IN THE SHADOW OF STRANGERS: A wealthy man is about to change her destiny …but it’s a secret.

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IN THE SHADOW OF STRANGERS: A wealthy man is about to change her destiny …but it’s a secret. Page 5

by Wendy Reakes


  Gordon nodded towards the envelope again, “Go on!”

  Jack relented as he always did when it came to Gordon Bentley. He picked up the envelope and turned it over. It wasn’t sealed so he flipped the flap and pulled out a plane ticket. Second class! “What’s this?”

  “A plane ticket!”

  “I can see that. What’s it for?”

  “A holiday! For you!”

  Jack and Gordon had been friends for nearly four years. Albeit the term ‘friend’ hadn’t officially kicked-in until Jack divorced Teresa. Now the two men spent at least three days a week in each other’s company since their jobs made both their lives overlap, allowing them time for a friendship they wouldn’t have had if things had turned out differently…If he hadn’t have met Teresa!

  Jack studied the face of his friend across the table. He put the ticket back into the envelope and slid it back to him. “I don’t need a holiday. And if I did, it wouldn’t be there.” He tapped the upturned blank envelope and grinned as he folded his arms across his chest, waiting for the persuasive reasoning Gordon was about to divulge. He knew him too well.

  Gordon shrugged. “Okay! It’s about the Killa girl.”

  “Who?”

  “The Killa girl!” He was waiting for Jack to respond. “Katherine Killa! You know, the girl I told you about.”

  “Oh, yes, I remember. You were totally pissed at the time. I thought you were going off your head. You were muttering something about an unpaid debt.” Jack shook his head. Gordon could be so intense at times and it never failed to amaze him how the man expected others to feel exactly the same way.

  It looked like Jack has touched a nerve. Gordon looked peeved; the expression he always used when he didn’t get his own way. “It’s no laughing matter, Jack. I’ve got a score to settle and I won’t rest until it’s done.”

  Jack drained his coffee cup. “Get over yourself, mate!” He caught the eye of the barmaid passing by their table. “Can I get a refill?”

  She came closer to them with her eyes fixed on Jack’s. She stood next to him with her leg touching his thigh as she leaned down to pick up his empty cup. “I’ll get you some more, Jack.”

  As she walked back towards the bar, she glanced back to see if Jack was still watching her. He was!

  Gordon watched the girl go behind the bar. “Christ! What do they see in you?”

  “It’s my charm, mate. But then you wouldn’t know about that would you?”

  Gordon shook his head and sat back in his chair. “So, about Katherine!”

  “Who?”

  “The Killa girl, Jack.”

  “Oh yeah! What about her?”

  The waitress returned with his replenished cup. She placed it gently on the table with her eyes still fixed on his. Jack thought she was pretty. She was petite with blond shoulder length hair and long tanned legs and her lips were pursed pink and slightly parted. Recently he’d been out with someone who looked like her. It had turned out badly. She’d been possessive and madly jealous of every female he spoke to. He finished it one night when she took a pair of scissors to the lining of his favourite jacket.

  Jack was a free bird! He liked to make his own decisions, go his own way, do what he wanted to do, and after his failed relationship with Teresa, he’d often vowed not to get tied down again anytime soon. “So, why are you still so het-up about this girl? You haven’t even met her have you?” Jack wasn’t that interested in Gordon’s obsessive behaviour. He never had been! As far as Jack was concerned, he just had to tolerate it.

  “Well no, but you know very well that I feel committed to looking after her.”

  “Committed! That’s what we should do with you.”

  “You have to see things through to the end, Jack. You can’t give up just because time has passed or situations have changed. Besides, you don’t know the whole story.”

  He shrugged. “Shit happens, mate. You can’t save everyone you know?” Jack threw four lumps of sugar into his cup.

  “I know! But when I think about Teresa and all the privileges she’s had and how she’s wasting her life….”

  Jack nodded his head. That he does agree with!

