Melting The Ice. Лорет Энн Уайт

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СКАЧАТЬ the two lethal rotor blades slowed and came into focus. She recognized the coroner and members of a television crew as they alighted from the mechanical beast. A man in a suit followed. He stood out amongst the windbreakers and fleece. This story was pulling them all in, even the suits. Hannah guessed he was with one of the big U.S. outfits.

      She joined the crowd, out of breath. There were other newspaper photographers capturing the scene. She tried to peer down into the glacial bowl but couldn’t really make out what was happening below. The TV crew started filming.

      “Hannah, over here.” The Swiss-German accent and granular rasp was unmistakable.

      “Hey, Gunter.” She moved over to join the plastic surgeon. He was deeply tanned with a head of thick salt-and-pepper hair and clear hazel eyes. Hannah couldn’t help thinking he carried his years exceptionally well. But then, Dr. Gunter Schmidt was devoted to the pursuit of youth. It was that same promise of eternal youth that attracted the rich and famous to his White River Spa.

      “I was on a walk up here on the mountain.” Gunter could not pronounce words with a w. He said them as if they started with a v. But despite his pronunciation oddities and Germanic syntax, his English was good.

      “And then I see all this commotion. They say it is Amy.” He was also out of breath. “That is right? They have found her?”

      “It looks that way, Gunter.”

      “Ach, poor Al. He must be taking it hard, ja?”

      “He is. He’s struggling.” Hannah looked away from the scene below, her eyes following the trail she knew so well. From here, it climbed a little farther then leveled out along the ridge toward the ski area boundary. Then it rounded the ridge and led to a series of small, rustic cabins designed for overnight use. A hiker could spend a week doing the full loop. Back-country skiers used the cabins in winter. “I just can’t figure what Amy was doing up here.”

      “She was perhaps hiking,” the doctor offered, following her gaze.

      “No, Gunter. I don’t buy it. Her clothes were wrong. The weather, the timing, the break-in. Nothing fits.”

      The doctor frowned.

      Hannah lifted her camera and peered through her lens at the scene below on the glacier. She could make out the form of Sven Jansen. She clicked the shutter as the team started to slowly make their way with a body bag back up the glacier toward the chopper.

      Rex Logan’s heart missed a beat.

      Anyone watching him in his air-conditioned Toronto office would not have noticed a thing. He never showed his emotion. That came from his British Special Air Services training. That, combined with his medical specialty, was one of the reasons the Bellona Channel found him so valuable.

      But the picture on page three of the Toronto Star had upped his pulse rate.

      He leaned forward to press the button on his phone. “Hold all my calls, Margaret.”

      He loosened his tie and flattened the page out onto his desk. It was Hannah McGuire.

      In grainy black-and-white.

      He scanned the headlines. A body had been found on Powder Mountain in White River. Hannah had been captured by a news photographer among a crowd on the mountain. She was holding a camera in one hand, looking toward a body bag. Her long hair was blowing across her face. She was trying to hold it back with her other hand.

      Rex ran his forefinger slowly over her grainy image. He knew the feel of that hair. Her knew her smell. He knew the sensation of her golden skin. Her image haunted his dreams at night.

      He absently fingered the small Ethiopian silver ring on his finger as the hot memories welled up and assaulted him in his cool office. He could almost smell the crushed frangipani blooms, hear the sound of night insects, taste the salt on her skin, see her eyes. Those eyes, leonine, with the color and fire of fine whiskey.

      Rex closed his eyes and slowly sucked in air. The memories of Marumba often came like that. They would wash over him before he could send the unbidden images scuttling back into the recesses of his tired brain.

      He knew Hannah was in White River. He knew that much from the Canadian News Agency office. Once, just once, when he had a whiskey too many, he’d called the CNA headquarters. It was a lapse of reason. She was the only one who did that to him, skewed his judgment. He’d wanted to know where he could find her. They’d put him through to a photographer who used to work with Hannah on her Africa assignments. He told Rex that Hannah had quit and moved to White River.

      Why the hell she had dropped her career as one of the best damn foreign correspondents this country had known was beyond him. She was at the peak of her profession. And now, here she was, in a photo on his desk that had caught her looking out over a body on a mountain in White River.

      White River, where the International Toxicology Conference was due to start in one week.

      His contacts in Cairo had indicated that several rogue nations were planning to send agents to that conference. The list of participants was already starting to read like a who’s who in the world of biological warfare. Red flags were going up all over the place. Something was going down. And the Bellona Channel board members wanted him there. Only trouble was, Rex didn’t want to go.

      He didn’t want to run into Hannah McGuire.

      Rex pulled open his desk drawer and fished out a magnifying glass. He hungered to see her more clearly.

      Useless. It just made things bigger, blurrier, grainier. He put the magnifying glass back into his drawer and rubbed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets before reading the story.

      There was no reference to Hannah. The article noted that the body was presumed to be that of Amy Barnes, a young reporter who’d gone missing last fall.

      He looked at the photograph again. Then something new caught his eye and, for a second time, his heart beat faster.

      It couldn’t be.

      In his preoccupation with Hannah he hadn’t noticed the man standing near her. It had been six years since he’d last seen him. If it wasn’t him, the likeness was incredible.

      Rex needed to know more.

      This was more than coincidence. Two people on Powder Mountain, both linked to a tumultuous period in his life six years ago. Hannah and this man. The last time he had laid eyes on either of them was in Marumba.

      He leaned forward and pushed the phone intercom button to ring his secretary. “Margaret, did you tape the news last night?” She usually recorded the CNA news. It aired at six o’clock, before she returned from work. She liked to watch it when she got home.

      “I always tape the CNA, Rex.” Margaret’s voice came back through the intercom. “It comes on again later at night, but way past my bedtime. Even an old-timer like me needs beauty rest.”

      “You’re beautiful to me, Margaret. I need that tape.” There would be something on the CNA news, he was sure. The missing girl’s parents were high profile, and the search for Amy Barnes had been one of the biggest search-and-rescue missions mounted in recent years.

      Rex took his pizza slice out of the microwave and cracked СКАЧАТЬ