring as the snow-capped granite peaks that inspired them.

  But she had run to White River as an escape. She had run from love. Well, at least for her it had been love.

  Hannah watched as a couple, the man with a baby in a carrier on his back, picked their way slowly down the hiking trail toward the hotel. She had always known she would have children. She had dreamed that she could make it all possible, kids, her successful career, a proper family…a storybook family.

  Well, that was for storybooks. She did have a child. It was not the way she had planned things, but she had a wonderful, beautiful son and she was going to make the best of what she did have. She had been doing fine, until now.

  Danny, she needed to phone Danny. She needed to make contact with him, to hear his little voice, to ground herself.

  Hannah stepped back into the hotel room and eyed the phone. No, not here. She didn’t want Rex to be able to hear.

  He was still in the shower; she could hear the splash of the water.

  Now was her chance.

  She gathered up her purse and sweater and walked quickly across the soft carpet to the door. She put her hand on the knob, pausing to listen for the shower.

  It stopped. She’d better hurry. She pulled open the door and made a dash for the elevator.

  Rex stepped out of the shower in a fog of steam, feeling vaguely human again. He wrapped a towel around his waist and rubbed a circle clear in the misted mirror. He slathered shaving cream over his jaw, pulled a trail through the creamy froth with his razor, rinsed the blade and took it to his face again.

  As the steam once again started blurring the edges of the clearing he’d rubbed on the glass, Rex’s mind drifted back in time, back to that day he’d first seen her in Marumba, that small pocket of troubled country nestled between Sierra Leone and Liberia, near the Ivory Coast.

  She’d been in that bar, celebrating with a raucous crowd of foreign journalists and photographers. She’d just broken a story about illegal diamonds being smuggled from Sierra Leone through Marumba.

  He’d been downing beer, internally seething over the botched lab raid and his wasted time.

  Rex had been just hours away from doing a deal with the Plague Doctor himself. It had taken him months of undercover work to infiltrate the Marumba research lab that posed as pharmaceutical plant. He’d won the confidence of the Plague Doctor who’d then given Rex a tour of his facility. Once in the lab, Rex saw the extent of his evil. Most of his experiments with biological agents like the plague, hemorrhagic fevers, anthrax, e-coli or HIV had been carried out on dogs and baboons.

  He knew for certain then that the Plague Doctor had been responsible for an Ebola outbreak in Kenya that had killed hundreds. He could also be linked to an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease in animals in Britain.

  The doctor personified evil, and he sold his secrets to the highest bidder, to the country or army with the deepest pockets. He was a scientific mercenary in the biological weapons war and he had no conscience.

  Rex had almost had the proof he needed, almost had access to the Plague Doctor’s new genetic research on ethnic bullets. A few more hours and the Bellona Channel would have had evidence in hand, knowledge it could use in the fight against the proliferation of biological weapons worldwide. Knowledge Bio Can Pharmaceutical could in turn use to create antidotes.

  The CIA had also been watching the lab, aware of the Bellona Channel’s work. It wasn’t unusual for the two organizations to cooperate. But then Mitchell had blown the whistle too early and the troops had moved in.

  The result was a fire, a raging white-hot blaze, an ecological nightmare. Everything in the lab was burned. But there were no biological agents found in the fire-safe refrigeration unit in what was the Biosafety Level 4 sector and most of the staff had escaped—including the Plague Doctor.

  Rex dragged the razor over his skin, cursing the CIA agent under his breath. He swore again as he nicked his skin with his blade.

  It was as if Mitchell had deliberately tried to thwart the Bellona Channel and facilitate the escape of Dr. Ivan Rostov.

  It was in that bar, after the disastrous raid, that he’d first seen Hannah. She’d been leaving for Ralundi the next day. Rex also packed his bags that night. But he didn’t ship out to Canada as planned. When the pink copper sky over the Marumba mountain range promised dawn, he’d left for Ralundi, a small town on the Marumba coast, telling himself he needed a break.

  That decision six years ago to leave for Ralundi had cost him his heart.

  Rex splashed cold water over his face and ran his hand over his jaw, testing the result of his shave. He wondered if Hannah had had any luck with the Vancouver library.

  He opened the bathroom door and was greeted by cool early-evening air billowing the gauzy curtains out from the French door. He didn’t see her. He didn’t need to, he could sense she wasn’t in the room.

  He stalked over to the open French doors and pushed aside the pregnant drapes. “Hannah?”

  There was no one on the balcony.

  He whirled round and stormed back into the room. “Hannah!”

  She had gone.

  He swore as he opened the door into the hallway. Nothing but silence along the empty corridor.

  He muttered an expletive and yelled down the row of room doors. “Hannah!”

  Where in hell was she? Didn’t she get it? She wasn’t safe. This was no time to play games.

  Rex started down the hallway toward the elevator before remembering the towel around his waist. He cursed again and turned back to find some clothes.

  She didn’t have her car with her; she’d be on foot. Knowing her stubborn streak, Rex figured she’d probably decided to walk all the way home. That meant she would have to go back through the park.

  He didn’t like this one bit.