  “...and I think about Katherine and how she’s getting on with hers, trying to make a life for herself.” Gordon glanced sideways as two women walked past their table. He lowered his voice. “So I think, why should I put all my energy Teresa’s way and not Katherine’s? Why not be a father to her and help her out a little? Especially after what she did for our family and particularly when she doesn’t have a father of her own.”

  Gordon was playing the soft soap card and Jack knew it. He did it to him every time. He always managed to manipulate Jack into getting involved in schemes that had nothing to do with him. And now he was sure he was going to get dragged into this one too, in the same way Gordon convinced him to marry Teresa.

  Teresa! What a year that was! It had been a whirlwind…more like a shotgun wedding, and then a year of madness and intense high-flying emotions, which had driven them both crazy. They were totally unsuited. Jack knew it from the word go, but Teresa had other ideas. She had been determined to have him in the beginning. Then, after Gordon had offered him the deal, he’d accepted, knowing it was the best thing that could have happened for his business; too good an opportunity to miss. He couldn’t have known then that even if he had refused to marry his daughter, Gordon would still have recommended him to Keith. Gordon had admitted it just after the wedding ceremony, tapping his new son-in-law on the back of his tailored groom’s suit.

  A year later when Jack had gone home early one day, he’d caught Teresa with her hand down some bloke’s trousers. That was the final nail in the coffin as far as he’d been concerned, so he called time, there and then. She would have bled him dry financially if Gordon hadn’t stepped in. Her father paid the settlement on Jack’s behalf. He even put his own lawyers on it. And because of that, none of them had seen or heard from her since. Not even Alice; her own mother!

  Gordon looked frustrated. Time was moving on and Jack could tell he was determined to put the matter to bed. Jack knew him like the back of his hand.

  “Look, forget I said anything, Jack. I’ll find another way.” He picked up his coffee cup. It was empty. “Can you at least get your girlfriend back over here for a refill?”

  Jack softened. “Okay, so I suppose a little trip won’t do me any harm.”

  Gordon perked up. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

  “Why Geneva?”

  “You need to get to a little place called Mürren. Take a train from Geneva to Interlaken, and it’s not far from there.”

  “And what do you want me to do when I get there?”

  “Just check things out for me. Katherine’s got a job in a little hotel there. She’s a cook.” Gordon grimaces. “Anyway, I just want to know she’s all right. It’s that simple!” He looked at Jack’s frowning face. “What?”

  “That’s it?” Jack snorted. “Why don’t you just hire a private eye?”

  “I want someone I can trust. All you have to do is find out if she’s okay. You can brush up on your skiing while you’re there. Take a little break.”

  “Don’t you think you’re taking this whole thing too far? It could get out of hand if you’re not careful. People can get hurt from other people’s games.” Jack was serious now. He was more than concerned about how intense Gordon was over the girl. “You know, what happened was a long time ago. She’s all grown up, now. Let it go.”

  “No, I can’t do that. I’ll never do that, not until I even things up with her.” Jack knew when there was no point in arguing with him anymore. “I’d consider it a big favour, Jack my boy. Just do this one thing for me. Look out for her. Make sure she doesn’t get into any trouble. She’s never been out of the country before and I get the impression she’s running away. It sounds like a lethal cocktail to me, anything could happen.”

  “Okay, I’ll go. But Gordon mate, don’t say I didn’t
warn you.

  Chapter 9

  “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?” she asked for the hundredth time. “It looks a long way up.”

  Already an adept skier, Fran had talked Katherine into believing that the quickest way for her to learn to ski, was to go to the top of a mountain and find her way down.

  Fran laughed. “Relax. We’re not going all the way up to the top. We’ll stop halfway and go down from there. It’s practically flat, that part.”

  Katherine’s throat felt dry. She’d put skis on for the first time in her life and there she was, about to get onto a ski lift to take her to the top of a goddamn mountain. She was about to kill herself. She was sure of it.

  “You don’t want to go messing around on the nursery slopes,” Fran said with supreme, mindless confidence. “They really are a waste of time. It’s much better to get thrown into the deep end from the off. That’s how I learned. Besides, you only really need to know how to snow-plough at first!”

