Then Lucas swiveled in his seat and smiled at me.
“Sorry, Charlie, I didn’t mean to scare ya,” he said, sounding almost genuinely penitent. “I was just coming around to pick you up there.”
I pushed myself back into my seat slowly, uncurling my stiffened fingers and taking a deep breath to dilute the adrenaline that was coursing through my system. I checked his face carefully. Was it my imagination, or did the smile not quite reach his eyes?
“Of course you were,” I said softly, letting the double answer play out. “I never thought you were doing anything different.”
Nine
I didn’t get the opportunity to tell Simone about my conversation with Frances Neagley before we arrived at our destination, by which time I felt it was already too late. The only good thing was that Ella had nodded off soon after our last rest stop and so I could give my full attention to our current situation.
Greg Lucas lived in a small town called North Conway in the White Mountains, about three hours north of Boston, and the contrast from the dark and serious city was marked. North Conway was picture-postcard pretty, for the most part, with clapboard houses painted a variety of pastel shades. Very few had garden fences separating them, adding to the friendly feel, like there was no need to keep out strangers. Like nothing bad could happen here.
Christmas fairy lights still decorated the shop fronts, even in early February. And there did seem to be a lot of shopping available, outlets mostly, boasting just about every famous name designer brand I’d ever heard of. When I remarked on this, Lucas smiled and explained there was no state sales tax in New Hampshire.
“This time of year, people come to North Conway mainly to ski, but when they’re done on the slopes there’s plenty for them to spend their dollars on,” he said, flashing a quick smile. “Keeps the wheels turning.”
He’d already told us, in broad terms, that he had a business dealing in military surplus supplies in the neighboring town of Intervale. For once I didn’t have to probe further into that. Simone was curious enough about what the man who claimed to be her father did for a living to ask him enough questions of her own. She seemed calmer than she had been when we’d left Boston, but as she listened to Lucas’s explanations there was still a certain eagerness about her that concerned me.
He was, to my mind, still pretty vague about it. The way Lucas talked, you’d think all he handled was army boots and camouflage-colored tents. But given his military background I couldn’t help but wonder what else he might be involved in. I was just wondering how to phrase a question when Simone beat me to it.
“So, does that mean you sell guns?” she asked. I glanced at her in surprise. Maybe she wasn’t quite as taken in by Lucas as I’d feared.
He frowned, slowing for a stoplight. “Not really,” he answered, which was no answer at all. “I have them, of course.” In the mirror I saw him flick his eyes sideways at her, as if to gauge her reaction. “It’s kind of a natural thing out here.”
Simone shook her head. “Not to me it isn’t,” she said sharply “I can’t stand them, and I won’t have them around Ella.”
Lucas nodded seriously. “They’re all safely under lock and key, honey,” he said mildly. “Don’t you worry about it.”
Simone didn’t reply to that, but I could tell by the way she’d turned her head away and was staring fixedly out of the window that his answer hadn’t entirely reassured her.
It was nearly one in the afternoon and the landscape was blisteringly white in the stark bright sunshine. We’d drive through enclosed forest sections, then suddenly there’d be a gap in the trees and you’d see distant snow-covered mountains. The scale of the place was overwhelming.
Lucas pointed out the local ski resort over to our right as we trundled down the seemingly never-ending main street. “Mount Cranmore,” he told us, adding that they had some nice easy nursery slopes there, for when Simone was thinking of getting Ella out on skis.
“Oh, she’s much too young for that,” Simone protested, glancing back at where her daughter lay sleeping alongside me.
“You never can start them too early,” he said. “You’ll be amazed how soon she picks it up.” There was something a little earnest about the way he spoke, as though he was looking for reassurance that they would be staying long enough for something like skiing lessons to be a possibility.
For some reason the thought unsettled me. We were passing a variety of restaurants and I grasped at the idea of getting Simone away from Lucas long enough to speak to her, especially somewhere safely public.
“What about stopping for a bite of lunch?” I suggested brightly.
“I have lunch all set once we get to the house,” Lucas said, and I suppressed a groan. “We’re only a couple minutes away now”
He kept checking Simone’s face, I noticed, and his hands seemed to be gripping the steering wheel more tightly than was strictly necessary. His nervousness was making me twitchy It had increased noticeably in the last few miles. What was at the house that he didn’t want Simone to see? Or what was going to happen once we got there?
I soon found out.
At first it looked like Lucas was taking us right to the ski slopes. We turned off the main street into a side road that quickly became residential. Big detached houses with the front driveways neatly cleared of snow, and basketball hoops above the garage doors. A number had American flags hanging limply from poles in their front gardens. Just about every house had a pickup truck or a big four-wheel drive in front of it. Still, the snow must have been a couple of feet thick in places, so you actually needed the extra traction.
We crossed a railway line and turned left onto a street called Kearsage, then right onto Snowmobile. I kept glancing out of the rear window so I’d recognize them again from the other direction. Never get yourself into anywhere you can’t get out of. It was one of the first things I’d learned.
I examined my options. In theory, when it came to Simone’s security I was in charge. Yes — technically-she was my employer, but if she was actively exposing herself to danger, I had the authority to override her decisions. It was a nice theory. Practice was another matter.
In practice, I couldn’t physically restrain her. One of Sean’s rules was that if a client constantly disregarded advice, we walked away from the job. Better that than put his team at risk doing something they knew was unnecessarily dangerous or taking the fall for their principal getting killed instead. Not, at this stage, that I felt there was any real danger involved here, and leaving Simone and Ella to cope on their own was not an option.
Besides anything else, the whole purpose of her visit to the U.S., as she’d pointed out, was to find and get to know her father. Even I had to admit that this trip to North Conway with him was a perfect opportunity for her to do that. The fact that I had reservations about him-albeit ones that I couldn’t turn into anything concrete — counted for nothing. Simone dismissed my cautious approach as an overreaction like the one she believed I’d had on Boston Common.
We seemed nearly at the base of the mountain now. I could see the lines of the ski lifts rising above us, dotted with people taking advantage of the sunshine. Just when it looked like we were heading right for the ski lodge at the bottom of the mountain and were going to have to complete our journey by sleigh, Lucas made another right turn, past the tubing park and the Fitness Center that even boasted its own climbing wall. Another quarter of a mile farther on, Lucas slowed and said in a tense voice to Simone, “Well, here we are.”