  He pulled on a white T-shirt and black jeans. Then, as an afterthought, he lifted the mattress, pulled out his .38 and shoved it into the back of his pants.

  Chapter 6

  A mounting sense of anxiety squeezed in around her heart as she ran down the wide stone stairs of the five-star White River Presidential Hotel.

  She almost tripped, catching her balance at the bottom. She stopped momentarily to take stock. She felt as if she was suffocating. She needed to break free from Rex. His presence here in White River was sucking her down into a vortex of emotions she couldn’t bear to confront. She had to get home. She had to speak to her little boy, hear his voice.

  She didn’t have her car. She could catch a bus home. No, the walk would burn off some of her frustration. It was getting cool but there would be enough light for a while yet.

  Hannah shrugged into her sweater, clutched her purse under her arm and strode purposefully down the brick-paved walkway.

  The eclectic White River boutiques still had their wares displayed out on the stroll. Summer tourists picked among the displays for treasures to take to their loved ones back home. Others were enjoying sundowners on the patios. Music spilled out into the mountain twilight from restaurants, coffee shops and little bistros. She could smell garlic, wood smoke and barbecue.

  But she felt oddly detached as she hurried through the crowds, untouched by t
he holiday atmosphere. Biological weapons. Murder. It was all too bizarre, too impossible to contemplate against this serene backdrop.

  She turned down the path that led to the suspension bridge over White River. She wanted to speak to Danny, go to sleep and wake up realizing this was all just a bad, bad dream.

  The walkway cobbles gave way to gravel as the path narrowed and started its descent down through the heavy conifers toward the river. The scent of pine resin was thick in the evening air.

  It was darker and cooler as she got closer to the river. She could hear it, rushing swollen from melting glacial ice, ice that hadn’t melted in years, the ice of Amy’s tomb. It was this unusual melt, she thought, that had brought her body to light and Rex into her life. It had set a series of dominoes tumbling.

  Hannah stepped onto the wooden slats of the narrow swinging bridge, conscious of the white froth churning below her feet. She could see the water through the gaps in the wood. She gripped the cold, damp metal of the steel cable that served both as a railing and support for the structure.

  The bridge crossed this point in the river because it was most narrow here. The very narrowness of this rocky little gorge, however, drove the body of glacial water in a broiling surge through to the calmer pools and eddies below.

  She was halfway across the water, heading for the Moonstone side of the river, when she felt the bridge beneath her jerk. She steadied herself as it began to rock and bounce. Someone else had joined her in crossing. Probably some kids jouncing the bridge. Danny liked to do that.

  Gripping the railing, Hannah turned to look over her shoulder. A man, advancing, was making exaggerated movements that caused the bridge to buck and sway under her feet.

  The set of his shoulders, the way he filled the space between the railings, reminded her of a football player in line for the tackle. The hood of his voluminous gray sweatshirt was pulled low over his brow.

  Everything about his posture was threatening.

  Hannah froze and clung to the railing as her brain computed facts. His pants were baggy, wide, cut snowboarder-style. His clothes gave him no form, just bulk.

  She was stuck in that space before perceived danger is recognized as real and adrenaline kicks the body into action, that space where time warps into slow motion.

  As he moved closer she saw the red-and-white bandanna wrapped over his mouth and nose. He wore reflective sunglasses. He was faceless. His hands were covered with pale latex gloves. Fear fell like a cold stone in her stomach.

  Hannah dropped her purse and took a step back, her heart stampeding in her chest. He’d cut off access to the village. Her only escape now was to run into the dark woods on the Moonstone bank.

  She turned, ran, staggering like a drunkard as the bridge lurched under her.

  He was toying with her. He wasn’t rushing. He wanted to see her paralyzed with fear.

  Perhaps that’s all he wanted, to get a kick out of frightening the life out of some woman. She would outrun him. She reached the end of the bridge where the slats dipped in a little gangplank down onto the dank trail.

  She uncoiled into a sprint the minute her feet hit solid ground but was jolted up short as her sweater snagged on the dry fingers of a dying Douglas fir.

  She wriggled free just as he hit her with his full weight, the force smacking her into the ground.

  The air in her lungs exploded from her rib cage as he sandwiched her to hard earth. She was stunned, winded, and sharp pain sparked and crackled along her ribs.

  Hannah groped in the dirt, grasped a cold rock. She could do no more than hold on to it, she was pinned flat into the soil and pine needles by his weight.

  What did he want? Is this what happened to Amy?

  Pinprick sparks of light started crowding into the periphery of her vision. She blinked them back with tears of pain.

  Focus, Hannah, focus. She fought the blackness circling her mind. She could taste soil in her mouth, grit against teeth.

  Focus.

  She allowed her body to go limp, waiting to see what he wanted from her.

  He grabbed a handful of hair, yanked her head sharply round. She used that moment, twisting violently under him, to swing the rock up to his skull.

  She felt stone meet skin as it cracked into his cheekbone, shattering the mirrored lens of his glasses.

  He grunted, swung back grabbing his cheek, momentarily off balance. She seized the instant, pushed up on her arms, pulled out from under him.

