The Secret Agent by Francine Mathews

her glass in salute.
    Not even death threats could faze this woman. Oliver Krane had known exactly what he was doing when he sent Stefani Fogg to France.
    Around midnight, Max told her it was too late to ski to Le Praz, and offered her his guest room instead. She didn’t protest—didn’t fight her way past him to click into her skis, though the wine and the hours of talk had closed the distance between them and she had more than once caught herself wondering how the line of his jaw would feel under her fingers. While he went in search of sheets, she walked Jeff Knetsch to the door.
    He was still uncomfortable in her presence; all the facts and the effort at professionalism had failed to make him her friend.
    “What do you really think of Max’s story?” she asked him. “Max’s assassination theory?”
    “All that crap about the CIA? I think he’s got too much time on his hands.”
    Or the strong need for a hero. But which man does he want to redeem? Jack Roderick? Or Rory?
    “And as for flying to Bangkok—”
    “You’re worried?”
    The lawyer hesitated, one hand on the massive oak jamb of Max’s door. “He’s pissed off somebody with a lot of firepower. And it hasn’t occurred to him that the strangled whore was just an opening shot. Next time, he could lose something he really values.”
    “Does he listen to you?”
    Knetsch smiled wryly. “Max listens to nobody. Especially when he has paid for the advice. Are you skiing tomorrow?”
    “Off-piste.
Max wants to show me the backcountry. Join us, if you like.”
    It was her attempt at a truce. But wariness lingered in the eyes of Max’s oldest friend.
    “I know Max’s backcountry. My leg can’t take that kind of terrain anymore,” he said curtly. “I’ll meet you for a drink afterward.”
    “The Bateau Ivre,” she suggested. “Four o’clock.”
    “Done.” He turned away.
    But as she shut the door behind him, she wondered what had inspired Knetsch’s mistrust. Krane & Associates? Her credentials? Or the fact that she was a woman in Max Roderick’s house?

7
    M
ax
lay awake well past one, feeling the turbulent night air shudder against the frame of his house. Faces swam in and out of his consciousness: Jack Roderick’s eyes and sharp nose; his father’s, a softer version; and Stefani Fogg’s profile, half-averted. When he thought of her, it was always in profile—the slope and pitch of her facial structure like
a piste
he had yet to map. He had told her what he could of his family’s past, not because he had paid Oliver Krane to send her here to Courchevel, but because he’d tested and liked her nerve. Max had learned much about the human spirit by watching the human body ski: three days’ observation had shown him how little she feared.
    Except, he suspected, deep emotion. Feeling that might cause pain, or chain her to another human being. Feeling that could wreck the perfect autonomy she’d crafted for herself.
    He avoided the same traps. He’d been terrified of them most of his life.
    Wind buffeted the house’s peaked roof; the door to the balcony rattled faintly in protest. The fog that had blanketed the slopes at dusk had blown into Switzerland; the moon was setting. He rolled over, thrust his feet out of bed, and without turning on the light placed his hand on his viola where it sat in the corner of the room.
    It is possible for one man to ski at world-class level or to play an instrument with orchestral precision—but not in the same lifetime. Max loved his viola with the passion he had long since lost for skis, in part because the viola had always denied him mastery. It submitted to nothing in his repertoire.
    He took up the bow with humility, clutched the instrument by its throat and walked out into the freezing air. The wind was like a knife on his naked back; it pierced the folds of his pajama legs. He might be incapable of subjugating the music under his hands, but he could still subdue his flesh to the elements. He laid