A little self-conscious of my shabby choice of attire, I walked up to the front door and used the heavy brass knocker. The door opened only a few seconds later, and a young and attractive woman in a housekeeper’s uniform ushered me inside. The chalet was toasty warm, and it smelled strongly of fresh baked bread. I noticed a dusting of flour on the woman’s skirt. A lock of hair had fallen out from her tight bun, and she swept it back self-consciously. I couldn’t help but wonder if Bloedermeyer had hired her for her looks or her talent as a housekeeper. The tidiness of what I could see of the house and the drool-inducing smells wafting from the kitchen led me believe it was a bit of both.
“You must be Miss Black,” she said with a strong European accent. Swiss maybe? “Mr. Bloedermeyer is presently on the telephone. Might I offer you some coffee and croissant while you wait?”
The housekeeper helped me out of my flannel jacket. I then kicked my boots off and slipped into the fleece-lined house shoes that had been set out for me. They were exactly the right size.
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all, I thought as I followed the woman into the house.
Chapter Two
Having stuffed two croissants into my face with unladylike efficiency, I sat and sipped coffee while waiting for Bloedermeyer to be ready for me. The housekeeper cleared my crumb-laden plate without a word, returning a minute later with a glass and a small decanter of orange juice. I drained the last sip of coffee from my cup, then killed the orange juice in one long swig. I wondered if this wasn’t just the warm up for several more courses of breakfast, but once the remaining dishes were cleared, I was left alone while the housekeeper disappeared to some other part of the chalet.
The room I’d been deposited in was a large living room that was surprisingly warm and cozy given the fact that the ceiling must have been thirty feet high and that three out of the four walls were mostly glass. There were two fireplaces. The larger of the two sat cold and dark at the back of the room where it was set into a rustic stone chimney. The other fireplace was a blob of black metal sitting two feet off the ground on a tube that went from floor to ceiling. A pleasant little fire crackled away, kissing the room with heat and lending the air the subtlest touch of bright smokiness. Three modern white couches were arrayed in a loose horseshoe in front of this smaller fireplace. A low rustic wooden coffee table the size of my bed back home sat in the middle of the horseshoe, displaying an overly tidy selection of coffee table books and architectural magazines. The rich hardwood floors radiated a heat I could feel even though my new slippers.
I was lost in thought trying to mentally calculate Bloedermeyer’s monthly heating bill when the housekeeper returned to fetch me again. She led me past the fireplace and through an opening on the other side of the room from where we’d first entered. After passing through a short hallway that branched away from the main building, we stepped through a door and into a more modest rectangular room with windows running along the length of both walls. A small conference table at the front of the room was piled high with binders and rolled up building plans, as was the drafting table opposite. As messy as these two surfaces were, Bloedermeyer’s own desk was an oasis of calm. Aside from the sleek notebook computer sitting open in front of him, only a single picture frame and a soapstone carving of a bear adorned his desk.
Bloedermeyer himself sat perpendicular to his desk, ankle resting on knee while he nodded and spoke the occasional reassurance into the phone he held to his ear. He twisted towards me and held up one finger to indicate he’d be with me shortly, so I settled into one of the chairs in front of his desk to wait. I couldn’t have said what I’d expected him to look like, but he certainly wasn’t anything I’d have guessed. He looked quite young despite his salt and pepper hair. He had the kind of chiseled good looks that would have made him right at home perched on the cabin of a sailboat in a magazine advertisement for retirement investments. When he spoke, it was with a faded accent I eventually identified as South African.
“I know, Jerry,” he said. “Believe me, I know. I’m doing everything in my power to keep the project on track. You don’t have to worry about a thing; that’s what you pay me for, isn’t it?”
I couldn’t make out exactly what Jerry was saying on the other end of the line, but the rapid pace of the murmuring that made it through didn’t sound very reassured.
“Sorry about that,” Bloedermeyer said after he’d ended the call and set his phone down next to his laptop. “It never rains, but it pours.”
“Is this related to why you’ve hired me?” I asked.
“There have been several incidents over the last few months that have begun to concern me,” he said. “Until recently, these incidents were confined to the site of a development I’ve been spearheading for the last three years. A few weeks ago, someone smashed all the windows of my car while it was parked in front of my office in the village. Last week someone burned an effigy of me in the driveway outside. There have been emails and notes — all anonymous — threatening me and the safety of my loved ones if we don’t kill the project immediately.”
“How far along is the development?” I asked.
“We began clearing land this summer, but there were five separate mechanical breakdowns that each set us back as much as a week. When our on-site office was burned to the ground, there was no doubt in my mind that someone had been sabotaging our equipment.”
“Why so many attacks?” I asked. “Do the police have any leads?”
“The police here are useless,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Our project is somewhat contentious with the locals and environmental activists, but it’s always like this. Everyone is happy to live in the product of near constant development, yet they all think their new house should be the last of the new development in order to preserve the natural charm of the area. Never mind that the people who came before them fought against all new development, as did the people before them. If no new areas were ever cleared, this whole resort would still be a backwater blank spot on the map known only to those few whose families owned the first decrepit old cabins. When Whistler was built in the late 60s, there was little more than a gravel track leading up here. There are probably people upset that the road was even paved in the first place. No, progress is never met with open arms.”
