The Dark Frontier by A. Decker (best books to read non fiction .txt) 📕

“Your friend took it into his head to come down on foot. He just wouldn’t listen to reason.”

Frank showed them the cold iron barrel of the gun, inched closer to the one on the outside of the pavement and thrust it into his nose.

“Don’t get the wrong idea. Just take a sniff of this. Not been used, has it?” He paused, savouring the young man’s discomfort. “Not yet.”

He left them standing there, looking impotent and just a little self-conscious, and hurried back to the chalet. They made no attempt to follow him.

Although evening had already set in by the time he got back, the chalet was in darkness. It gave the impression of being empty. The dense black cover of the trees seemed to have edged much closer to the building than he remembered it from their first night there. It had the effect of drawing in the night even earlier, even colder, around their refuge. To his surprise, the door was open. He called Patricia’s name, but the house remained quiet and unresponsive. His mind clouded over, seized by a sensation that lay somewhere between panic and profound sadness. The pounding of his heart was almost audible. Not until he went into the bedroom did he find her, face down on top of the bed, fully clothed, motionless. Only the shadows cast by the light from the landing gave any clue to the subtle rhythm of her body as it followed the mechanics of her shallow breathing.

With a sense of relief, he lowered himself gingerly onto the bed beside her. She stirred at this movement and curled up like a snail retracting into its shell. He watched her as she slept. Her hair draped in the shadows on the bed like a curtain, blacker than the night, over her dreams. The dismay and dread that appeared to haunt every corner of her waking hours was in such stark contrast to this shell of peaceful innocence. This helix of unspoken beauty. The quiet concentration with which he watched over her made the shock all the greater when, without warning, his presence startled Patricia from her sleep.

“Frank! You’re back!”

He said nothing, just ran his fingers through her hair.

“Frank!” There was panic in her voice, as she reached out for the light switch. In the sudden glow of the bedside light, he could see that she had cried herself to sleep. Her eyes had the look of raw meat that had been washed clean. “What have you done, Frank? Where’s the gun?”

He took it from his pocket and laid it on the bed between them. A dark destiny still untested. A look of horror filled the washed-out spaces in her expression.

“You haven’t?” She stared in disbelief.

“No. He literally slipped away before I had a chance.”

Frank smiled to himself at the memory as he reassured her, taking her hands in his, and explained how Breitner had unwittingly escaped his clutches.

“When it came to it, I suppose I lost my nerve. However monstrous he is, I couldn’t just gun him down in cold blood.” He felt her hands tense in his. “I imagine he’s still picking his way down the mountainside in his smart leather-soled shoes at this very moment.”

“You’re a fool, Frank.” She flung his hands back at him in disappointment. Or maybe contempt. And she began to pace the floor. Her fragile vulnerability had turned to outright fear.

“Once you’ve got someone like Breitner on the hook, you don’t just throw him back in the water. Oh, Frank, you’re such a fool.”

“You were the one who warned me off. What was I supposed to do?”

“Finish it. You should have finished it. Once and for all. Finished it.”

There was a venom in her voice that shocked him as she hurled the words at him like balls at a coconut shy and continued to pace the room. Her eyes sparked again with life. But Frank felt the obsessive quality of her words open up a disturbing distance between them. He had never seen her like this before. It was at odds with everything he knew about her. And it kindled a new fascination.

“I’ll make some coffee,” he said with a naive desire to please. But she caught his arm as he tried to leave the room.

“There’s no time for coffee. We need to pack and get out of here before he finds his way back.”

“What’s the hurry? He doesn’t even know where to start looking for us.”

“Davos is a very small place.” Her words were not only identical to those Breitner had used on him earlier. Even the way she spoke them was the same. They carried an edge that threatened to widen the distance between them further. “And you saw yourself that he has a lot of friends here,” she added.

The new side to her that she revealed that evening made him slightly uneasy in her company, like a new acquaintance with so much ground for him to make up. And so little time to do it. It created a self-conscious urgency. A sense of gaps to be closed. But he recalled the two faithful watchdogs at the Parsenn station. And had to admit she was almost certainly right.

The next train out of Davos was heading for Filisur. Once they were on it and heading out of the station, they both relaxed and settled back into a kind of harmony that, while still a little edgy, had sufficient substance to let them laugh together at the day’s events: Breitner throwing his weight around over a slice of carrot cake in a shabby tea-room; the thought of him sliding his way down the mountainside in the dark; or the ludicrously earnest gathering to honour one of the most forgettable figures in a chaotic nation’s history.

“I’m sorry, Patricia. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have brought you to Davos.”

“You should have told me what your plans were,” she said and rested a forgiving hand on his arm. “But it’s my