Killer Mountain

“Since you got up. That’s my job, remember?”

“You heard.”

The FBI woman nodded. “Who were you talking to?”

“A man.”

“You told someone about Sturgis. Why?”

“I couldn’t help it, Frances. He’s going after Hudson!”

“Tell me.”

Cilla related the strange phone call demanding to speak to “her father”, who’d died the previous May. She hadn’t known about Sturgis and thought it was just a crank, but realized where else she’d heard that whispering voice. She was starting on her conversation with Florrie Stone when Frances stopped her.

“John will be in his office in a while. Let’s call from the ski area so we don’t wake people. I think he should hear the rest of it fresh from you.”

Krestinski listened quietly, making no comment about the collapse of his Sturgis ruse. He repeated the words heard by the librarian. “Three wise men bearing gifts to a field in Bethlehem.’ And then `change one word.’”

“One `little’ word. And I don’t think they mentioned the wise men.”

“But they pointed to them. And this was before Sturgis had his apartment blown!”

“John, this man is now after Hudson.”

“I’m giving instructions to have two men assigned specifically to him around the clock. He’ll be their only job until we get through this.”

“He’ll never put up with a bodyguard, John. You know how he is nowadays.”

“He’ll never know it unless you tell him. They’ll just appear to part of the team we’ve already got there. What do you mean `nowadays’. Hasn’t he always been… independent?”

“You mean pig-headed. Probably, though he’s not far from the emotional stew he was in last summer.”

“He had a lot to handle then.”

“And us now?”

“I won’t hide it from you. You’re all in the line of fire. I’ll be up there tomorrow afternoon.”

Jim Evans had made his point forcefully. As a condition of leaving the care of the hospital, Hudson was to be off his feet the first day and have no skis on them for at least a week. He grumbled, but spent most of Tuesday on his stomach with a book held over the bed’s edge in the upstairs bedroom Carver had assigned them. Outside the windows he could see Krestinski’s people sifting through the woods that closely ringed the Carver house. Wally liked trees and in building the house had removed only those absolutely necessary for house foundation and view.

It was an even more familiar home to him than the house he and Cilla had lived in until explosions ripped it apart the night before. He’d spent six months here the previous year; spirits drained by the crash that killed Sylvia. He’d tried to lose himself in books taken from the shelves where Carver had stationed them in tight, military ranks, gazed into the glowing, flickering light from the huge fieldstone fireplace at a well-loved face his eyes would never again behold, and senselessly climbed and descended the hardwood stairs when other diversions let him down. It was also where, from unpromising beginnings, the seed that became his love for Cilla had grown and blossomed. Now someone was threatening the flower.

She’d been gone when he’d wakened and at Great Haystack until far into the evening. Finally, crawling into bed, she pleaded fatigue and turned on her side away from him. The attack had taken a lot out of her. She needs time and patience he told himself.

It wasn’t until the next day he found out how wrong he was.

Chapter 18

Wednesday afternoon. Hudson, who’d been making out reports in an insurance office most of the day, stood looking at the note he’d found on the bed they shared in the Carver house:

Hudson

Call me a coward, but I didn’t marry you to get kidnapped and bombed. After much thought I’ve had my things taken to my house. You were right; Mooney’s house was never ours.

Her house was on Bear Notch Road, where she’d grown up and where he’d first seen her. Jeans and woodsman’s shirt, an old fashioned bun held together by a clothespin, head looking insecure on a scrawny neck. Other clothespins being used to hang laundry. He’d gotten a cold reception barging in on her looking for information. Information that put both their lives in peril. As they were now. It had taken him months to pierce the hard shell she’d drawn around the warm, exciting woman that few would ever guess was within.

He picked up the phone and dialed Great Haystack. Frances was apologetic but businesslike.

“Yes, she’s here, but she won’t speak with you. I’m sorry.”

The hell. He was at the mountain in eight minutes, striding by Frances, who’d taken a desk just outside the general manager’s office, tearing open Cilla’s door. She looked up.

“I left you a note.”

“One question. Why?”

“Where was my home when we first met?”

“Bear Notch Road.”

“That’s my family house.”

“You were living at an ashram in New York State. You call that home?”

“Home is where you feel comfortable. I was comfortable there.”

“You’re going back?”

“I made a commitment to my cousin, Kabir, and the rest of the Abenakis to run Great Haystack for them. I’m going to keep that commitment.”

“Then why are you bringing up the ashram?”

“Hudson, have you ever thought about why I was there? It wasn’t just an isolated incident in my life. It was where I chose to be.”

“Escaping from a world that had treated you badly.”

“Seeking a life that had more meaning.”

“Because you’d been raped.”

“Because a lot of people are being raped. And murdered, like my mother. You can’t understand someone wanting to remove themselves from this `best of all possible worlds?’ I saw it through Candida’s eyes, cruel, brutal and uncaring. I thought life here with you would be different. The peace and quiet of the White Mountains. Hah. Hudson, you’re a good and gentle person, but you attract violence like bees to honey.”

“Bees make honey. They’re attracted to flowers.”

“You know what I mean, and making light of it won’t change the facts.”

“What are the facts?” Hudson asked softly.

“The facts are I’ve had it with your world. I can’t take it any more. I want you out of my life. Perhaps I’m the one that’s strange, but I’m tired of waiting for the next bomb to drop, having the FBI sitting outside my office door. I’ve been burned out of your house, now I want you out of mine.”

“Great Haystack?”

“Yes. You’re only playing at ski patrol. You’ve plenty of money, you don’t need to work. I’m asking you to please clean out your locker here and leave. And take your violent world with you.”

“Tell me you no longer love me.”

“I no longer love living with you.”

For nearly twenty seconds he stared at her silently. She returned his look with calm, disinterested eyes that never wavered. He nodded.