  Hannah scrambled up, started to flee, but he reached forward and caught her ankle. She tried to writhe out of his grasp as she fell, but the sideways movement crashed her down onto the rocks that hung over the river.

  She felt, more than saw, the angry water waiting below.

  Something dribbled into her eye. Warm. Blood. She could taste the metallic tang of her own blood in her mouth.

  All that held her back from the frigid froth below was her assailant’s painful hold on her ankle.

  She twisted her head, looked up at the faceless form that held her life in his hand. Blood oozed thick and black from the gash in his face, soaking into the bandanna over his mouth. She could see the yellow of her own dress refracted into a million shards in the broken mirror of his lens.

  He looked down at the water below, then at her.

  “Please.” She didn’t recognize the hoarse croak as having been uttered by her own swollen lips. “Please. Don’t. I have a son. Please.”

  He lifted the hand holding her leg and he let it go.

  Gravity did the rest.

  Hannah flailed out, grabbing blindly at rocks and roots as she tumbled down into the roiling maw below the bridge.

  Pain exploded through her skull as her head glanced off a rock and the glacial cold swallowed her body.

  Everything went instantly black.

  It didn’t go right. This would cost them. Perhaps he could still make it look like an accident. He got up, hurried to retrieve her sweater from the snag, dusted it off and laid it neatly on the rocks over the gorge. His bandanna was sticky with blood from the gash on his face. He cussed as he made his way back along the bridge and gathered up her purse.

  He glanced up, made sure he was still alone and opened it. She had a wallet with ID. Good, they’d know it was hers. They would think she had slipped and fallen.

  Then he saw the framed photograph. Her son. Dark hair, unusual pale blue eyes. He stuffed the small frame into the back pocket of his baggy pants before retracing his steps over the bridge and dropping her purse onto the rocks alongside her sweater.

  He would have to make his way downriver now, to see if he could find her body. He had to be sure she was good and dead.

  But before he could move, a blow across the back of his shoulders shot the wind out of him. He instinctively ducked and rolled, forward and low, flowing with the force before spinning around grabbing his assailant’s ankles and bringing him down to join him in the dirt.

  He’d been hit by a piece of log. He grabbed for the log and swung it up into his assailant’s face before scrambling to his feet and hightailing it into the forest.

  “Did you see a woman, tall, in a yellow dress, honey-blond hair?”

  Rex could see the young doorman wasn’t sure how to answer. “My wife.” Rex laughed as he fished a twenty out of his wallet and tucked it into the doorman’s vest. “Women. You know how it is. She wanted Chinese, I wanted Italian. So she storms out in a huff.”

  The lad relaxed. “Yeah, typical.” He nodded in conspiratorial agreement. “Women.”

  “Did you see which way she went, buddy?”

  “Yeah.” He grinned. “Hard not to notice her. She went that way.” He pointed down the stroll that led past the shops to the park and the river.

  “Didn’t happen to see if anyone was following her, did you?”

  A wariness flickered back through the doorman’s puppy brown eyes. “Pardon me, sir?”

  “Never mind. Thanks, mate.”

  Rex bounded down t
he stairs. As he suspected, Hannah must be making for home, on foot.

  The sky was still pale violet with streaks of pink cloud, but in the trees near the river, it was almost dark.

  Rex trotted over the suspension bridge, keeping his center of balance low, absorbing the bounce and sway of the slats in his knees.

  He caught sight of the small pale bundle on the rocks on the opposite bank when he was halfway across the river. His pulse doubled its pace. Panic was something he didn’t allow. He couldn’t use it to his advantage. He pushed it down.

  He dropped off the gangplank onto the trail and climbed down onto the rocks before he saw the sorry bundle for what it was. Hannah’s sweater, her purse.

  His breath caught in his throat. He dropped down onto his haunches and gently touched her possessions. He saw marks in the dirt above the rocks. It looked as if she could have slipped and fallen.

  He could see nothing in the churning foam below.

  Rex picked up her sweater and saw dirt, bits of twig and traces of blood. He lifted the soft fabric to his cheek. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, inhaling her scent. When he opened them, he was in control. Years of British Special Air Services training had slammed into gear.

  He’d have to hurry, make best use of the fading light. His eyes followed the marks and scuffs where pine needles had been scraped back to reveal fresh tracks in the damp earth. Rex recognized signs of a struggle. There was blood on a piece of log on the trail. He dropped to the ground and picked up a sticky clump of needles and sniffed. More blood. It looked as if one set of tracks led up the trail into the trees.

  He looked up, squinting into dark woods. He channeled the anger that had begun to boil acrid in his gut down to where he could use it as a controlled, combustible fuel that could drive him endlessly, calm and rational, like an oiled and lethal hunter.

  He knew bush fighting, and he was no stranger to taking life. Rex set off, crouched low, into the trees along the top of the riverbank. If Hannah had fallen, or been pushed, into the water, she would have washed downstream. He ducked under a low, heavy hemlock bough. That was if she was lucky. If not, she could be trapped underwater against the rocks, under pressure from currents.