Chapter 12 Haisley
HAISLEY
Haisley was bored.
The one (rather important) thing she’d forgotten when she made her ridiculous plan to isolate in her room was that she really wasn’t any good at isolation.
She didn’t consider herself a social butterfly, but she hadn’t realized how much she enjoyed being around other people.
During days that the chalet didn’t have guests, she usually had Dorothy, the live-in housekeeper, and could drive down into town and be around people when she got desperate.
She didn’t think being cooped up in her own room would be any worse than having the chalet to herself, but it was a hundred times more awful.
She could hear them chattering away. When they were in the great room, she could just hear the hum of their distant laughter, and the chef (Chef!) had a booming voice that carried from the kitchen.
When they met for meals, she could make out most of their conversations, even when she wasn’t trying to eavesdrop.
She had a suite with her bed right up against the dining room, and she had never been able to sleep with earplugs.
She couldn’t drown them out with her own music or movies, so unless she hid in the bathroom and read in the bathtub, she was an unwilling silent partner in every confusing conversation.
Their topics were baffling, and the more Haisley heard, the more she was sure they were exotic animal smugglers. Their interactions lacked the snarky, back-biting banter that pretended to be clever in pursuit of status; it seemed unlikely that this was a CEO team building holiday retreat.
And if these guests were family, they had tighter family bonds than Haisley was used to.
Her own family had so much drama and resentment that reunions deserved hazard pay, and she had let her correspondence diminish to holiday cards (very generic, already mailed) and perfunctory birthday calls for her siblings (who didn’t bother to do the same in return).
She would have taken a boring Christmas on her own over having to show up with gifts that wouldn’t be appreciated by people who only wanted her to side with them over some entitlement issue that painted everyone involved in a very unflattering light.
Being bored certainly wasn’t the worst problem to have.
The problem was that a bored Haisley started having ideas.
The power flickered off for a few moments on the first snowy morning as they were clearing breakfast, and Haisley immediately wondered with a stab of hope if they would just leave if it remained out.
The power came right back, but the idea lingered.
Haisley knew enough about the building and its systems to stage a power outage.
She had left instructions about setting up the backup generator, but a few ‘accidentally’ misplaced power cables would keep that from being an option.
After a few cold meals and no water pressure, surely they would pack up and leave.
Then she remembered that she wouldn’t have water pressure or heat, either, and wouldn’t even be able to sit in front of the fire like they would. Besides which, it looked like they’d gotten enough snow that they were trapped up here until the plows came through.
Mountain Crown was near the end of a long rural road that wouldn’t be any kind of priority, so it might even be a few days.
But the wheels in Haisley’s head were turning now.
Haisley knew this house inside out and backwards. She could make the place so subtly uncomfortable that by the time the roads were cleared, they would be dying to leave, lined up at the door with their fur coats and their pet leopards.
It didn’t have to be as sweeping as a full-on power outage.
Haisley knew just where to start.