Chapter Sixteen
“Poison?” Dalton says as we eat lunch with Rory at the chalet.
“Yep.”
“What kind?”
I shrug. “There are a few possibilities. April will run tests, but it really only matters if he was poisoned by something we have access to here.”
“Because if so, then the killer could be one of us. Except we’re pretty sure it was Gretchen, right?” He lifts a dollop of mashed potato to Rory’s lips, and she nearly takes off the finger with it. “Ouch!”
“Don’t forget she has teeth now.”
He shakes his finger. “No kidding.” He gives her another piece … on a spoon. “If it’s Gretchen, though, how the hell is she poisoning anyone up here?”
“She’d have brought it with her. Premeditated.
Let’s say the three of them are on some sort of mission.
Targeting Haven’s Rock or the mining camp.
They get what they need, and then her orders are to kill her colleagues.
It’s way too James Bond for me, but if we’re talking spies and assassinations, poison makes sense. ”
“And presumably something went wrong with Blake. The poison didn’t work.”
“Or Blake was in on killing the other guy. Helps her bury him, and then it’s his turn to die.”
I take Rory from his lap and put her on the floor. She grumbles … and then spots Storm and starts to crawl, crowing with delight.
“That’s the problem with criminals, including spies,” I say. “They can see one of their own being taken out and never think they’re next.”
“So Gretchen and Blake poison and bury our dead guy. Then they meet up with us, give their story, and the next morning, Gretchen kills Blake.”
I nod. “Or vice versa. The other guy killed Blake and hauled him off, and then Gretchen poisons him. April’s time of death estimate puts it anywhere between two and four days ago.”
“Where does this leave us?”
“Really hoping Gretchen is long gone? If she’s some kind of operative she knows what she’s doing and no one will come looking for her partners.”
“Fuck.” He shakes his head. “Yeah, I guess that’s where we’re at. Lock down for a few more days. Give her plenty of time to go.”
“But while that clears up the immediate issue, it doesn’t solve the bigger one.”
He glances at me, fork to his lips.
“What were they here for?” I say. “Us or the miners. And even if it’s the miners, that’s a problem for us.”
I’m on a call. Rory is still crawling around the floor, while Dalton has gone in to work. Yolanda is with me, mostly because she wants to talk to the person I’m calling. Not that you’d know it by their opening exchange.
“Hey, cuz!” Petra says over the line. “I was just thinking of paying you a visit.”
“Please don’t.”
“Oh, now I definitely will. I’m thinking of October, before it gets too cold. Maybe I’ll come to celebrate Halloween. We can dress in matching costumes, just like when we were kids. I’ll bring the candy.”
“No.”
“What’s that? You’d love to have me? Excellent. I’ll talk to Gran and make the arrangements.”
“And I’ll talk to Gran and tell her all the reasons why you shouldn’t visit. You’ve finally started a new life, and we wouldn’t want you to backslide.”
Petra snorts. “That’s why you don’t want me up there? For my own good.”
“No, that’s the excuse that Gran will buy. The reality is that I don’t want you here because I’d spend the next few months hearing how nice you are, how friendly and personable, and are we definitely cousins?”
“Still coming up. I’ll just put on my costume early. I’ll play you.” Her voice goes gruff. “Halloween? What are you, twelve? Who wants candy? I don’t want candy. I hate dressing up. I hate everything.”
“Including you.”
“You adore me. Casey? Mark your calendar. I will be there for Halloween with huge boxes of candy.”
“I’ll hold you to that, you know,” I say.
Her grin shines through in her voice. “Good. It’s a plan.”
“And I’ll be away for the week,” Yolanda says.
“No, you won’t. You’ll be there to grumble at me, and tell me I brought the wrong kind of candy, and you’ll love every minute of it.”
Petra had been in Rockton when I arrived. She’d been my first good friend there. Discovering she was one of the founder’s granddaughters, and a spy—both professionally and in Rockton—had been a blow.
I’d watched her take out an enemy and barely blink, and that was so far from the Petra I knew that I’d been shaken, certain the one I saw was a lie.
It’s not. There’s the happy-go-lucky Petra, the ice-cold operative Petra, and the other one, forever grieving her young daughter’s death and the aftermath that slammed the blame onto her own shoulders.
I miss her terribly, but I’m glad she’s finding her footing.
She’d originally planned to come with us to Haven’s Rock.
Then her arrival date kept being pushed back until she admitted she wasn’t joining us.
Being back down south for a few months helped her realize it was time to move on with her life.
“We have spy questions,” Yolanda says.
Petra groans.
“Sorry,” I say. “Secret-agent questions.”
“That’s not much better.”
“Highly trained–operative questions? Oh, how about federal-agent questions. That’s boring, but fitting. Unless you didn’t work for the federal government.”
“I’d tell you, but then … Well, you know the rest,” Petra says, far too cheerfully. “Okay, so Gran said you’re dealing with something that seems to involve espionage. Involving either Haven’s Rock or that gold-mining operation.”
“Yes,” I say. “How much did she tell you?”
“Nothing else. She said you’d fill in what you were comfortable sharing.”
It’s Petra, which means I’m comfortable sharing everything, even the speculative bits that make me feel as if I’ve seen too many spy movies. I tell her about meeting Blake and Gretchen, finding Blake dead, and now finding a second body.
“And this second body is definitely connected to the fake hikers?”
“No. Nor are the hikers definitely fake.”
I list off all the evidence that supports that theory.
