Ice Claw Read Free

go. The black ski cap had been torn free in the struggle; a tumble of auburn hair fell across the runner’s face.
    It was a girl.
    The café’s steamed windows blurred the empty streets. Max and the girl ate pizza and drank hot chocolate. Occasionally a car would crunch by, and once they heard the high-revving engine of a motorbike. Max tensed, but it passed without stopping. The girl reached out—a small gesture of assurance. Max liked the warmth of her touch but squirmed his hand away to fiddle with his food. French girls were more demonstrative than any of the girls he knew at home, and they seemed unafraid to express their feelings. Max concentrated on his pizza. Her name was Sophie Fauvre. Her slight, elfin build put her age anywhere between fourteen and eighteen. She had lived in Paris until two years ago, and Max was right, she wasa parkour , and the discipline of urban free-running was something her elder brother, Adrien, had taught her. But those boys who had boxed her in tonight—they had been sent deliberately to hurt or kill her.
    “Someone sent those blokes? I mean, how do you know it wasn’t just a bunch of yobs having a go?”
    She frowned. “Yobs?”
    “Er …” He scrambled for a French equivalent. “Loubards.”
    “No, no. They are paid to stop me. They are kids, sure, but they’re like feral animals. The men with the money buy them anything they want, and they do as they are told. If they had hurt me tonight, the police would have put it down to a malicious accident.”
    “Why would people buy off street kids with fancy motorbikes to hurt you?”
    She hesitated. Hadn’t she told him enough? He was an innocent who had jumped into danger to help her.
    “Have I got food on my face?” Max asked.
    “What?”
    “You were staring at me.”
    “Sorry. I was thinking. Look, you don’t understand. My brother has gone missing. He called us from a town called Oloron-Sainte-Marie; it’s a few kilometers down the valley. And then he disappeared. I thought I could find him. People I have spoken to remember him but nothing else. So now I have to go home. Perhaps there is news there.”
    “To Paris?”
    “No. To Morocco.”
    “Ah. Did I miss the Moroccan connection somewhere?”
    She laughed. She liked him. Which was not a good idea.
    It wasn’t going to help her complete her task. He had a habit of rubbing a hand across his tufted hair, and then, as he smiled, his eyes would flick self-consciously away. Nice eyes, though, she thought. Blue or blue-gray, she couldn’t be certain in the soft light of the café.
    “Now you’re staring,” she said.
    Embarrassed, Max quickly recovered and put a finger to his mouth. “You’ve got cheese in your teeth.”
    And as soon as he said it he wished the earth would open and swallow him.
    He walked her back to her small hotel through the winding streets, keeping in the middle of the narrow road, the brightest place, away from light-swallowing alleyways. The cold night air began to bite, even through his padded jacket.
    He ignored the creeping ache in his body, alert for any movements in the shadows. Fear kept the circulation going better than any warm coat.
    Sophie told him that her father used to run the Cirque de Paris, but over the years he had turned more and more towards animal conservation. Her Moroccan mother had taken ill several years ago, and the family had returned to her homeland, where, after her death, Sophie’s father founded an endangered-species conservation group. Like other conservationists who tried to stop the illegal trade in animals, threats and violence were not uncommon. The traders made big money. People like her father were bad for business.
    “Adrien discovered one of the routes was through Spain and across the Pyrenees. There are no customs posts anymore, so every day thousands of trucks cross from the ports in the south of Spain.”
    “And your brother found one of the animals?”
    She nodded. Cupping her hands to her mouth,