Chasing Ghosts Madalyn Morgan (free e books to read txt) 📖

She quickly dressed and combed her hair. Pushing a few stray curls into place she trapped them beneath a Kirby grip. Slipping her feet into her shoes, Claire picked up her handbag and looked over her shoulder, taking a last look in the mirror. Her face was pale with dark rings under her eyes. She looked as if she hadn’t slept for a month. She blew out her cheeks and took her makeup out of her bag. After applying powder, rouge and lipstick she looked better - and she felt better.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The bar was busy when she arrived at six-thirty. Thomas was hunched over a newspaper in the corner of the room. As she approached him he jumped up, folded the paper and dropped it onto the table. ‘What would you like to drink?’

She was about to ask him what he was drinking but saw a glass of beer on the table. She didn’t feel like beer. It was too cold. ‘Wine,’ she said, ‘red, please.’

Thomas strolled over to the bar. After a short conversation with the bartender, which Claire wasn’t able to hear, he came back with a glass of wine. ‘The barman said this is a good local wine. He told me that it is medium bodied and a little fruity - and then he winked at me.’ Thomas put Claire’s wine on the table and sat down. ‘Make of that what you will,’ he said, laughing.

Claire took a sip of the wine. ‘Mm, it is fruity,’ she said, and laughed too.

When Claire and Thomas were sure they would not be overheard by any of the hotel’s guests, they made plans for the following day.

‘So,’ Claire said with a shiver, ‘we go back to that horrific prison.’

‘No, we don’t.’

‘But we must! How else will we find out how Mitch escaped and which village he was taken to?’

Thomas put his hand on Claire’s hand. She flinched and he withdrew it immediately. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to--’

‘No. It’s me who should be sorry. I’m a bit on edge. Go on?’

‘We do not have to go back to the prison,’ Thomas said. Taking a map of the area from his pocket, he spread it out on the table as any tourist visiting the town might do. ‘The escape route must be on the south or southeast boundary of the prison grounds. Somewhere around here there is a wood,’ he said, pointing to an area on the map that was green. ‘They couldn’t have escaped to the north or west. If I remember correctly the two main lookout towers were on the northern perimeter and la Garonne runs along the western fence.’ Thomas pointed to the blue meandering line of the river.

‘I can see that,’ Claire said. ‘They would have been target practice; picked off one by one if they had tried to cross the river.’ Thomas moved his finger north. ‘Why risk trying to get past two watchtowers without being seen, and then have to climb a mountain when you could hide in undergrowth in a forest of fir trees a little further south, which is on an incline?’

‘But they were seen,’ Claire said. ‘Mitch was shot. So, they might have gone north to the mountain,’ she reasoned.

Thomas shook his head. ‘No. I spent a year training with a Maquis group in the mountains. Not in this region, in the Alps at Chamonix. You have to be fit to climb a rock face like the one near the prison. They couldn’t have done it, they would have been too weak. Besides, if they were hoping to cross the Pyrenees to Spain…’ Thomas pointed to the Spanish border on the other side of the mountains, ‘they would have to end up around here.’ He drew his finger back across the map to France. ‘That would be the shortest and the quickest route.’

‘But not the safest,’ Claire said. Her heart was beating fast. ‘And this area,’ she said, indicating with her finger to a clearing on the far side of the wood, ‘would be a perfect place for a sniper to wait and shoot the escapees.’

‘Yes, it would.’ Thomas folded the map and slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘The good news is, there are a couple of villages within walking distance, so we could start at the edge of the wood, at the clearing, and from there go to the first village.’

Before Claire could respond a crowd of youths crashed through the door. The last one let the door slam behind him. Claire jumped and spun round. With the horrors of the prison still in her thoughts her nerves were on edge.

‘Time for dinner,’ Thomas said, getting to his feet. He stood behind Claire and when she stood up, pulled her chair away to give her space to step away from the table. He gestured to her to walk in front of him. Instead, she offered him her arm. When he drew level with her, Claire linked her arm through his and together the two friends strolled into the dining room.

There was a choice of three main dishes, beef, chicken and fish with seasonal vegetables - and apple cake for dessert. Thomas chose beef and Claire chicken; they both said yes to apple cake. The food was tasty and there was plenty of it. Neither of them had eaten for several hours and they both cleared their plates. After dessert, they sat for a while and drank coffee. Refusing a refill, they left the dining room and went back to the bar.

A roaring log fire in a large red-brick fireplace attracted Claire and she headed for the nearest table to it, while Thomas ordered their drinks.

‘I’m sorry,’ Claire said,