At this moment, though, she dismisses all that as just another chapter in her life, the bigger issue being what they can do to fight back at the terrorists and shift the narrative.

  A look across at the hotel manager gives her no reassurances; he is quivering, sitting with the security manager. Kirk Fleming may be good at schmoozing customers and keeping staff in line, but he isn’t the kind of popular leader she would be prepared to follow.

  The fact Fleming had hired his twin brother as security manager said everything. Patrick is a decent enough guy, but he is more like Columbo than James Bond. His remit is making sure the customers are confident their valuables are safe, and the staff have no opportunity to pilfer from the company. In a lot of ways he is little more than a stock-taker with a shiny badge.

  Her mind returned to the present as the last few people join their group and the guy with the clipboard goes to the manager’s office.

  Sharon experiences a mixture of dread and morbid fascination when he returns a minute later with the woman who seems to be in charge.

  The woman takes up position in front of the hostages – Sharon isn’t under the illusion they are anything else – she is flanked by the guy with the clipboard and a man who looks more like a computer geek than a terrorist.

  The woman holds up an arm and waits for the small amount of chatter to subside before she speaks.

  Chapter 7

  Like everyone else in the room, I’m watching and waiting for Hannah to speak. It’s obvious she knows how to read a room, she’s aware we’re hanging on what she’s about to say, and she’s milking the situation like it’s a prize cow.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you have all been identified and I’m sure you’ve learned the value of cooperation.’ She gives a pointed look at the naked figure of Houston’s partner. ‘In a moment, you will all be called to come and speak with me privately. I hardly need emphasise the benefits of cooperating to you, but I think it would be remiss of me to assume you’re all going to do as you’re told.’ She pauses and licks her lips in a way that’s almost seductive. ‘The first person to refuse me or my men, at the time of asking, will be punished severely. The second will die screaming. In fact, they’ll be begging for death. This is something you’ll all witness because I will execute them in front of you as a reminder to anyone else who may have foolish ideas about heroism.’

  The way Hannah is ramming home her point seems off to me. Debbie Boitoult’s plight remains at the forefront of our minds, and Houston’s girlfriend is still naked. There is no need for Hannah to keep reiterating that we must cooperate.

  It’s overkill – unless what she’s going to ask us to do is so horrific that we are tempted to refuse. So far as I can work out, that can be the only explanation.

  Those who’ve paid to be here are all wealthy or influential people. Most of them are both.

  Sharon, who’s far more interested in these things than I am, has pointed out a few reality TV stars, an alleged singing sensation, and a former wrestler who has risen up the ranks until he’s in sole charge of a franchise that has grown men play-fighting for the amusement of small children.

  The only customer I’ve recognised myself is a former captain of the England football team.

  When I first met him, it was all I could do to control my temper and not shorten his over-sized nose for the goals he’d scored against Scotland in the European championship.

  The game took place years ago and it was one I’d watched on the Internet a day after it was first broadcast. That didn’t stop my sense of outrage at his overly-elaborate celebrations though. As for the former captain, he’s now the BBC’s go-to-presenter for all major sporting events.

  None of that is important though, what really matters is why Hannah is having private meetings with people. My first thought is that she’ll be pressing them for the contact details of someone who’ll pay a ransom for their safe return. My second, is that it’s Hogmanay, and likely payers of ransoms will not be easy to contact. There’s also the fact that communications have been cut. Hannah and her cohorts may have a satphone, or some other way of contacting the outside world, but I don’t know how their being able to contact others will help them unless the team here is only one part of their organisation.

  Another consideration is how they plan to make their escape; whatever happens tonight, there are only three ways to get to and from RidgeTop Resort.

  Number one is the cableway, but they won’t use that as it would deliver them right into the hands of anyone who might be waiting for them.

  Number two is by helicopter. It would work, but only to a certain extent; the current snowstorm, and the reduced visibility it has brought, will make flying incredibly dangerous – if not suicidal. Plus, it’s possible their crime will have been detected when they decide to leave. Therefore, there would be a full-scale attempt to track the helicopter to wherever it eventually lands. The tracking would be done by radar, and other technologies, until a police helicopter or two could be put on their tail. Depending on how serious their crimes get, there may even be military involvement. I can’t imagine having an Apache Gunship on their six is part of their plans.

  The third way to get to and from the resort is perhaps the foolhardiest. A top-class skier may be able to navigate their way down the slopes in darkness, but, like the cable car, they’d head right into the arms of any welcoming committee organised by the police.

  None of these seemed like good ideas to me, but, then again, I’m a former doorman, current bartender and occasional whatever-I-need-to-do-to-earn-a-buck guy, not a master criminal. The idea they’ve got a master plan is a given; what it is, is something for me to wonder about.

  I see Clipboard lift one of the A4 envelopes from the pile, which some of the terrorists have been creating on the bar’s counter, and approach Hannah.

  Hannah looks at the envelope and turns her head so she’s looking at the assembled crowd.

  ‘Zack Longhorn. Will you and your wife please come to the front?’

