Read Chapter 14: The Boast

The generator coughed once, twice, then settled into a low, steady hum that vibrated through the floorboards. The backup power had bought them another few hours of light against the encroaching dark. Lamplight pooled over the long pine table in the main room, where Viktor, Ali, Camille, and Nadia picked at bowls of reheated stew. Henri stood by the window, arms crossed, staring at the wall of snow that had swallowed the front entrance.

Luc entered from the mudroom, stamping snow from his boots. The trek had been pointless—another perimeter check, another set of footprints that led nowhere but back to the chalet. He caught Camille's eye across the room. She gave the faintest shake of her head. No movement. No new tracks. Nothing except the quiet pressure of being buried alive.

He slid into the chair beside Ali, who pushed a bowl toward him without a word. The stew was thin, mostly potato and canned game, but the warmth was welcome. He ate in silence, listening to the rhythm of the room.

Viktor broke it first. He'd been nursing a bottle of Armagnac from the cellar since the generator kicked back on, and his words were starting to thicken. He raised his glass, sloshing amber liquid over his knuckles.

"To narrow escapes." His grin was wide, too bright. "In Moscow, I once survived worse than a little snow. You know what I mean, Moreau?"

Luc looked up. "I don't."

"Of course you don't. You're a guide." Viktor waved a dismissive hand. "You climb mountains. I move mountains. Different things."

Nadia set down her spoon. "Viktor, perhaps you should—"

"Should what? Be quiet? I've been quiet for two days." He leaned forward, elbows on the table, the bottle still in his fist. "You think this is bad? This is nothing. A snowball fight. In Russia, I had men trying to kill me. Not the weather. Men with knives and guns. And I walked away from all of them."

"Because you paid someone to walk away," Nadia said quietly.

Viktor laughed, a wet sound. "Because I knew who to pay. That's the secret, Luc. That's the whole secret. Money is just the gun. Knowing who to put in front of you—that's the bullet."

Camille shifted beside him. "Is that what you teach your clients, Luc?"

"Not exactly."

"No." Viktor pointed the neck of the bottle at Luc. "He teaches them how to avoid avalanches. Boring. I make avalanches happen. I make them look like accidents. And nothing sticks to me. Nothing ever sticks. Because I know who to call."

Luc's jaw tightened but he said nothing. He spooned more stew, listening to the ceiling creak under a fresh gust of wind. The chalet settled around them like a held breath.

Viktor was warming to his theme, more liquor lubricating his tongue. "I had a partner once. Back in the early days. Good man, good instincts. But he got greedy. Wanted a bigger cut. Wanted to name names." He tapped his glass against the table. "Now he's a fishing lodge in the Urals. Not the man. The man is the foundation."

A beat of silence passed. Ali cleared his throat. "That's—"

"Metaphor." Viktor grinned. "I use them to keep my hands clean."

Luc set down his spoon. The heat from the generator and the press of bodies had made the room stuffy, the air thick with the smell of damp wool and carbon. He reached for his coat to hang it over the back of his chair, and as he did, his sleeve caught the edge of Viktor's jacket, which was draped over the adjacent seat.

The jacket shifted, revealing the inner cuff.

And there it was. A burn mark, small and precise, a half-circle of blackened fabric where the synthetic fibers had melted and fused. Luc froze for half a second, a cold pulse running through him that had nothing to do with the temperature.

The photograph in his pocket. The one from Henri's locked room. He'd held the charred edges; he knew the texture, the pattern of the burn. It was the same kind of scorch, the same deliberate, close-range source that would come from leaning a flame against fabric for a long moment.

Not a cigarette burn. Not a spill. A match or a lighter held to the corner of the photo, meant to erase a face.

"Enjoying the view?" Viktor's voice cut through the fog.

Luc blinked, straightening. "Just checking the stitching. You get what you pay for."

Viktor laughed and raised his glass. "See? Even the mountain men know quality."

Luc forced a smile and sat back down. The photograph was a weight against his ribs, burning with the memory of his father's face, half-consumed. He thought of the scarred man beside Julien in the frame, the one he hadn't recognized. He thought of the burn on Viktor's cuff.

It meant nothing, he told himself. A dozen ways a jacket could get burned in a house like this. A careless cigarette. A stove. A moment of absent-mindedness.

But the burn pattern was too tight. Too controlled. The kind of deliberate destruction he'd seen hunters use to blind an animal, to remove its identity before the body was buried.

He glanced at Viktor, who was now pouring Nadia a glass she clearly didn't want. The Russian's hands were steady despite the drink, his eyes sharp at the edges. There was nothing accidental about him. Every move he made was calculated, even the drunken boasting. Especially the boasting.

Maybe that was the point. A boast is a weapon in itself. It tells you what a man is proud of, and by extension, what he's hiding.

Luc thought of the footsteps at the bridge, the cut rope, the locked room. He thought of the knocking on the door that had stopped the moment he'd gone out alone. Someone had known he would hike out. Someone had timed it perfectly.

He needed to tell Camille and Ali. But not here. Not with everyone breathing the same air.

He stood and carried his bowl toward the kitchen sink, passing Camille. As he brushed by, he let his hand graze her arm, a single tap with his index finger. The meeting signal. Tonight.

She didn't turn, but he saw her shoulders tense, then relax. She had understood.

Ali got up and stretched loudly, then wandered toward the generator room, making a show of checking the fuel. Luc heard him pause by the locked room's door, heard the click of his fingers testing the frame. The door that Henri had left ajar had been sealed shut again, by Luc's own hand, with screws he'd found in the tool bin.

Three of them now. A fragile pact in the heart of a buried house.

Back at the table, Viktor was telling a story about a yacht seizure, his voice rising, filling the room, pushing against the walls of snow that held them all prisoner. Nadia stared at her plate. Camille watched the window. Henri remained frozen by the door, a statue watching for ghosts.

Luc pulled the photograph from his pocket in the shadow of the hallway, one quick look. The burn marks along the edge. He pressed his thumb against them, feeling the uneven texture. Then he touched his coat, where the cut rope still coiled in his satchel.

Viktor's voice boomed with laughter behind him.

Luc pocketed the photo and made for the stairs. There was a meet beneath the floorboards of the boiler room in a few hours. He had questions to prepare. The first one, the biggest one, was whether Viktor's boast about getting away with anything had a deeper, darker application than dead partnerships in Moscow. Whether it reached all the way across Europe to a man who covered up a death on a mountain.