Page 10 of Mountain Shadow

What am I doing?

I’m bringing danger to Tess’s doorstep.

Her little sister could get hurt. And Tess wasn’t alone anymore. She had a child to take care of—Damien’s son, who was now hers as well.

I shouldn’t be here.

She felt suddenly breathless and lightheaded. “Stop the car. I need to go. I can’t go to Tess’s place. I’ll—”

Jens’s hand was behind her neck, pushing her head gently forward until it was between her legs. “Lean forward, Sarah. Just like that. Relax. I’m not driving you to Tess’s place. We’re going to my place, in Argentière.”

Jens

As he drove, Jens kept a cautious eye on the woman beside him. Though it wasn’t safe to have her sitting like that, with her head so close to the dashboard, she seemed to be breathing easier now, so he was reluctant to ask her to lean back.

A part of him figured he should be driving her to the hospital, or to the gendarmerie if she refused to go to the hospital—but this was Tess’s sister. And she was clearly afraid of someone.

A stalker.

Jens’s hands gripped the steering wheel tighter as he recalled the look in Sarah’s caramel-colored eyes as she’d spoken. He wondered what had happened to put such fear in her eyes, but he didn’t want to bring it up again—not until he got her warmed up and got some food into her.

Jens knew what exhausted looked like. During his time with the Special Forces, exhausted had often come with the territory. He and his team had been chosen for their ability to manage stress and changing environments—trained to effortlessly switch from delivering humanitarian aid to participating in intense counter-terrorism operations or, in his case, to deciding who lived or died in those hazy minutes after an IED blew up on unsuspecting civilians.

Soldiers excelled at regulating their emotions, and despite that, he and his team had always kept a close eye on each other, looking for the signs of exhaustion that meant one of them was likely to crack.

Sarah had that haunted look in her eyes—those impossibly large, beautiful eyes—that told Jens she was close to cracking. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days. As her breathing settled, he wondered if she was falling asleep. Then she spoke again.

“Did you not hear what I said?” she asked, in a thready voice, lifting her head.

“I heard what you said,” he replied quietly.

“You need to stop the car and let me out. You’re not safe with me, either,” she said, her voice hitching with something close to panic.

Something in Jens’s chest clenched.

She’s concerned for my safety.

“It’s going to be okay. You’ll be safe at my house.”

“But—”

“You need to rest, Sarah. I promise you’ll be safe with me tonight, and then you can decide what to do next.”

As he’d hoped, the knowledge that it was only for the night, that she was still in control, seemed to mollify her. She leaned her head back against the seat, though her hands still clutched at the fabric of her soaked jeans. Her eyes were open but almost unseeing as he took the road to the smaller town of Argentière. In the dark, it was hard to see the mountains that had made him choose to live here, rather than in the larger town of Chamonix.

Finally, he took the small unpaved road leading to his place. At this time of year, it was no longer covered in snow, so he had no difficulty navigating it. He stopped outside his house and stepped out of the car, stretching his long legs gratefully, then walked over to the passenger door and opened it, offering Sarah his hand. She surprised him by taking it—it was only when he saw how badly her legs shook that he understood why.

The urge to pick her and her small backpack up and carry her into his warm house was almost too strong to ignore, but Jens knew her emotional well-being was the priority now, and he didn’t want to do anything to scare her. He kept a light hold on her hand, his other arm behind her, ready to catch her if he fell.

He was once again aware of the large height difference between them. At six four, he was used to towering over most people, but she barely came up to the middle of his chest.

“You live here?” she asked, warily, squinting in the darkness.

Jens encouraged her to take a step forward. Their movement triggered his outdoor lights, illuminating the path to the front door of his small mountain chalet.

He took in the familiar rustic, wooden structure, trying to see it through the eyes of somebody who’d never seen it before. The structure was solid, so he had done little work on the outside, beyond repainting the doors and windows. All his efforts had gone into renovating the inside.

He opened the front door. Originally, there’d been a tiny hallway here, with doors leading out to five or six small rooms—rooms designed for a time when it was hard to heat large surface areas and closed doors helped trap in heat. He’d removed most of those walls, turning the ground floor into a large, open-plan living space. Large sliding glass doors opened onto a balcony. It was too dark outside to see much, but Jens could just about make out the dark shapes of the mountains beyond.