  Chapter 8

  Nathan Miller looks at the console in front of him and sees nothing except the glare from the light, which tells him there is a power failure at the other end of the cableway. That shouldn’t be a problem: if there is no power, the operator at the top can throw a lever to disengage the gearing mechanism and the entire cableway can be controlled from the base station.

  It may not be as speedy as having both the top and bottom stations supplying power, but it will still work.

  Yet when he tries to set the motor into gear it whines and protests until its powerful motor causes the wheel to turn without achieving anything bar the tightening of the pull cable.

  He stops the motor at once, before either the motor burns out or the cable becomes over-stressed.

  His next move is to radio his counterpart, Steve, at RidgeTop. There is no point in him looking out of the window as he thumbs the key, but he looks anyway. As has been the case since dawn, thick, wet snow is falling – he knows ‘falling’ is a misnomer for what the snow is doing.

  Rather than drifting to the ground in a more or less vertical path, the ferocious winds that power the snowstorm are driving each flake two feet across for every foot that gravity is pulling it.

  He can see nothing because of the blizzard, he hears nothing because nobody answers, and he says nothing because there is nobody to speak to. All by himself, he’s covered the same bases as the three wise monkeys.

  Steve may well have gone to the can, but Nathan knows Steve is a stickler for protocol, and his counterpart always alerts him whenever he’ll be away from his post and when he’s got back.

  With no response, he pulls his backpack from under the desk and grabs himself a sandwich from the box he brought with him.

  Tonight wasn’t supposed to be his shift, but he swapped it so he could have Christmas at home with his family.

  Boy, had that been a mistake.

  His father was as ornery as ever. The day had been spent with the man, whom Nathan had never been able to respect, complaining about the noise Nathan’s kids made, about the meal Nathan’s wife had spent hours cooking, and then, to cap it all off, he railed on Nathan, blaming him for his mother finding the man from the dime store preferable to her husband.

  The day had ended with a lot of harsh words and a standoff that had been one wrong comment away from evolving into a fist fight.

  With his sandwich finished, and a smear of mayo decorating the tips of his moustache, Nathan tries to contact Steve for a second time.

  Once again there’s no answer. Another look out of the window returns the same twenty feet of vision-obscuring blizzard.

  Nathan now faces a dilemma: he can dismiss Steve’s absence from his post as an inconsequential one – there are no passengers scheduled to travel on the cableway tonight, he and Steve are only in post in case there is an emergency of some kind – or he can listen to the prickle in his gut and call someone else at the resort.

  Sure, it may get Steve in a spot of trouble, but, on the other hand, if something is wrong, the sooner he acts the better.

  He puts down the radio and picks up the telephone handset. As soon as he dials the number for the resort’s reception desk he is met with the same flat monotone he got before he dialled.

  Nathan tries dialling a second time and gets the same result.

  By now, the prickle in his gut is a full-blown porcupine charging around looking for escape.

  Nathan’s instinct tells him that something is wrong up there. It’s one thing Steve failing to answer his radio, but for the telephones to be out too suggests there is a bigger issue, such as a power cut. The problem is, he knows there is a generator at RidgeTop that is more than capable of powering the resort.

  It may just be a series of coincidences, but it may be something more serious. If the resort has no power, the residents will be in for a long, cold night.

  Rather than take any chances, Nathan dials another number and relays his concerns to Olly Attwood, the manager of RidgeTop’s sister resort, RidgeWay.

  RidgeWay is aimed at the everyday person, rather than the elite, and its resort is based further along the valley. With six times the bed space of RidgeTop, RidgeWay is a much larger complex, its hotel at the bottom of the mountain and nothing more than a cafeteria and small medical centre at the end of its cableway. It is, however, the hub of operations, and as such, the manager there is in overall charge of both resorts.

  The man listens to what Nathan has to say and promises to contact Fleming up at RidgeTop to see what’s going on.

  With his concerns passed up the chain of command, Nathan abdicates himself from any responsibility and rummages in his backpack for something else to eat. His groping hand finds a candy bar and an apple. One of the two will have to be kept for later, so he flips a mental coin and makes sure it comes down on the side that lets him have the candy.

  He peels the wrapper from the candy bar and looks out of the window, wondering, as he stares into the blizzard, whether there is something amiss at RidgeTop, or whether he’s just hit the panic button for no reason.

  Chapter 9

  I watch as Zack Longhorn levers himself upright and strides forward. He’s a proud Texan, made obvious by his cowboy boots and the metal tips on the collar of his shirt, and his voice is a languid drawl as he addresses Clipboard. Longhorn is either completely unafraid, or too stupid to realise the danger he’s in.

  The wife he trails behind him suggests he may be stupider than he is brave. She’s half his age and, judging from the way she’s made up, she’s all about style rather than substance. Nothing about her looks real; her nails are fake, as are her eyelashes, and her face has been made up in a way that suggests she’d be unrecognisable if seen without the layer of slap she’s applied. The breasts her gown is struggling to contain are way too large for her frame.

  All in all, she carries the look of someone who’s out to snare a rich man, and if Longhorn has fallen for her charms, there’s every possibility he’s not as bright as he’d like people to think.

