Crimson Slopes (Part Due)

A Giallo in Winter Tale

Part II

The next morning his iPhone notified him of an incoming text. He was finishing up a workout in his home gym and picked up the phone, he quickly scanned the screen.

The text was from his beautiful foreign client:

Roger, in the old medieval tales, when a lady asked for a knight’s assistance, the knight was obligated by the Code of Chivalry to aid that lady. I am asking for aid, Sir Knight. By the way, I assume you own a handgun? Please meet me at the Catamount Cafe, in the lobby of the resort at 10 am.

“Yes, Lara, I own a handgun,” he sighed aloud and chuckled. He texted her back that he would be there.

Roger responded to some business emails from his laptop and then took a long hot shower. While dressing, he reached into a wooden drawer in this spare bedroom that acted as both home office and gym. He withdrew a black polymer .40 caliber pistol. He began putting it back in the drawer when he uncharacteristically changed his mind.

Instead, he slipped the Glock 23 into a Kydex appendix holster, along with a spare fifteen round magazine. He had bought the weapon from the Rutland County Sheriff’s Office when he resigned. In order to disguise the firearm and holster, he slipped on a dark Norwegian sweater over his Henley long sleeve. A blue LL Bean Puffer parka rounded out his ensemble.

Due to his short brown beard, able-bodied build, faded black watch cap and some old Soviet army leather winter boots, he looked more like a ski lift operator than a tourist but at least he would still blend in at the resort.

“You brought your weapon, yes?” She asked nervously while they were seated. She wore tight fitting leisurewear, Roger assumed she had visited the resort spa that morning, her flawless skin glowed.

Roger had a hard time not looking at her ample bosom trapped behind the thick cotton. He merely nodded at her question as he sipped on his overpriced cappuccino in the private corner booth of the Catamount Cafe. She relaxed her shoulders a bit.

“Good, a knight is somewhat useless without his sword.” Roger rolled his eyes.

“What is this all about, Lara? I appreciate the cappuccino but we didn’t have to meet at the cafe. Also, why do I need to be armed?” Lara waved a dismissive hand in response to the beverage gift.

“I am being watched, well more than just watched…stalked,” she blurted out.

“What?!? Are you sure? This is Killington’s busy season; a lot of people are around at the moment.” Now it was her turn to roll her eyes at him.

“Yes! I am sure, bedak! Twice now, I have left my room and come back with items misplaced or clothes discarded, as if they were searched. I can feel someone watching me sometimes.” Roger noticed her slavic accent was now a bit stronger.

Roger was about to say something in a soothing manner but Lara was ready for his propitiating response.

“I am sure you do not believe in a woman’s intuition and being a former officer of the law, you require real evidence, well look at this!” She pulled out her pink iPhone and thrust it into his angular face. The screen began playing a video.

The video showed one of Killington’s nicer weekend suites. Lara was shown in the corner putting on some makeup and placing items in a purse, she then left the suite.

Less than a minute later, a figure dressed in a black one piece outfit, entered the large open suite. It was clearly a man but a large hood on the outfit was up and obscured any facial features.

He began searching, sometimes outside the angle of the hidden camera. He appeared to be looking for something specific but not finding it. After a five minute frantic search, sometimes leaving clothes strewn about, he left. The video ended.

Roger leaned back in his chair, Lara looked at him with expectation.

“That black one piece outfit with the hood up, I recognize it. It’s a Rothco Ski and Rescue one piece, many of the ski instructors and ski patrollers wear it, it is insulated and incredibly warm, perfect for winter mountain wear. How did you get this?”

“I know a little about hidden cameras and spying. My father was a secret policeman with UDBA; Yugoslavia’s KGB, during the Cold War. He taught me a few things about surveillance…and when to know you are being harassed.”

“Okay, well we need to take this to Killington’s safety and security department, they will contact the sheriff’s office as well. They will give you another room and perhaps find this guy…”

“No! I want to catch him myself. I want to know what he wants! If you can follow me at a distance, we can catch him, Roger!”

“Whoa, whoa! Hold on, I am your driver for the weekend, not your bodyguard. We don’t even know if he is working alone, he could be part of a more organized thief ring. Let me call someone I know at the sheriff’s office, he can help you with this situation.”

Lara Novak said nothing, she pierced him with her dazzling blue eyes. Roger found this very intimate act both erotic and unnerving at the same time. He broke the gaze and coughed into his fist, then took a drink from his recycled cardboard cup. His face felt flushed.

“My family had many enemies. Although we moved to the U.S. many years ago and my father has been in his grave for almost five years, I know I can never be fully safe. He made many powerful enemies, and my father became wealthy by selling certain secrets to oligarchs and other intelligence agencies.” Roger looked up.

“So they are after you because they believe you hold more secrets or revenge?”

