Page 66 of Mountain Summons

“What photographs?”

“Don’t play dumb, Lena. I need to see the photographs you took that day, up in the mountains.All of them.”

“That’s why you reached out to me, after all this time. You weren’t writing an article about the skeleton.”

“Brilliant deduction. Stop wasting time. I know your boyfriend’s out there waiting for you. We don’t want him to come here looking for you, do we?”

Don’t we?That was exactly what Lena wanted …

Or it was, until the pistol appeared in André’s hand. It was old, the metal dulled with age, but no less dangerous for it. And it was pointed straight at her.

Lena felt her breath shatter. She was French—soldiers patrolling around airports or public spaced often carried weapons much bigger than this one. But they’d never pointed them at her. And André wasn’t a soldier. André was?—

“Now, Lena,” he said quietly, gesturing with the pistol. “Let’s not make this any harder than it has to be.”

She didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. She was calculating the distance to the door, whether she could make it—but he was blocking the way, and she knew she couldn’t.

“You’ve already made things hard enough for me. I went to your house to look for the photographs—found nothing, and almost got caught by a nosy neighbor. I’m out of patience, Lena,” he threatened.

The break-in.It was him.

“I don’t have them with me.” A lie. Not a great one. She just wanted to buy time. Time to think. Time to figure out what this was about. But her brain had turned porous, and she knew time was one thing she didn’t have.

“Show me the photographs, Lena. Now.”

She pulled her laptop out of the bag and set it on the table, hands shaking so hard she had trouble finding the power button. As she typed in her password, she wondered if she was doing the right thing.

Yes. She was. She was stalling. She was keeping André away from Tristan. And maybe—just maybe—if she waited long enough, Tristan would figure out something was wrong and call for help.

She navigated to the right folder, her fingers trembling slightly on the trackpad, and opened up the first image.

André snatched the computer roughly from her, his grip jerking the screen sideways as he yanked it toward himself. His eyes flicked manically between the laptop and her, then back again, pupils darting as he clicked through the photographs in rapid succession.

But the pistol—it never wavered. It remained steady, its dark barrel fixed on her with a focus that sent ice-cold shivers down her spine.

Lena kept her breathing slow, deliberate. She could hear the rush of her own blood roaring in her ears.

“I don’t understand,” she tried again, voice soft, coaxing. “You’ve seen them before, André.”

“Shut the hell up.”

The snarl in his voice was sharp, edged with panic. He clicked faster, more frantically, his mouth tightening with each image that flicked by. The whites of his eyes showed too much. His breathing grew uneven, shoulders hunched over the laptop like a man searching for something in a dark tunnel.

“Whereisit?” he spat out.

“What?” Lena asked carefully, watching him—not just the gun, but the sweat starting to bead at his temple, the tremor creeping into his jaw, the way his hand twitched over the keys.

“It’s not here.” He ran a shaky hand through his thinning hair, disheveling it further. “It’s not fucking here.”

“André, listen to me?—”

“Don’t,” he hissed, his hand jerking up, the gun swinging a little too wildly now. “You don’t get it, Lena. This—this was supposed to fix everything.”

Her mouth was dry. She fought to keep her voice steady. “Fix what?”

Keep him talking. That seemed safer than the alternative.

But he didn’t reply. All at once, André slammed the laptop shut with a sharp snap that made her flinch.

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