Page 3 of Mountain Security

She looked down at her polished L.K Bennett black leather heels. At five-seven, she was tall enough that she could comfortably have worn flats or boots with the suit, and perhaps with the snow outside that would have made the most sense, but she liked the way the three-inch heels put her at eye-level with most men. In her profession, she’d always found it useful to be able to stare men in the eye.

Plus, the heels completed the outfit.

Yvette hadn’t always been interested in fashion. She’d grown up in a poor household—she didn’t remember a time when they hadn’t been poor, but after her father’s unexpected death at the construction site where he worked, when Yvette was six, her mother’s concern had been about what to feed Yvette and her sister. The two girls lived off hand-me-downs for many, many years.

Yvette’s life was very different now.

She’d been lucky enough to be accepted at a good university, and luckier still to have a support network ensuring she graduated. She’d discovered a passion for politics. It was the perfect career for her—the job where she could make the difference she wanted to make in the world. And she was good at it—over the last years she’d developed a reputation for always being cool under pressure.

She sighed.

She didn’t feel so cool today.

The events of the previous week had left her feeling unsteady. Someone had been copying files from their office—confidential files that should never have left their secure server, but were now in some unknown person’s hands.

It had been Yvette who’d discovered the file theft, but it’d been her boss’s idea to bring in somebody from outside to help.

Yvette trusted Mayor Pierre Chevalier implicitly—he’d been her boss for six years, and together they’d done important work.

And we have so much work left ahead of us.

But she knew how fragile political well-being was. If it came out that their office wasn’t able to keep city files safe, it could jeopardize everything they were working towards. It could mean losing the election next spring.

For the hundredth time, she wondered if bringing somebody from outside was a good idea, or if they might simply be making a bad thing worse.

She’d done her research on the man in question, of course. Alex Wright. One didn’t get to be where she was today by being careless or stupid. On the surface, Wright looked okay. He’d been a member of thePeloton de Gendarmerie de Haute Montagne,or PGHM, for the last seven years, always under the leadership ofCommandantBeau Fontaine.

Yvette knew Fontaine. He was a gruff, difficult man, but a straight shooter. The fact that he vouched for Wright spoke well of him. Wright was also a computer expert. If anybody could help them figure out what was happening, it would probably be him.

But it still pissed her off that it was necessary. She wasn’t used to airing her dirty laundry in public.

No, shereallywasn’t looking forward to today’s lunch.

Relax.

Pierre trusts this man.

You should trust him, too.

At least until he gives you a reason not to.

Yvette knew her ability to trust was not one of her talents. That was probably one of the reasons she and the mayor worked so well together. Pierre Chevalier’s instinct was always to trust people, and Yvette worked tirelessly beside him to make sure he knew who he could and couldn’t trust.

As for her, excluding her mother and her sister, she could count the number of people she trusted on her fingers, with space left over.

And most of them happen to be under suspicion now.

That made her angry, too. She knew her team hadn’t stolen the files—she trusted them, dammit, and they would have had no reason to. But there was still that niggling tiny doubt in her mind, and she wouldn’t sleep easy until she’d put it to rest.

Yvette pinched her cheeks, looking to bring some color back to them, and applied some lip gloss to her full lips, then a layer of thick mascara to her dark eyes. Like her power suit, make-up was part of her armor.

She took a deep, steadying breath before pulling the bathroom door open.

“You okay, Yvette?” Pierre asked when she walked into the small private dining room they’d reserved so they’d be able to speak candidly with Wright.

“Fine,” she said, distractedly. Out of the window, she saw a man step out of a dark green SUV and stride towards the restaurant’s entrance.

A sixth sense told her she was staring at Alex Wright. And the thought struck her, that she shouldn’t have bothered with the heels. He was going to tower over her, anyway.

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