Hannah could hear the dull thuck-thuck-thuck of a helicopter somewhere, closing in. From her vantage point below, she aimed her camera lens up at the crowd, focused, clicked.
She was used to having her own Canadian News Agency cameraman on a job, but this was not Africa and her CNA days were over. Balancing a career that could see her in Angola one month and Sierra Leone the next was no life for a child. She had experienced what that kind of lifestyle had done to her father, to her family.
As Hannah clicked, the yellow tape was sucked from its moorings into a brutal whirling frenzy. The chopper was coming in for a landing just off the trail, churning up everything in its path. A red hat went flying. People held their hair, ducked their heads. Gray glacial silt boiled up in a cloud around them.
Hannah kept shooting.
She jogged up the steep trail as the blur of 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 couldnt 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 couldnt 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. Hes 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 cant figure what Amy was doing up here.
She was perhaps hiking, the doctor offered, following her gaze.
No, Gunter. I dont 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 Logans 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, hed called the CNA headquarters. It was a lapse of reason. She was the only one who did that to him, skewed his judgment. Hed wanted to know where he could find her. Theyd 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.