Judging by how much Bloedermeyer’s cheeks had reddened, this wasn’t the first time he’d delivered this little speech. I wasn’t about to weigh in on the subject of whether or not building more vacation property on the side of the mountain was a good idea or not, but it was now quite clear why that guy in the village had reacted as he had when he’d realized I was working for Bloedermeyer. Whistler had a reputation for being barely survivable for the legions of minimum wage earning staff that worked in the many hotels, shops, and restaurants just so they could ski all winter. New development meant a new influx of wealthy property owners. It would herald yet another rise in the already outrageous cost of living.
Bloedermeyer shut his laptop and leaned forward, elbows planted on his desk, hands clasped together in front of him. He stared at me with shrewd intensity, as though he could calculate my value to him by peering into my soul.
“Your assistant says you’re some sort of special forces agent,” he said, making it sound more like a question than a statement.
“I am highly trained in a number of specialized disciplines that make me quite capable of protecting your daughter from a wide array of potential threats,” I said. “Rest assured, your daughter will be safe in my care.’
I’d practiced the line on the bus ride up. Although I hadn’t been able to muster quite as much Liam Neeson particular-set-of-skills seriousness as I’d been aiming for, it seemed to do the trick. Bloedermeyer still didn’t look completely convinced, but he’d already agreed to hire me based on the assurances Chase had given him. If he had any remaining doubts, he chose to keep them to himself.
“Very well,” he said. “Nicola can be quite willful at times. She�
�s a sweet girl, but I fear all of this nonsense has set her somewhat on edge. I had to fire her last bodyguard after he lost track of her on the first day. Perhaps you’ll have a better chance at finding some common ground.”
“I’m sure we’ll get along famously,” I said through a forced smile.
“Ada will show you to my daughter’s room,” he said. “I don’t doubt you’ll find her still in bed. Consider my asking you to wake her as something of a trial by fire. Once Nicola is awake, tell her to give you a tour of the house.”
The housekeeper appeared a second later, as though she’d been listening from the other side of the door. I rose and followed her towards the exit, pausing when Bloedermeyer spoke again.
“This week is going to be very demanding on me,” he said. “I trust you’ll be able to perform your duties without daily oversight?”
“I work better with the freedom to operate as I see fit,” I said. “Leave your daughter to me. I’ll keep her from harm’s reach.”
Bloedermeyer nodded, rising and placing his computer into a slim leather satchel as an indication that our meeting was done. I followed Ada back down the hallway and into the main building. We climbed a narrow set of stairs to the second floor, and Ada indicated a door that I presumed led to Nicola’s bedroom. I looked to Ada for advice, hoping she’d accompany me into the room to wake my new charge. Unfortunately, she’d already turned and retreated back downstairs.
I knocked three times.
“Fuck off!” came the muffled response.
So that was how it was going to be.
Not wanting to let this kid get the better of me right out the gate, I twisted the door handle and stepped into the room. It looked like any normal teen girl’s bedroom. There were clothes strewn about the floor and draped over every surface. On her bedside table was a mountain of fashion magazines. The room lacked the kind of posters some of my more stable former foster sisters had tacked to their walls, but there were several large digital picture frames rotating through a gallery of images which appeared to be made up of nothing but selfie group shots of girls in various states of intoxication.
“Time to get up,” I said, stepping over a pair of inside-out jeans to get to the foot of the bed.
I sent a little energy into my fingertips, willing it out in a tiny burst of electricity when I touched the edge of her blanket. The crackling static electricity raced through the puffy duvet, pricking the girl’s skin. She shot upright, flinging the blanket aside to reveal flannel shorts and a threadbare t-shirt sporting a picture of Grumpy Cat.
If looks could kill, the glare Nicola flashed me would have stopped my heart instantly. She rubbed her eye with the back of her hand and yawned loudly.
“Nice shirt,” I said.
“Who the fuck are you?” she mumbled.
No point in beating around the bush. From what her dad had said, I wasn’t the first person who’d been given the job of watching her. If I wanted to collect my paycheck, I was going to have to last more than a day. I had more than a passing familiarity with bitchy teenage girls, having been a particularly nasty one myself, and I figured directness was the only real course of action.
“Your father hired me to protect you,” I said. “I know you don’t want me here, and to be honest, I’d rather be doing just about anything else. It is what it is, though. We can either make the best of it, or I can tie you up and lock you in the closet the second your dad leaves the house.”
“Rawr.” Nicola mimed pawing at me with clawed fingers. “Where’d he find you? Matrons “R” Us?”
“I’m not that much older than you,” I spluttered. Most people mistook me for a teenager myself.
“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.”