“The mining camp is chipping its employees?” Petra says. “On the one hand, major privacy invasion. But on the other?”
“Maybe we should do it, too? Only we’d get permission obviously.”
“Yeah, I’m guessing the miners signed some document they barely read that would allow the tracking. But if our dead man doesn’t have a tracker then he’s not their employee.”
“Mmm. I can’t say that absolutely. But yes, there is no proof he works for them and also no proof that he wasn’t with Blake and Gretchen.”
“So a trio of espionage agents, with orders to kill two members once the data has been retrieved. Apropos of nothing, did I hear you guys run movie nights more often?”
“Yeah, yeah. Too many James Bond movies. I’ve already made that joke at my own expense. So I’m way off base.”
Petra exhales. “Well, it depends. Was I routinely sent on missions and ordered to kill my colleagues? No. Was I ever ordered to kill them? No. Did I personally know anyone who was ordered to kill their colleagues? No. But, of course, that wasn’t the sort of thing you’d confess in the spy pub over brewskis. ”
“You never took me to a spy pub,” Yolanda says.
“I could, but then I’d have to … Well, you know.
But you guys understand my point. I didn’t work in the sort of environment where fellow operatives were killed to shut them up.
I did know people who worked in things closer to what you’d find in the movies.
Private operations. I heard stories of those agents being killed when they completed a mission.
Or being killed when they discovered something they shouldn’t.
Or when they developed a conscience. There’s a lot out there, and it’s not all MI6, CIA, covert-government-operations stuff. ”
“Okay,” I say.
“Let’s take that and jump to our two possible targets. Haven’s Rock or this mining company. Could someone be hired to spy on you guys and then kill their colleagues? I can’t see it. Sorry. Maybe in Rockton. Maybe if you were operating some nefarious and highly profitable operation.”
“Which we are not.”
“Correct. Haven’s Rock is the opposite of profitable. On the other hand, I can see the old council spying on you for basic espionage.”
“Trade secrets. Their new version of Rockton is failing.”
“And Haven’s Rock is thriving. Gran also mentioned they might want to lure you guys back to the fold. I can see that, too. From experience, I’d say they’d be analyzing your operation and seeing whether you’re stumbling, maybe in need of help. And if not, then maybe they could change that.”
“Sabotage us.”
“Yep. But that would mean embedding a spy. What would they learn lurking around the forest? Nothing except that your patrols are very good and would find them if they got too close.”
Yolanda says, “What if they know we’re doing fine. Could they move straight to sabotage?”
“Yes. However, that’s not the kind of operation where you kill your fellow agents to keep them quiet.”
“So their target would be the mining company,” I say.
“In my opinion, yes. From what Gran says, that is one hell of a secretive operation, tightly run. It’s not a few guys panning for gold in the forest. It’s not even some small firm running a claim.” She pauses. “Are we sure they’re actually mining?”
“We keep our distance,” I say, “but we’ve been close enough to confirm that.”
“Not sure what else they’d be doing,” Yolanda says. “If there’s money to be made up here, it’s in gold.”
“Maybe there’s something to mine besides gold, something even more valuable.
It’s not a massive operation, which would make me wonder how much gold they’d be getting.
Either way, considering how professional—and paranoid—these guys are, they have a serious operation there, making serious money. Which could mean serious espionage.”
“So—” I begin. “Hold on. I’ve lost my kid.”
As I hurry to find Rory, Petra calls, “Isn’t she barely crawling?”
“She’s fast,” I call back. “Also, her mom is a little distracted.”
I find Rory in the kitchen, with Storm standing right behind her, watching. The dog gives me a baleful look. I murmur an apology, pat her head, and scoop up Rory, grabbing her favorite toy—a squirrel-shaped teething rattle—as I head back to the living room.
“Storm was on duty,” I say. “And giving me stink eye because I wasn’t.”
“Good dog,” Petra says. “Hello, Rory! I didn’t know you were there because your mom didn’t tell me.”
Rory gurgles and shakes her rattle.
“Okay,” I say as I settle in with the baby on my lap. “So the mining company would be the target. That makes sense. Haven’s Rock might be spyworthy to the council, but we don’t have secrets valuable enough to kill for.”
“Unless it’s about a resident.”
“Right. Do we have a resident whose secret is so valuable that someone would send spies to find them … and then kill their colleagues? émilie says no.”
“Also, that’d be an overly complicated operation,” Petra says. “Why send three people unless you plan to kidnap the resident? But then you sure as hell wouldn’t murder your colleagues first.”
“Unless kidnapping was the plan,” Yolanda says, “but Gretchen changed her mind. Or the plan was to kill a resident, and she had an attack of conscience.”
“No one is sending three operatives to kill one person. That’s not how assassinations work.” She pauses. “Or so I’ve heard.”
Yolanda snorts.
“Makes sense, though,” I say. “While we could have a resident someone wants dead, three people aren’t coming to do it. We need to look closer at the mining operation.”
“That would be my advice. Now, if it’s a case of corporate espionage, where the stakes are so high you’d only want one operative returning? That’s not some little gold-panning operation.”
“But is that any of our concern?” Yolanda says. “If it’s about the miners, do we stick our head over the parapet?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Petra says. “Do you want this operative going back and saying she met others in the forest? A couple with a dog and a baby? Doesn’t sound like she’d mistake you for miners.”
“Shit,” Yolanda says.
“Yep. No matter what, though, I think it’s time to get a closer look at your neighbors. Find out what they’re really doing up there.”