  Fran Baker was from Essex. She was loud and boisterous, warm and kind-hearted, and at twenty-two, she boasted to have already travelled around America on a Greyhound bus, and undertaken several other adventures, like flying on Concord, albeit second class, going from London to Venice on the orient express, despite being dumped by her boyfriend somewhere between Paris and Milan, and flying over Ireland in a hot air balloon dressed in a red-riding hood costume. ‘That’, she said, ‘was a long story!’ Katherine admired her life-loving spirit and secretly wished she had some of her own tales to tell. Fran could speak fluent German, French and Spanish and she laughed constantly, finding amusement in practically everything. The girl was a walking, talking ball of energy and she came with a knack of talking herself and everyone else into a confident mind-set. Hence, Katherine’s current predicament of finding herself on the unchartered piste. Yes, Fran was a confident one alright…but Katherine couldn’t help wondering how positive a person could be with someone else’s life?

  As they ascended the mountain on a chair-lift made for two, she was beginning to have doubts about the faith she’d placed in Fran’s self-confessed wisdom. Looking down on the scene below their feet, the beauty of the Alps presented itself in an overpowering and threatening way. The peaks were anything but warm and welcoming. The snow was no longer soft and white; having grey vertical streaks of ice skimming over it, and the trees below their feet looked like deadly spears shooting up from the ground. The whole scene took the concept ‘dangerous’ to a whole new level. Katherine thought, it was one thing to look at it, but quite another to get involved.

  As the chairlift approached its destination at the peek’s halfway-point, Fran warned her the end would meet them abruptly. “As soon as the lift arrives at the landing point, we need to get off,” she said shouting over the noise of the mechanism, “and sharpish, before it carries on and takes you along with it!”

  It was the part she dreaded most, but as the top of the run loomed ahead of them, and despite her trembling knees and wishing she was anywhere but there, Katherine managed the manoeuvre quite successfully.

  “See! Easy!” Fran shouted, as Katherine began to breathe again.

  They pulled into the side of the run, away from other skiers and bending at the waist, Fran checked that Katherine’s boots and skis were secure. “Right then, watch me,” she said. “This is how you snow-plough.” She stood with her legs straight, her knees locked and her feet turned inwards. “You control them by digging the sides of the skis into the snow and then you use your sticks to balance and to pick up speed. Like this, see?”

  Katherine copied the technique. “Like this? Okay, that’s not too bad.” She was smiling now. She felt better; more confident in her ability. She’d achieved a manoeuvre she hadn’t thought she could master in a month of Sundays.

  “That’s it, well done!” Fran rewarded her efforts with an impatient nod. “Right then,” she said, pulling her ski-mask down over her eyes. “See you at the bottom. Ta ta!”

  With sheer disbelief, and with her mouth agape, Katherine watched Francis Baker speed away on sturdy gliding sticks, disappearing around a declining bend, out of sight within seconds. Katherine looked to the skis protruding in front of her, sure her knees were about to give way. “Well, that’s marvellous…just bloody marvellous!” She cursed the day she’d ever met Francis bloody Baker.

  Knowing she couldn’t go back, and determined not to look a complete amateur, she faced forward, to face the challenge head on. Head on! She hoped not. To one side of the rotating chairlift, a large expanse of snow sloped off to oblivion with an intense blue sky in the distance as if there was no ground after the snow. She’d already consoled herself that Fran was just pulling her leg and that she was in fact, waiting for her around the bend. She slowly glided over the snow, staying upright with the help of her poles. She took a deep breath, “Wing and a prayer comes to mind here!” she muttered to herself.

  Experienced skiers whizzed past as she made her way slowly down the side of the run. With her body as rigid as the ice beneath her feet, she used every muscle in her body to keep herself erect. Around the bend Fran was nowhere to be seen but Katherine wasn’t completely surprised. Fran had once confessed to lacking patience for people who didn’t possess the same dangerous approach to living as she.

  Having no choice but to complete the run, Katherine looked back to see how far she’d come. It was a good few meters! Not bad. She was getting the hang of it now!