  Tattoo Neck is standing beside Clipboard and he pats down Longhorn with a thoroughness that speaks of much practice, or his having been the recipient of a nasty surprise at some point in his nefarious career. Either way, there’s no chance that Longhorn has gotten anything larger than a toothpick past him.

  When Tattoo Neck turns his attention to Little Miss Made Up she pouts, and looks to Longhorn to stop the terrorist from touching her.

  Longhorn fixes her with a commanding look, so she submits to Tattoo Neck’s professional pat-down with ill grace and the sullen pout perfected by teenage girls.

  She shudders when the backs of Tattoo Neck’s hands glide over her hips, but it’s when they slide up between her legs that she reacts in a way that risks her life.

  Her knee pulses forward towards the crouched terrorist’s nose and her hand is pulled back ready to throw what I’m sure she intends to be a devastating slap.

  Tattoo Neck is too fast for her and, as he ducks his head away from the knee that is arrowing for his nose, his hand reaches for the knife on his hip.

  Longhorn is even quicker. He doesn’t just grab the arm that’s arcing towards Tattoo Neck, he uses it to reposition Little Miss Made Up so she’s behind him.

  ‘That’s enough, my dear. The man is only doing his job.’

  Tattoo Neck has a scowl on his face, but he lets the matter drop when Longhorn ushers the young woman back to his side and tells her to stand still.

  It’s an interesting exchange as it denotes the balance of power in the Longhorn household, as well as Tattoo Neck’s professionalism. Like a good security guard, he used the backs of his hands to pat down the Longhorn’s intimate areas. While the process was invasive, it was carried out with the maximum humanity.

  Had Buzz Cut been the one to pat them down, I’m not sure he would have used the backs of his hands, or passed up the chance to grab a handful of Little Miss Made Up’s more rounded assets.

  Even Tattoo Neck’s response to the girl’s attempt to strike him had shown his professionalism. Not only had he avoided harm, he’d also reacted by reaching for his knife.

  I’ve more experience than I care to regarding gun and knife fights, and it’s taught me, at such close quarters, the knife is better than the gun. Yet Tattoo Neck had shown enough restraint to not use the knife until he’d assessed the changing situation and realised that Longhorn himself was offering no threat and was nullifying the one presented by Little Miss Made Up.

  Nor does he press the matter while he finishes his pat-down of Little Miss Made Up. A spot of petty retaliation may have been enacted to establish superiority and quell any further uprisings, but he doesn’t go down that road.

  This tells me, for this part of their plan, the terrorists are not putting undue pressure on their hostages. The only reason for this, that I can think of, is there must be further coercion to come, and they want their victims to be compliant rather than defiant.

  While it may work on a group level to make an example of someone, it will carry a lesser impact to each individual couple if it isn’t directed specifically at them.

  My guess is that Longhorn is the terrorists’ target of this couple, and Little Miss Made Up will be used as leverage to make him comply with their wishes.

  As Tattoo Neck leads them to the manager’s office where Hannah awaits, I hope for Little Miss Made Up’s sake that Longhorn truly loves her. Otherwise, she may find herself at the receiving end of Hannah’s brutality.

  Chapter 10

  The threat to Little Miss Made Up is palpable to me, but it’s not the thing giving me the cold sweats. Much as I hate to see anyone suffer, the overly made-up young woman isn’t someone I know or care about. Having been in a similar position to Longhorn, as the protector of a loved one, I can only hope for her sake he makes better decisions than I did.

  The knowledge that you’re responsible for the suffering of someone you love is a burden that never lightens. I’d tried to deal with my guilt in a variety of predictable ways.

  First, I ran away. Leaving Casperton and my friends and family behind had been cowardice, disguised as my removing myself for their benefit. I kidded myself that I had to leave so they didn’t become victims of my poor choices. That didn’t work out well for anyone, and the infrequent contact I have had with my mother and my best friend has engendered little more than homesickness and a deepening of my guilt.

  My next attempt to escape my problems was to climb inside a bottle or six. This was an even worse solution than running away. I can be a mean drunk and I got myself into bar fight after bar fight. I won each fight as they happened, but the reality of my actions was that I was looking for someone to kick my ass in a grandiose bout of self-flagellation.

  The end result was me picking on the wrong man when I was half done-in with drink and the night’s previous battles. The guy I selected as my target was the biggest guy in the bar. Considering the shape I was in, he had every advantage he needed, and I was too drunk to realise he had three buddies with him.

  When I came to, it was under the harsh lights of an emergency room.

  A few days later, when my bruises had healed, I got a handful of quarters and found a working payphone.

  Doctor Edwards had initially refused to take my call. I could understand that: he’d been fond of Taylor too. She was his receptionist after all.

  I persisted throughout the day and eventually I persuaded him, via his new receptionist, to give me a telephone consultation.

  The half-hour conversation I had with him ate up a pocketful of quarters and left a hole in my chest.

  He started out by insisting I ran through the whole sequence of events.

  When he heard the unbridled truth, he offered neither consolation nor condemnation. Like the psychologist he was, he asked what I thought about my actions.