This time it was harder.
This time she had expectations.
Catherine sighed, turning the slim, crystal stem of her wine glass between her fingers. Not that it mattered if she sighed loudly or surreptitiously –she didn’t think her date really knew she was there. Or if he did, he wasn’t happy about it.
His strong, lean fingers worked the cutlery, making short, surgical work of the steak he’d ordered. He’d made the choice of this venue, and a week after their first date, they were dining in the smart restaurant of an upmarket boutique hotel.
She glanced across at him. He wore a dark suit, sharply cut, with a navy shirt and no tie. As he swallowed, the cords of his throat moved under supple, golden skin that somehow glowed in the frame of his open collar.
Catherine felt a hot, dark pain shoot through her: equal parts longing and pure sexual need. Some of the longing, she knew, was for him to feel the same need. She sighed again, and sipped her wine.
When she looked up from the crimson merlot, she found his eyes on her. She forced a smile.
‘This is a lovely place,’ she said.
‘Yes.’ His lips moved to shape the word, then flattened into a hard, grim line.
She swallowed. ‘Have you been here before?’ Oh yes, a great conversationalist you are.
‘Yes.’ Lips formed the word, then settled flat.
‘Is your steak good?’ Heaven help me.
‘Yes.’ Flat line.
Something snapped in her. She got to her feet, dropping her pristine napkin onto her half-finished boeuf en croute, struggling with her chair on the plush carpet until a waiter drew it out for her. Jonathan came smoothly to his feet without effort, making her feel even more awkward.
‘This is clearly a mistake.’ She didn’t care that the waiter still hovered, that curious faces were turning their way. ‘Goodnight.’
‘Catherine –’
She didn’t wait, keeping her head so high she nearly tripped over her own handbag –the waiter restored it to her –she walked swiftly out of the dining room, aware of the murmur of voices behind her, half obscured by the buzzing in her ears.
‘Cath, wait…’
She didn’t stop for her coat, almost running out the door, heading instinctively for the darkest part of the street. Footsteps sounded and she spun round. ‘Go. Away.’
He had her coat. He stopped warily a few paces away.
In silence, she held out her hand for her coat, but he didn’t give it to her. A few seconds passed, while the goose bumps rose on her arms. He stood half in, half out of the light, the amber illumination slashing across his face as if he wore a mask. One eye glittered.
‘I’m sorry. It’s…’ He glanced over his shoulder. A taxi drove towards them, a gaggle of partying women, tottering in high heels, giggled their way down the road. ‘It’s just that I shouldn’t be here.’
‘You shouldn’t…Oh, God. You’re married.’
‘Married!’ The eye flared wide in shock, in alarm. ‘No. God, no,’ he said, glancing away as if dazed.
‘Then why? What do you mean?’
He stepped closer, still not quite looking at her. Her coat was draped over his left arm, but his other hand was out of sight. He looked again down the road, as if embarrassed to be seen with her. Turned a little away from her, his right arm straightened, held down by his side in shadow. He moved closer, until she could see that he breathed hard, the line of his shoulders tense.
‘Easy, don’t rush,’ he muttered, under his breath. He looked round once more, the street was finally empty, and then, and only then, he turned his head, looked down, and met her eyes.
There it was again. That sense of dislocation, echoed in the blue eyes that stared down into hers, the head rearing back just a little. The traffic noise died, drowned by the hammering of the blood in her ears.
She couldn’t remember the last breath she’d taken.
‘Damn,’ he said, dropped her coat onto the pavement, caught her head in his left hand, and kissed her.
Jonathan grabbed her hand, urging her on. He kept her moving, hoping to keep her out of breath and out of questions, because at some point he was going to have to explain and everything in him rebelled at looking down into those courageous, trusting eyes and saying…saying…
God.
They went through some sort of peaty bog at speed, stumbling over tussocks, going ankle deep in the soft ground. Cath tripped and went down, mired to the knee, and he took a moment to steady his breathing, getting a look behind them. The top of the path they’d ascended levelled out onto a plateau, creating a broad moor where the tarn on their left lay still, shadowed silver. Ahead to the right, the mountain rose, a smooth, rounded shoulder of the long ridge that formed this side of the wide valley, falling away to ragged crags on the opposite side.
Their pursuers hadn’t yet appeared behind them. His mind ran ahead, but without cover, without…belatedly he realised Cath was still struggling in the bog. He got a grip of her trousers and heaved her out.
‘Run,’ he said, and knew from the hated flicker of fear in her eyes that something of his urgency was getting through. She shook the peat from her hands and ran, heading up the slope, picking her way carefully, but moving fast. Even while his mind switched from pleasure to business, he was still able to admire the way she moved, the strength in her legs, the nimble way she picked level, solid footings among the detritus of the fellside.
He ran at her shoulder, ready to force her on when her strength began to fail. He risked a look behind. They were still in luck. He didn’t know the names of the men they’d sent, but he knew why they were here.
They were here to finish the job he hadn’t.
It hit him, then, with blinding, breath-stealing clarity, that explaining to Catherine wasn’t the worst thing he could face today.
