Page 19 of Mountain Shadow

Jens ordered a burger for each of them, but her words nagged at him. He didn’t want to think of her going hungry—ever.

“Did you have to learn French to join the Mont Blanc Search & Rescue team?” she asked.

“I committed to learning French when I took the job.” He shrugged. “I’d learned some pretty obscure languages during my time in the Army, so I figured French wouldn’t be that hard.”

“Which languages?” she asked.

He could see what made her a good radio show host. She wasn’t afraid to dig in to get the answers she wanted.

Jens didn’t talk much about that time in his life—not even with his coworkers, and he trusted them with his life. So much of what he used to do was classified, and it all seemed so far away now. But he found himself opening up to Sarah.

“Mainly Middle Eastern languages. Arabic, Farsi …”

“Wow,” she said, looking impressed. “All I learned in school were a couple of Spanish phrases … and I’ve forgotten most of them.” Her nose wrinkled for a second. “I guess I remember una cerveza por favor.”

He laughed. “Une bière, s’il vous pla”t doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it?”

“I always knew I wanted to work in media, and never really needed languages for that. But now I wished I’d paid a bit more attention.”

Their burgers arrived alongside a heaping tower of fries.

“This is incredible,” Sarah said, taking a dainty bite of her burger and chewing carefully. Her pink tongue came out for an instant, licking the salt off her lips.

Jens felt himself get hard and was glad for the table between them. He forced himself to look away from her mouth and concentrated on his own food. A few minutes passed before he was sure he had things under control.

While they ate, Sarah told him about her job as a radio host. Jens considered himself an early riser, a habit he’d picked up in the Army, but Sarah woke up at four thirty every day. He wondered at the level of discipline required to maintain that schedule.

“What can I say?” she said. “I love my job. Or at least I did, until …”

“What happened, Sarah? What made you leave London?”

She placed the half-eaten burger back on her plate and sipped her ice tea. “I need to tell you. You should know. Just in case.”

Jens pushed away his own plate, giving her his full attention.

“I told you about the pig’s heart. At first, people kept telling me to ignore him, that he would get tired and give up. But the heart was the first sign that this wasn’t simply going to go away. Any packages addressed to me were carefully monitored by the station’s security after that, so I didn’t get any more such deliveries, but that’s when he started emailing me pictures of myself coming and leaving work.”

Jens’s hands clenched into fists. “He was watching you.”

She nodded, worrying her lip with her teeth. “There were so many pictures. He’d been watching me for a long time. I was so scared. I wanted to take off then, but of course my job isn’t the kind of job that can be done remotely. So I kept going in to work every day. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“What happened then?” Jens asked softly.

“He found my phone number. He would call from an unknown number, and just breathe on the line for a long time before hanging up. He kept calling, and calling.” Her face scrunched up as if in pain. “I turned off my phone, and when I turned it back on, I had forty missed calls. All from him.”

“Did he leave any messages?” Jens asked. He fairly vibrated with cold anger at the thought that a man could treat a woman this way.

“No, not at first. But again, it escalated. He started leaving vile messages, detailing exactly what he wanted to do to me. He said he would find me, that he’d make me sorry. That’s when I ditched my number and bought a prepaid number. But I couldn’t go back home. And I didn’t know where else to go. I took as much cash as I could out of the ATM, then made my way to the airport. And here I am.”

Sarah shivered in fear, huddling further into her blue jacket.

He couldn’t help himself. He stood up and grabbed her, wrapping her in his arms. The moment she melted into his embrace, Jens realized, in a sudden flash of insight, that this felt right in a way he’d never experienced before. He understood, of course, his need to protect her and keep her safe from harm. That didn’t surprise him. But there was a part of him that wanted to stay just like this—that wanted to hold her and not let go.

“Shh … you did the right thing.” He dropped some cash on the table and ushered Sarah gently forward. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”

Sarah

Jens’s mountain chalet had a strangely calming effect on Sarah. She stood by the entrance, taking off her new walking boots, while Jens disabled the alarm.