“I don’t know who they are or what they want! I will find out, whether you help me or abandon me.” The last statement cut into Roger, he knew at that moment he was smitten with her, under her spell, this damsel in distress knew what emotional buttons to push.

“Okay, what do you require of me…my lady.” Roger made a flourishing gesture with his hand.

For the next thirty minutes, the two of them hammered out a simple counter-surveillance plan.

“Excellent! Game, set, match! Let me put on my snowboarding outfit and I will meet you outside.”

Before Roger had a chance to respond, she gaily jumped up and headed to her room. Roger stood up, looked around the sparse cafe, and what few tourists were there were glued to their phones. No obvious East European spies in sight. He put on his coat and his watch cap and rambled outside to put some cold air into his lungs.

“Stupid, stupid, I shouldn’t get involved in this Scooby Doo crap, I’ve got a business to run,” he muttered to himself while standing in the parking lot near the main entrance of the office lodge. But Roger made a confession: he was bored. Since Bethany the bartender’s permanent exit, he had become a wallflower. Petty routine had overtaken his life.

Some excitement might snap him out of this post-break-up funk.

He made his final decision, no matter what, he would see this through to the end. Like Sir Galahad on his grail quest.

She was hard to miss. Lara was decked out in red, the formfitting snowsuit was red, with a red storm hood trimmed with white faux fur. On each side a large white stripe was visible. She had on her red knit cap and her snowboard was slung under her arm. She clomped forward in her boots.

They did not make eye contact, as she walked by, heading to the ski lifts. She pulled some purple Pit Viper goggles down over her eyes to hide her gaze.

Roger put on a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses and discreetly followed her at a distance. As Roger passed near a ski lift maintenance shed, he spied an orange high viz vest with the resort’s logo and snow shovel, from previous outings at the resort and knowing the area like the back of his hand, he knew those items would be sitting there.

He quickly put the vest over his winter coat and grabbed the snow shovel.

In any ski resort, the worst job is trail maintenance. Most of it is performed by seasonal hires who barely functioned as adults. Since these temps are spending most of their shift on the mountain, engaged in manual labor, these workers constantly came and went.

Therefore the ski lift operators didn’t even bat an eye when he walked up to them and asked them to hold up the line while he jumped on a lift. They just assumed he was a new hire who had been given the grunt work of looking for bare patches to repair on the upper mountain trails.

Roger quickly ascended into the cold sky.

Lara was only a few chairs ahead of him on the lift line. She was alone and played her role well. She had her snowboard attached to her boots already. A perfect picture of a tourist prepared for a day of epic snowboarding.

As the lift reached the top of the mountain, the weather changed drastically. The sun was hidden behind dark clouds, the wind mercilessly picked up. Roger was used to shifts in the weather patterns in Vermont, especially during the winter, but even this change was weirdly sudden.

As Lara slid effortlessly off her chairlift, Roger followed in a more awkward manner. On top of the mountain, throngs of skiers and snowboarders adjusted their gear and inspected the various resort signs. Trying to figure out which trail they would try out.

“Please, dear God, take the beginner trail,” Roger muttered as he continued following his client. The cold was starting to bite into his skin and the cold air entered his lungs like icy razor blades.

But Lara made a sharp curve to her left. She stopped in front of a trail not being used by any of the tourist families, a double diamond trail called: Howard’s Folly. In fact, most actively avoided this course.

“Shit!” Roger was so loud in his exclamation that several brightly colored teenage snowboarders snickered at him as he walked towards the only double diamond trail on the mountain.

He began moving snow around near Howard’s Folly as Lara stood proud and tall on the very edge of it, adjusting her snow goggles and checking her outfit. A few teenagers and young adult snowboarders approached but they didn’t acknowledge either Roger or Lara and were soon flying down the suicide run.

Lara took two deep breaths and kicked off onto the terrifyingly advanced course. Roger followed at a slow jog, he stuck to the outer edge of the trail, along the tree line. More skiers and snowboarders followed them but they blew past both Roger and Lara. Lara appeared slow and hesitant in her snowboarding. Roger wasn’t sure if this was an act so that he could keep up with her or whether she now realized she made a terrible mistake by choosing the infamous double diamond trail.

It was when he turned around to face back up the mountain, he saw him.

He wore the same black one piece ski patrol outfit that Roger had watched in the video. Just like in the video, his black hood was up, but he now wore a black balaclava and mirrored ski goggles. Roger couldn’t even guess the ethnicity of this infamous man in black, not a trace of skin was showing.

Roger could tell by the way he maneuvered his matte black and crimson colored Rossignol skis that he was no amateur. At the same time, he was deliberately moving slow on the initial mogul course.

He stayed behind Lara but he had no place to hide this time.

Lara came to a ledge before the start of the second part of the course. Perhaps her intuition warned her of incoming danger. She turned and looked up towards the mogul course.

She saw her stalker in black.