Losing her would be.
‘Cath, wait!’ he hissed, making a grab for her shoulder and missing, off-balance in body and mind. ‘Wait!’
She skidded to a halt and he found himself almost rooted to the spot. Her face was white, only the heat of exertion lending it colour. Her mouth shook.
Catherine, I’m so sorry. ‘Look, I need to explain, in case…in case I don’t get to later.’
She didn’t say anything.
Over her shoulder he could see cloud boiling up out of the neighbouring valley, spilling over the edge.
‘The men after us. You need to be afraid of them, if we get separated, you need to run, hide, and get to safety.’
She stared. He wiped sweat from his face. ‘You…they…’ He swallowed. No time for finesse in survival. ‘I wasn’t supposed to kiss you when we met, Catherine. I was supposed to kill you.’
Tears welled in her unblinking eyes, hovering there an impossible time before tracking over her ashen cheeks. She was utterly still, not a muscle flickered in her face.
‘I wasn’t supposed to kiss you. I wasn’t supposed to like you. I wasn’t supposed to see you again, to fall in love with you, Catherine.’ He raked his fingers through his hair, tugging at the roots. He wanted to comfort her, but he was the source of her pain. ‘I was supposed to fulfil a contract. But I didn’t, I…From their point of view, I failed. So now they’ve sent people to…clean up.’
She moved, just the back of one hand to swipe across her eyes. ‘Kill me?’
She was in shock.
‘You piece of slime!’
‘Catherine –’
‘You can’t –You don’t –Oh, how could you?’ she cried. She pressed her hands to her face, bending over, making a keening, hurting sound.
‘Catherine –’
‘Don’t say my name!’ she shrieked, leaping upright, staggering backwards. ‘Get away from me!’
‘No,’ he said, as she began to run. ‘No, no, no, no, no,’ he muttered under his breath as he went after her. She struggled when he first got a grip on her, but he’d expected that. He tried to restrain without hurting, tucking her arm up, winding her close, avoiding her kicking. ‘No, Catherine, you need me –You can’t –’
‘I need you?’ She spun in his grip, trying to bring her teeth to bear, raking his shins with her heels.
He went down with her, shocking her with the movement, with the hissed words at her ear, ‘If you want to live, Catherine, you need me.’
She stopped fighting, only breathing hard, vibrating with anger.
‘Do you hear me? Focus. If you want to live, you have to work with me.’
‘I hate you,’ she said, in a dull toneless voice.
‘Well, I love you,’ he said, tasting bile, ‘and if I can’t kill you, no one can.’
Some remaining sane part of his brain heard those words in action replay and reared back, incredulous, but it seemed to work.
She turned her head slightly in his hold. He could see the flicker of one eye, the impossibly beautiful curve of her cheek, dark strands of hair plastered to it. There was a speck of mud high on her cheekbone, near her eye. Carefully, moving slowly, he wiped it away with one fingertip.
She shifted, a relaxing of tension, a change of balance. ‘Let me go.’
He had to duck his head to hear, she spoke so softly. He let go.
She sat up slowly, her back to him, then got to her feet, ignoring his offered hand, brushing mud from her trousers with slow, jerky movements. She turned partway towards him, looking at him out of the corner of her eye, as if facing him fully was beyond her.
‘What do we do?’ she asked.
‘Get ahead,’ he said, ‘while I work out how to neutralise them.’
Catherine looked at him, then, and he wished she hadn’t. ‘OK.’
‘On, up,’ he said, waving at the slope ahead of them, towards an old dry stone wall that crossed the path, and she started running again.
He’d been crazy to think there was any way he could get away with this. Crazy to think it would all go away if he didn’t face it. Well, now he was facing it, and facing this: he was going to see to it that Catherine survived, and then…and then…
Well. For him, there was no ‘and then’.
Catherine scrambled through a gap in the wall, breathing hard, her legs burning. Jonathan caught her arm and gestured ahead, further up slope, where she could see a ragged tumble of stones where a cairn and stone shelter lay beside the path.
‘Catherine. Take cover there and wait.’
‘Why?’
‘So I can get round behind and –’
‘No. Why did they want me dead?’
He pulled her down, speaking quickly, ‘That contract last month, the network security one? They said you downloaded something you weren’t –’
‘I didn’t!’
His grip tightened on her arm. ‘It doesn’t matter. It only matters that they thought you did.’
She stared. He wasn’t looking at her, was peering round the rough stones in the wall. The yellow lichen looked as if someone had dropped splodges of turmeric on the green-grey stone.
‘That was all?’ she whispered.
‘Yes. It was enough. For them. Now move.’
She didn’t look at him, but headed where he’d pointed. She glanced back, looking down across the climb they’d made. Their pursuers staggered over the rough ground, but Jonathan was bent double behind the wall, heading back.
As she watched, the men caught sight of her and shouted, just as Jonathan slipped over the wall, dropping into the ghyll almost behind them.
And the roiling grey cloud crested the tops of the crags and swept across the fell before a strengthening wind, hiding everything.