Page 70 of Mountain Struggle

Our ETA is twenty minutes.

A lot could happen in twenty minutes.

Stand by. Nobody approaches without my approval.

We’ve got your back, boss.

Pocketing his phone, Damien strode towards the house, half expecting to get shot at any moment—but no, Dubois had gone through too much trouble. He wanted something from Damien, and he wouldn’t get that if he simply shot him now.

The door to the hut was ajar. Damien walked through, listening for any noises while he waited for his eyes to get used to the semi-darkness inside—but he could already feel the emptiness in the building.

Walking past the living space, which held a dilapidated sofa and some chairs, he arrived at what must have once been a kitchen, judging by the sink taking up one corner.

He heard a noise, coming from outside. His eyes went to the back door leading outside from the kitchen.

Jamie and Tess are out there.

Damien looked down at his phone. His team was still fifteen minutes away, probably a bit longer for Drake.

I can’t wait.

Damien didn’t have a game plan. In his job, that was perhaps the ultimate offence—everybody knew things could change in a second, but charging in without having a plan was simply not done.

I’m going in.

Before he could second-guess himself, Damien pushed the door open. As he stepped out into the bright sunlight, he raised a hand to shield his eyes.

When his eyes accustomed to the light, his heart froze at the sight ahead of him.

#

Tess

Tess’s mouth tasted bitter. Terror—the likes of which she’d never felt before—coursed through her veins as she watched Jamie hanging over the abyss.

The boy was strapped to a rope harness, held in place only by the madman’s tenuous hold on the rope. As soon as they’d walked out onto the terrace, Dubois had forced her to her knees at gunpoint and strapped Jamie into a handmade rope harness he’d clearly prepared ahead of time.

The premeditation scared Tess more than anything else—Dubois might be crazy, but he’d planned this meticulously, and he didn’t intend to let them go.

Every time Dubois waved the gun in her direction, he ended up jerking Jamie’s body around. Jamie’s eyes were shut tight—his face pinched in fear. The boy was less than ten feet away from her, but it might as well have been ten miles.

The metal grating dug into her knees but she barely felt it, so great was her fear. “Please. Please bring him back,” Tess begged. “We can talk about whatever you want. Damien will—”

Dubois turned to look at her.

“Say his name again and I’ll let him go,” he threatened. “We’ll see how long he takes to hit the bottom.”

They heard a noise from inside the house.

“Ah, here he comes. Good—my hand was getting tired.”

The door opened up and Damien walked out. His expression as he took in the scene in front of him was one of pure, unadulterated terror. Tess knew what he was seeing—his son, leaning over the edge of the abyss, and she, kneeling close to the edge.

Damien’s jaw was clenched. “Dubois, please, whatever you think happened, my son is not to blame.”

“Shut up and drop your weapon, Gray,” snarled the man. “Carefully. Or I’ll open my hand.”

Damien nodded and slowly reached behind him. “Please. I’m doing what you asked.” He brought out a gun, holding it with two fingers, and dropped it in front of him.