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and ducked. The speaker crackled into life before he could press the button.
    ‘Wait.’
    Alain’s voice was gruff amid the static hiss.
    The system fell silent.
    Trent straightened and ground a heel into the dirt. The gravel driveway was visible through the gate, grey-white against the blackness all around. It rose up to the top of the steep bank, then disappeared from view. All that remained to indicate its route were the lines of tall cypress trees that bordered it on either side and a hazy orb of wavering light that seemed to throb in the darkness way over the hump.
    Trent turned his back on the cameras and crossed the narrow road. He was on some kind of ledge. Velvety darkness lay beneath his feet, indigo-black and bottomless. He could see the autoroute way ahead in the distance, down in the flat bowl of the valley. Unseen vehicles moved silently along, surrounded by pulsating coronas of yellow and red. Off to his right, a chain of monumental electricity pylons climbed the escarpment and continued into the sparsely forested zones above. He’d hiked under the thrumming wires just moments ago. Had felt the static buzz around his body like a charged aura.
    He sniffed the air. Aromas of wild herbs and flowers and arid dirt. He stepped up to the powdery edge. Inched his toes out over the abyss. He closed his eyes and stretched his arms out at his sides and bounced on the balls of his feet like a diver about to launch himself from a springboard.
    He pictured Aimée.
    He saw her smiling.
    As each day passed, it became harder to conjure his favourite image of her. Morning sunlight on freckled skin, Aimée’s drowsy brown eyes watering against the glare. Auburn hair fanned out around her head on stark white sheets, hands curled into loose fists by her ears. Teeth clamped down on the corner of her mouth. Lips shaping a mischievous grin.
    He squeezed his eyes tight shut and concentrated hard, sharpening the vision. Sculpting it. Refining it.
    Guarding it.
    The stamp of footsteps on gravel jarred him from his reverie.
    ‘It’s OK,’ Alain called, from behind him. ‘You can come with me now.’
    Trent exhaled and relaxed his pose. He heard the clunk of the gate latch releasing. The electric hum as the gate began to swing open.
    Still he didn’t turn.
    ‘She’s waiting for you,’ Alain said.
    Yes , he thought. Yes, you’re right.

Chapter Five
    Alain insisted on patting Trent down again as he approached the gate. He was a lot more thorough the second time around and he located Trent’s mobile right away. He flipped it open and held it out to Trent, the screen glowing like a distress flare in the pulsing black. A four-digit pin secured the phone.
    ‘Enter your code,’ Alain said.
    ‘Why would I do that?’
    ‘You do it or you don’t come in.’
    Trent stared at the guy until the loathing brimmed over in his eyes. The bodyguard didn’t relent. Finally, Trent sighed and punched in the sequence.
    Alain lowered his face to the phone and thumbed the keys. He cycled through Trent’s call list. His contacts. His messages.
    He looked up. ‘It’s empty.’
    ‘Like your head, smart guy. It’s a drop phone. Prepaid. They can be useful in kidnap situations. I thought it could be useful here, too.’
    Alain snapped the phone closed and slipped it into his back pocket without another word. Then he went through the routine of feeling around Trent’s torso and arms and legs, squeezing hard with his big hands. He had Trent remove his boots and socks and put them on again. Then he motioned him forwards and secured the gate behind him.
    Alain had slipped on a clean charcoal jacket. It was the same style and fit and colour as the soiled garment he’d been wearing earlier. Maybe, Trent thought, he had a whole rack of identical suits hanging in a wardrobe somewhere, like a uniform store. Trent couldn’t recall ever seeing him in a different outfit before.
    There was a telltale bulge beneath the jacket where his Ruger was holstered