Did he trust Henrik? Ryker thought as he lay in his bed. Not really. Henrik was fifteen years old and impulsive.
Ryker had had doubts before about whether he needed to watch the boy more closely, but to what end? He really wasn’t the kid’s guardian. More than once on their travels together they’d shared a room, meaning Ryker was able to keep a close eye on and control the boy’s movements, but Ryker didn’t believe either of them really wanted that in the long term. The way Ryker saw it, if Henrik wanted to keep Ryker by his side, he’d have to learn to be open and honest. Simple as that. Trust was built by being trustworthy.
That thought didn’t make Ryker feel any more comfortable as he tried to sleep. But what was the alternative? Other than going and spying on Henrik’s room through the night to make sure he was there and stayed there. Ryker wouldn’t do that. In many ways, he had to leave it up to Henrik to make his own mistakes. As long as Henrik realized that Ryker wouldn’t always be there to bail him out.
Content with his decision, Ryker slept relatively well. He woke just after 8 a.m. and showered and dressed before heading to Henrik’s room. He knocked and waited. And waited. Knocked again. His brain spun with thoughts when he finally heard soft footsteps on the other side.
Henrik opened the door, hair mussy, eyes bleary.
‘Breakfast?’ Ryker said, sounding a lot brighter than Henrik looked.
‘Give me ten.’
* * *
Fifteen minutes later they were walking the slushy streets in search of a café.
‘Anything else you want to tell me?’ Ryker said.
‘About what?’
‘You know.’
Silence, before, ‘No.’
‘Okay, so this is the plan. We’re checking out of that hotel this morning. We’ll go and find an outdoor clothing store. We’ll buy a tent and all the gear we need and we’ll head into the mountains for a few days.’
Ryker looked at Henrik. He didn’t seem too impressed by the proposition.
‘You’re the one that wanted to do some climbing, I thought,’ Ryker said.
Henrik didn’t say anything to that.
‘And while we’re up there, away from civilization, away from the people here who already hate us, it’ll give us plenty of time to talk. Plenty of time for you to tell me exactly why we’ve come to this town. Because I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just to play pool and flirt with young women.’
‘Actually, playing pool and flirting sounds pretty good to me,’ Henrik said with a smile, and Ryker couldn’t help but reciprocate.
‘The problem is, Henrik, I know you too well.’
He winked. Henrik looked away as though he’d been found out.
They enjoyed a decent breakfast of omelets and orange juice and coffee before arriving at the store just as it was opening for the day. They didn’t take long to choose the appropriate gear and a simple pop-up tent. Ryker had enough cash for the purchases, plus enough left for a few days of food, but they wouldn’t be able to afford another night in a hotel without getting more cash from Ryker’s reserves, for which they’d need to move to a bigger town to find a money transfer shop.
Henrik’s cheap burner phone was also broken beyond repair so Ryker bought him a new one from a convenience store. The cheapest they had. It wasn’t as though Henrik really needed anything extravagant. Other than Ryker, he had no one to communicate with.
Having chatted little neither over breakfast nor in the shops or subsequently on the way back to the hotel, Ryker had nonetheless mentally prepared a list of questions for Henrik once they got moving away from St Ricard. Hopefully, in the intervening time, Henrik had been given chance enough to realize he needed to spill the beans. Ryker didn’t want to have to force the truth out of him. He’d leave it down to the youngster to make the call.
Ryker kept his eyes working as they walked. The streets were already busy with people in their puffy waterproof ski gear, heading for breakfast, or keen to be the first to the slopes. Ryker remained on the lookout for any of the people from the bar, not just from a defensive perspective but because he’d had more than a passing thought about Amelie and how he’d react if he saw her again. He wondered, too, whether Henrik would welcome bumping into Ella.
Perhaps both of them had burned their bridges there already.
They turned the corner toward the hotel. Ryker’s eyes rested on the blue-and-white car parked outside belonging to the Gendarmerie – France’s rural police, effectively part of the military.
Ryker glanced at Henrik who looked unsure of himself.
‘You don’t think…’
Henrik didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t really need to. Ryker thought the police’s presence was anything but a coincidence.
As they approached, a gendarme stepped out through the doors of the hotel and moved toward his car, but a couple of beats later he looked over and spotted Ryker and Henrik. A second gendarme stepped from the car and rose to his feet. Ryker looked up. He had to because the guy was six-six, possibly six-seven, and heavyset. His average-sized colleague looked diminutive in comparison.
‘You two,’ the smaller, older of the two said in French. ‘Come here.’
Ryker sensed Henrik staring at him, and he knew why. Henrik was asking him whether they should comply or run. Or even fight. But Ryker had no inclination to cause a scene. Not another one. This was about a simple bar fight. A bar fight he felt perfectly comfortable explaining, even if he did wonder both who’d called the police and why it had taken them so long to come after them.
‘Gentlemen,’ Ryker said as they reached the gendarmes, deciding on English.
The two police officers glanced at one another before the smaller one spoke again.
‘You need to come with us,’ he said to Henrik, switching to English now too.
He made a move toward Henrik but Ryker put his arm out across Henrik’s chest.
‘I don’t think he does.’
Both officers stepped back and placed a hand to their holstered weapons and Ryker raised his hands in defense.
‘He’s fifteen years old,’ Ryker said.
‘So?’ the bigger gendarme said. ‘He still needs to come with us.’
‘You’re his father?’ the smaller one asked.
Ryker hesitated, but only for a moment. ‘Yes.’
‘Then you can come too.’
‘What about the others from the bar?’ Ryker said. ‘The ones who punched and kicked my son. The one who threatened me with a broken glass bottle. Are you arresting them too?’
Both of the gendarmes frowned.
‘What bar?’ the big man said.
Ryker glanced at Henrik who squirmed away.
The big man leaned down and whispered into his boss’s ear, and the look on the smaller guy’s face turned from confusion to some sort of amusement.
‘Ah. Okay. So that was you two as well.’
Ryker and Henrik said nothing. The big man took his hand from the grip of his gun and took a pair of handcuffs from his belt.
‘Turn around,’ he said to Henrik.
‘He’s under arrest,’ the boss said.
‘Arrest?’ Ryker said. ‘For what?’
‘For trespassing. For breaking and entering. And we can talk about the fight too, perhaps.’
‘This is rid—’
Ryker went to move to the side to protect Henrik but the big man caught him off guard, grabbed his arm, swung him around, and slapped the cuffs over his wrists.
‘For your own safety,’ he said before Henrik’s hands were cuffed too.
‘Now, gentlemen, please, this way.’
The gendarmes escorted Ryker and Henrik to the back seats of their car then got into the front. As the car peeled away from the hotel, Ryker found himself looking at a spot on the footpath across the street. A spot where three women in ski gear looked on with interest. His eyes found Amelie’s for just a second before she shook her head and looked away, disgusted.
Yes, bridge definitely burned there, Ryker realized, even if he had no clue yet why.