Page 69 of Mountain Trial

As well as Mrs. Larsen’s bodyguard, whose body had been repatriated back to Norway, three local men who’d been hired as waiters had been found dead, their bodies folded into cardboard boxes at the back of the hotel’s enormous walk-in fridge.

The kitchen staff told the story again and again, to anybody who would listen―how they’d walked into the fridge a dozen times during the evening, never once realizing there were dead bodies inside. How, just before the speeches started, the fake waiters had tied them up in pairs, their backs against each other, and gagged them.

Everybody who worked there that night knows they could just as easily be dead.

What kept Kat up at night, other than the fate of the people who’d died―was the fact that the mercenaries who’d died or been captured weren’t half as dangerous as the two who’d escaped.

Kat had been to jail to see Leopard and Tiger, the two mercenaries in custody. So far, they were saying very little, beyond the fact that this had simply been another job.

Nothing personal.

They insisted Bull, their leader, was the only one who spoke with clients directly.

Their prints were nowhere in the system which, combined with the way the two men carried themselves, made the anti-terrorist police team believe they were ex-Army―maybe even Special Forces.

The kind of people who knew how to disappear.

They could have crossed several borders by now.

Kat felt tears of frustration fill her eyes.

“Kat, are you sure you’re okay?”

Kat blinked repeatedly and looked at Damien. She’d been zoning out again.

“I’m okay, Commandant,” she said, picking up a pen.

“We have a job. Could you, Jens and Gael get up there together?”

Kat nodded quickly, thinking this was exactly what she needed to get her mind off things.

An hour later, flying towards Tré-la-Tête, Kat was having second thoughts about it.

“Are we sure the person is dead?” she asked, without taking her eyes off the controls. She wasn’t looking forward to coming across a dead body.

Gael’s voice came back loud and clear on the headset.

“The body was found inside the glacier, Kat. I think it’s pretty safe to assume he’s dead.”

Jens shrugged. “Let’s get up there, and see what’s what,” he said reasonably.

Kat landed as close as she dared to the Trè-la-Tête refuge. It was a traditional wood-and-stone building, one of the few left that hadn’t been rebuilt since it was first constructed in the early twentieth century.

There was a man standing outside the hut. Kat relaxed as she recognized Rémy’s pale blond hair. Rémy was an experienced mountain guide and avalanche forecaster from St. Gervais who’d worked with the PGHM in different occasions.

If Rémy says there’s a dead body, there’s a dead body.

Locking the helicopter behind her, Kat followed Jens and Gael out onto the snow. Up here, at two thousand meters, the air felt softer. Large, slow snowflakes fell to the ground. Although it was only two p.m., already it felt like night was approaching fast.

Rémy’s voice, as he greeted them and stretched out his hand towards them, felt unreasonably loud.

So much space for sound to get trapped in.

No wonder it feels so quiet.

“Rémy, I didn’t think I’d see you until Saturday,” Gael said, clapping the taller man on the back.

Kat remembered Gael and Rémy often went climbing together on weekends.