  Ten minutes later, more confident with her temporary skiing ability, and feeling like a free spirit in the snow, she spotted a group of trees to the left of the run, away from the onslaught of her fellow skiers. She thought it was a good idea to take a rest. In fact, it would be pretty cool to take in the view while she was up on that unforgiving mountain of mountains. It could be the last time she ever skied it. Actually, it was very likely she wouldn’t ever ski it again. She wasn’t that stupid. Edging across the side of the ski slope to the trees, she worked her way off the beaten track onto feather light, soft virgin snow.

  Beyond, she saw that the trees were more like a miniature forest, so she forged further in and came to a cluster of smaller trees with thin trunks enveloped with fresh powdery snow. The branches were weighed down, waiting for the time when the snow would drop, so that they could spring back to life once more. After the noise of the other skiers scraping the ice had stopped, unable to pinpoint exactly when the transition had come, suddenly she could hear nothing. Complete silence! A silence she’d never heard before, a sound of solitude and isolation, so unique and powerful in its nothingness, she felt like she’d stepped onto a different world, where peace and calm reigned, where no one else dare trespass.

  With her skis still attached to her feet, she stood in the open space covered in fresh soft snow as the trees behind her curved in a horseshoe shape. At the front, a precipitous cliff dropped to unimaginable depths where views across the deep valley to the mountain range beyond was something no one saw every day and a picture she’d never forget. She felt as if she had discovered a lost land, and that she could now proclaim it hers.

  Jagged mountain-tops stood for miles into the distance, ancient and proud with pillow-like clouds breaking the dark aqua sky, nestling above the peaks laden with snow, like icing on a cake. Far away in a crevice between two hills, triangular splashes of colour broke the monotony of the white as hand gliders prepared to take off, waiting for a current of pure air to carry them away. It was breathtakingly beautiful. Never had she seen a picture so fine, beauty so graceful, so natural and so perfect that it made her feel like she never wanted to leave; as if she could stay there forever and die content.

  “You shouldn’t stray you know.”

  The sudden sound of the man’s voice made her swivel her torso at the waist, as the skis attached to her feet prevented her from jumping out of her skin. “What did you say?”

  “It’s dangerous. You could have fallen into a snowdrift or a ravine.”

  He was ta
ll…very tall. He had a wide neck and broad shoulders tapering to slim hips and long, muscled legs. As far as she could tell, beneath his black ski wear, he was early thirties. He was handsome with dark hair tinted with natural blond streaks. He had dark stubble on his chin, running over his jaw line and deep penetrating blue eyes stared at her from below a mask pushed up to his forehead.

  She didn’t know how to feel. He’d intruded on her perfect space and now the peace she’d felt only moments before had gone. “There wasn’t a sign!” she said, hating herself for sounding like a little girl.

  He offered a condescending laugh. “What did you expect? You think someone’s going to come up here each day and stick a post in the ground saying ‘No wandering off?’”

  “Well, I don’t see why not. Health and safety and all!”

  He grinned and moved further into the clearing “So, what are you doing here?”

  “I needed a rest. I’ve never done this before and my legs are killing me.”

  “Let me get this straight.” He dug his ski-poles into the snow as he towered over her. “You’ve never skied before and you’re doing this run?”

  “It’s my friends fault. She told me it would be the best way to learn. She’s supposed to be an expert!”

  “Some friend! And you know what they say about experts!”

  “Well, for your information she’s been skiing for years.”

  He raised an eyebrow and pretended to look about. “Where is she…this friend?”

  “She’s waiting for me at the bottom.” She looked at his eyes, almost the same colour as the sky. “Anyway I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”

  “But you shouldn’t be here. Something could have happened to you.” He looked across the clearing to the drop of the cliff.

  “Well, now I’m going, so you needn’t worry.” She pointed her skis in the direction she’d come and glided forward. “Hey!” She whipped her head around to see him smiling. “What are you doing here, then? If this place is so ‘off limits’.”

 

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