Into the Shadow Read Online Free PDF

little graft and corruption.
    Instead, he had little Miss Sweetness-and-Light.
    The first time he’d seen her, he’d been waiting at the train station in Kathmandu. She caught his eye; pretty women did that, and she was pretty enough. Short, probably five-three, with a slender figure that looked good in khakis. Brown hair and perfectly tanned skin, the sort of skin they made commercials about. But he didn’t think much about her, figured she was just one of the thousands of trekkers who descended on Nepal every year to hike through the Himalayas. He did grin derisively as she directed the porters to load her huge stash of camping equipment. He amused himself by wondering how many porters she would have to hire to carry it up and down the mountain trails, if she had an industrial-size hair dryer in that mess, and where she thought she was going to plug the hair dryer in.
    Just when he was transferring his attention to the next female, Karen did something extraordinary.
    She looked right at him, and smiled.
    She had the most extraordinary blue-green eyes he’d ever seen, with a fringe of long, dark lashes, and that smile . . . She tapped into some inner joy, and everything he’d thought about her changed.
    She was beautiful.
    He was stricken with need.
    Her smile faded. As if his staring made her nervous, she glanced away. She spoke to the porters; she was patient with their stilted English, and she knew a few words of Nepalese.
    He didn’t move, but called one of the pick-pockets who hung around the platform. Flipping him a coin, he said, ‘‘Find out who she is and where she’s going.’’ Not that it mattered; he had a job to do. He didn’t have time to obsess about a woman with aquamarine eyes.
    Then, when he got his answer, he cursed a blue streak.
    She was going to be right there at the base of Mount Anaya, within arm’s length, for months and months, building Jackson Sonnet’s hotel.
    He had comforted himself with the knowledge that she’d never be up for the challenge.
    Instead she bossed everyone around, and if they balked, she smiled at them. Look at Lhakpa, hovering close while she set the charges. Look at the other guys, all grinning and flirty while they got ready for the blast.
    She was changing everything, and if he didn’t watch it, she’d change him, too.
    He had to get her out of his life.

Chapter Three
    Karen made sure the men were at a safe distance, donned her ear protection, sounded the alarm that meant they were about to blast . . . and pushed the plunger. The ground shook beneath her feet. The solid rock lifted, shifted, and re-formed into a rubble of boulders, perfectly placed for removal.
    She hadn’t lost her touch.
    She removed her ear protection and waited, tense, for the roar that meant she’d disturbed the mountain, and it was taking its revenge in a rockfall to obliterate all her work—and her men, and her. After a full minute of silence, she gave the guys a thumbs-up.
    They cheered weakly. Lhakpa and Dawa walked for their backhoes. The ancient engines rumbled to life. Ngi‘ma rounded up his team of men and yaks and headed in.
    She climbed up the path to grab a quick breakfast before going back down to the site for a hands-on demonstration of why she was in charge. She was near the top when that feeling caught her, that prickly sense of being watched. She’d had it frequently of late, and she turned and scanned the heights—and there was Philippos Chronies coming down the path from the south, his bald head shining in the sun.
    Phil was Greek-Canadian, short, wide at the middle, with a body that tapered up to a broad face and down to tiny feet. She hadn’t worked with him before, but it hadn’t taken more than a day for her to judge his character.
    They’d met at the airport in Kathmandu, caught the train toward the work site, and within the first hour he’d hit on her. When she’d pointed out his wedding band, he’d shrugged and said his wife knew her place.
    Karen