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.He’d waited a long time before making his move.Long enough for the square to spring to life around him.Long enough for lights to come on behind windows and for people to stumble out of buildings and shuffle along pavements on their way to work.Long enough for parents to drop their children at the nursery amid raucous yelps and pounding feet; for two old men in cloth caps to gather on an ironwork bench beside the empty fountain in companionable silence; for housewives to drape laundry over the pulley lines set up outside their balconies.Long enough for the young man to curse himself for his cowardice and the opportunity he’d surely missed.Long enough for the man in the grey jacket to leave Trent’s apartment.Long enough for Trent to return.Except neither of them had.And none of the hundreds of people who’d passed by or lingered in the square had seemed to notice that Trent’s door was hanging very slightly open.Their curiosity hadn’t been aroused at all.Not by the lapse in security.Nor by the dull claps or the fractured shout of a few hours before.Now, life on the square had fallen into a familiar morning lull.There was nobody about.The young man couldn’t be certain how long it might last but he’d finally made up his mind.He was going to act.He was going to take a chance.He staggered out into the square, leaning forwards from the hip, like he was battling against a gale-force wind.His face was down and his right hand shielded his eyes, as if from the sun’s glare.His left hand was stuffed in the pocket of the hooded sweatshirt he had on.Thirty fast paces and he was at the other side of the square.Two more and he was outside the blue door.The locking unit was loose.Looked like it might topple out at any moment.The young man clenched his hand in his pocket.He muttered a few words of encouragement to himself.Then he jabbed the door with the heel of his palm and tried to ignore the watery sensation in his stomach as he took the hardest, heaviest step of his life.Chapter Forty-twoThere was a drainage trough on the other side of the road.Trent stumbled down it, then stepped over a low log barrier and set off across the dusty scrubland that lay ahead.There was no defined path.He would come to one eventually – could see it running diagonally up towards the far ridge like a scar in the chalky white rock – but for now he had to walk through untamed land.The ground fell away at an acute angle, forming a giant, shallow depression that jacked up towards the ridge.The going was rough and uneven.There was a lot of sandy earth and loose rock underfoot.It would be easy to turn an ankle.Low bushes and parched Mediterranean brush snagged the cuffs of his jeans and tangled with his bootlaces.He stomped through rosemary, thyme and myrtle.He trampled wild flowers, laurel and juniper.He moved on relentlessly, his skin crawling with the sensation of being watched.He pounded the ground and swung his arms, and all the while the droning traffic faded gradually from behind until the low hum started to blend with the throb of the blood in his ears.There was no shade.The tallest trees came only as high as his shoulders.He passed contorted pines and miniature green oaks, a weedy ash or two, and olive trees with knotted trunks.He squinted hard against the blinding light coming up off the baked white rock.He searched for movement.For the glint of a rifle scope.His eyes streamed in the glare.Not even mid-morning and his brow and neck and back were filmed with sweat.He clasped a palm to his skull and felt a warmth like he’d picked up a noontime boulder.The brush was dry as tinder.This time of summer, the Calanques were closed to the public because of the risk of wild fires.There’d be warning signs up on the official trails.There’d be red metal chains slung across them to deter hikers from coming through.So it was easy enough to believe he was alone out here.Just him and the hostile men who were watching.And as he got further away, beyond the ridge, he’d be out of sight of the road.He’d be even more vulnerable.Strange to think that he’d often been here before, and how different the barren environment had felt then.There’d been times when he’d set out on his own for a challenging hike to cleanse his mind of a tortuous negotiation.And there’d been other times, too.Occasions when he’d strolled along these trails with Aimée.When they’d marvelled at the stark beauty of this place, squeezing one another’s hands, the straps of a rucksack loaded with picnic things biting into Trent’s shoulders.Times when they’d spent whole days on the lonely beaches of Port Pin or Sormiou or, yes, En Vau.Afternoons when they’d lounged in the sun and bathed in the cooling green waters and he’d talked about one day teaching her to sail.Like the day she’d told him she was expecting his baby.He’d hired a small yacht and they’d sailed into the Calanque de Sugiton, laying anchor a short distance from the beach.They’d lazed in the sun [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.He’d waited a long time before making his move.Long enough for the square to spring to life around him.Long enough for lights to come on behind windows and for people to stumble out of buildings and shuffle along pavements on their way to work.Long enough for parents to drop their children at the nursery amid raucous yelps and pounding feet; for two old men in cloth caps to gather on an ironwork bench beside the empty fountain in companionable silence; for housewives to drape laundry over the pulley lines set up outside their balconies.Long enough for the young man to curse himself for his cowardice and the opportunity he’d surely missed.Long enough for the man in the grey jacket to leave Trent’s apartment.Long enough for Trent to return.Except neither of them had.And none of the hundreds of people who’d passed by or lingered in the square had seemed to notice that Trent’s door was hanging very slightly open.Their curiosity hadn’t been aroused at all.Not by the lapse in security.Nor by the dull claps or the fractured shout of a few hours before.Now, life on the square had fallen into a familiar morning lull.There was nobody about.The young man couldn’t be certain how long it might last but he’d finally made up his mind.He was going to act.He was going to take a chance.He staggered out into the square, leaning forwards from the hip, like he was battling against a gale-force wind.His face was down and his right hand shielded his eyes, as if from the sun’s glare.His left hand was stuffed in the pocket of the hooded sweatshirt he had on.Thirty fast paces and he was at the other side of the square.Two more and he was outside the blue door.The locking unit was loose.Looked like it might topple out at any moment.The young man clenched his hand in his pocket.He muttered a few words of encouragement to himself.Then he jabbed the door with the heel of his palm and tried to ignore the watery sensation in his stomach as he took the hardest, heaviest step of his life.Chapter Forty-twoThere was a drainage trough on the other side of the road.Trent stumbled down it, then stepped over a low log barrier and set off across the dusty scrubland that lay ahead.There was no defined path.He would come to one eventually – could see it running diagonally up towards the far ridge like a scar in the chalky white rock – but for now he had to walk through untamed land.The ground fell away at an acute angle, forming a giant, shallow depression that jacked up towards the ridge.The going was rough and uneven.There was a lot of sandy earth and loose rock underfoot.It would be easy to turn an ankle.Low bushes and parched Mediterranean brush snagged the cuffs of his jeans and tangled with his bootlaces.He stomped through rosemary, thyme and myrtle.He trampled wild flowers, laurel and juniper.He moved on relentlessly, his skin crawling with the sensation of being watched.He pounded the ground and swung his arms, and all the while the droning traffic faded gradually from behind until the low hum started to blend with the throb of the blood in his ears.There was no shade.The tallest trees came only as high as his shoulders.He passed contorted pines and miniature green oaks, a weedy ash or two, and olive trees with knotted trunks.He squinted hard against the blinding light coming up off the baked white rock.He searched for movement.For the glint of a rifle scope.His eyes streamed in the glare.Not even mid-morning and his brow and neck and back were filmed with sweat.He clasped a palm to his skull and felt a warmth like he’d picked up a noontime boulder.The brush was dry as tinder.This time of summer, the Calanques were closed to the public because of the risk of wild fires.There’d be warning signs up on the official trails.There’d be red metal chains slung across them to deter hikers from coming through.So it was easy enough to believe he was alone out here.Just him and the hostile men who were watching.And as he got further away, beyond the ridge, he’d be out of sight of the road.He’d be even more vulnerable.Strange to think that he’d often been here before, and how different the barren environment had felt then.There’d been times when he’d set out on his own for a challenging hike to cleanse his mind of a tortuous negotiation.And there’d been other times, too.Occasions when he’d strolled along these trails with Aimée.When they’d marvelled at the stark beauty of this place, squeezing one another’s hands, the straps of a rucksack loaded with picnic things biting into Trent’s shoulders.Times when they’d spent whole days on the lonely beaches of Port Pin or Sormiou or, yes, En Vau.Afternoons when they’d lounged in the sun and bathed in the cooling green waters and he’d talked about one day teaching her to sail.Like the day she’d told him she was expecting his baby.He’d hired a small yacht and they’d sailed into the Calanque de Sugiton, laying anchor a short distance from the beach.They’d lazed in the sun [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]