Nicola threw her legs over the edge of the bed and snatched her phone. Every app on the home screen was lit up with notifications. She began systematically processing them with remarkable proficiency, her thumbs swiping from post to post — jamming heart icons, re-tweeting, re-gramming, and commenting. Somehow managing to snap an elastic around a loose ponytail without putting her phone down, she took no fewer than ten selfies to send to different Snapchat contacts in under two minutes. I’d barely let Chase see me when I first crawled out of bed looking like a natural disaster, and here this kid was broadcasting her face to the entire internet.
Then again, she had the benefit of being a beach blonde seventeen-year-old with flawless skin. Straight out of bed, she looked like she was ready to walk on set for a photo shoot. She had none of the ungainly awkwardness I’d still been suffering from at that age. Hips canted to one side while she stood tapping away at her phone, the collar of her stretched out t-shirt hung over one shoulder as though it had been carefully arranged to sit just so. She looked better in her pajamas than most girls looked after a full makeover.
That was the first sign this was going to be more trouble than I’d anticipated.
“Let’s go,” I barked a little more aggressively than I’d planned, “Your father wants you to give me a tour of the house so I’m familiar with the layout. You can leave the phone behind.”
Nicola rolled her eyes, tucked the phone into the waistband of her shorts, and strode out of the room.
“This is Ada’s room,” she said, gesturing to the door next to hers. We stopped at the next door in line. “I’m guessing this is where you’ll be since it’s where Ada put the last guy. At least, I think she did. He didn’t last long enough to unpack his bags.”
I opened the door and saw my backpack already sitting on the cedar chest at the foot of the bed. The room itself wasn’t much to look at, but it seemed comfortable enough. All I really needed was a place to sleep and a place to recharge my phone.
“The next two rooms are guest bedrooms,” Nicola continued in a monotone drone. “Bathroom is at the end of the hall.”
I shut the door to my room and followed the girl down the hallway where a wider set of stairs went both up to another floor and down to the main level.
“My father’s room is up there,” she said. “You’ve probably seen that already, though.”
I opened my mouth to defend myself against the implication, but Nicola was already on her way downstairs. Knowing she was just trying to push my buttons didn’t make it any easier to keep from smacking her. As I followed her down the stairs, I indulged in a little fantasy of putting my heel right between her shoulders so I could watch her tumble to the bottom where she’d crumple in a pathetic little heap.
Of course, I’d never be so careless with the merchandise. This girl’s safety was my meal ticket. If anything happened to her, I’d be on the next bus back to Vancouver with nothing to show for it.
“This is the showroom floor,” Nicola said when we reemerged into the living room where I’d enjoyed my coffee and croissants.
“Showroom floor?” I asked.
“It’s where my father entertains his business buddies,” she said. Her disdain was obvious. “He’s always hosting parties for one investor or another. He likes to trot me out to keep their sons distracted while the men talk business.”
Nicola led me away from the living room and into a smaller, more functional version of the front area. The couches looked worn and comfortable. A large TV was mounted on the wall. The dark wood paneled walls were adorned with wild animal heads and large fish that had been forever frozen in parodies of their death throes. A locked gun cabinet stood against the far wall next to a massive floor to ceiling bookcase. An ornate array of custom hunting rifles and shotguns were visible behind the glass.
When Nicola crossed the room, my first instinct was that she was going for one of the guns. It was only when she grabbed a tumbler and unstoppered a crystal decanter that I realized she’d been aiming for the liquor cabinet set into one of the shelves. She threw back a shot of something clear, grimaced, then set the decanter back where she’d taken it from.
“Sorry,” she said as she marched on to the next room. “I needed that if I was going to put up with
any more of this bullshit. How long are you supposed to be my shadow for, anyway?”
“Hopefully not more than a week,” I said. “Until your father locks in whatever deal he’s working on. After that, I guess he’s taking you away from here for rest of the winter.”
Nicola’s expression darkened, but she didn’t say anything. I noted the bulge of her jaw muscle while she ground her teeth in anger. She hadn’t known about her dad’s plan. Lucky me for getting to break the news. Now I’d get an extra helping of angst from my already moody charge.
We entered the kitchen where Ada was in the middle of cooking. Thick slabs of French toast were cooking to golden perfection on the griddle of the professional gas range. The air was rich with the salty goodness of bacon sizzling away in the oven. A bag of desiccated orange halves sat on the floor next to the garbage, brave soldiers who’d given their lives in service to the pitcher of fresh squeezed juice sitting on the counter. My mouth watered at the sight even though I’d eaten less than twenty minutes earlier.
“I’ll take breakfast in the solarium,” Nicola told Ada.
“We will take breakfast in the solarium,” I corrected even though it was already almost noon.
Nicola stared at me like I’d just suggested we hop on a magic carpet to visit Mars.
“I don’t eat with the help,” she said.
I knew better than to laugh. The girl was obviously trying her best to channel the sternly commanding presence her father no doubt used to great effect. It’s just that she looked downright adorable. What she probably thought was an imperious glare came off as little more than a spoiled pout.
Black Ice (Black Records Book 3) Page 2