Chapter 22 #2
Inside, it was claustrophobic. Two bunks, the lower one stripped to the mattress, the upper made up military tight.
On the desk, an old e-reader and tablet, both dead now, and a notebook.
She picked that up and flipped through it.
Ink sketches filled the pages—people, penguins, birds, a boat bobbing in an icy ocean, a plane coming in for a landing.
When she got to the first page, she froze.
Her own face stared up at her, caught mid-laugh.
Oh, God. She remembered Maren sketching this. They had been hiking together near Moab, Utah, when they stopped for a water break and to admire the almost extra-terrestrial beauty of the red rock formations. She’d taken out the brand new notebook and drawn the sketch in thirty seconds flat.
That had been the summer before she came here and disappeared.
This was real.
Maren had been here.
Rue closed the notebook and pressed it to her chest, forcing herself to breathe as she scanned the rest of the desk. A field notebook, pages curling from the damp as the ice covering everything started to melt. The last entry was dated almost exactly a year ago.
Storm’s getting worse. Helena says we can’t risk the traverse to Thwaites tonight, but I don’t think we have a choice. The radio’s dead. If anyone finds this?—
That was all. The page ended mid-sentence, the pen trailing off into a broken line.
Rue’s vision blurred. She blinked hard and forced herself to focus.
She rummaged through the desk drawer, searching for anything else, but there were just pens and a half-finished crossword.
She shut the drawer, and something small toppled off the desk and bounced across the floor, landing at her feet.
It was a small carving of a red fox. The wood was worn, one ear chipped off.
Maren’s lucky charm. She’d carried it on every expedition, claimed it kept her from getting turned around in the field. Rue stared at the fox until the outline started to double, then she closed her fist around it so tight the edges dug into her palm.
She forced herself upright, wiped her face with the back of her hand, and left Maren’s room, continuing down the hall, desperate to find more signs of her.
The next door was jammed, but the third down was open, and the smell hit her before she crossed the threshold—a sour, coppery sweetness, unmistakable and out of place in the clean cold.
Blood. Old, but still potent enough to leap straight to the back of her tongue.
She flicked the headlamp higher and saw the stain, a dark starburst frozen onto the floor.
It fanned out from the base of a bunk, the sheets rumpled as if in a fight, the pillow half-off the frame.
Rue’s heart pounded against her ribs as she eased closer.
The blood was dry, the color faded to rust, but there was too much of it for anything short of violence.
She scanned the room. The upper bunk had a fist-sized hole punched through the mattress.
The insulation had spilled out in a lumpy, haphazard cascade, and there were more rusted red stains.
She edged back, the sick feeling crawling up her throat.
This wasn’t an accident. This was a horror movie scene—panic, violence, and then the aftermath, frozen in time.
She shot a glance down the hallway. Elliot was probably in the comms room, wrestling with the radios, trying to get in touch with his family.
She should go to him, tell him what she’d found…
But, no, she needed to see the rest first. Needed to know what had happened here.
The next door was different: a heavy steel slab with a hasp and a massive padlock, the kind you used to keep out polar bears or—her mind offered—the kind you used when you didn’t want whatever was inside to get out.
It was scratched around the edges, and the paint on the handle was worn off by repeated use.
She rattled it, and the echo boomed down the corridor.
The lock was a cheap hardware store model.
Easy peasy, thanks to one of her dad’s men teaching her the art of lock picking when she was a teen.
She retrieved a multitool from the side pouch of her parka and went to work, her fingers numbed in the frigid air.
The metal was cold enough to burn, but she’d done worse with less.
The shank twisted after two tense minutes, the lock snapping open with an anticlimactic click.
The sound was so loud in the silence she almost jumped.
Just as she pulled the lock free of the hasp and pushed on the handle, she heard Elliot’s footsteps thundering down the hallway toward her.
“Rue, what the hell—” He skidded to a halt, eyes narrowing at the sight of her mid-break-in. “Was it really that hard to stay put for one goddamn second?”
She opened her mouth to retort, but the words caught in her throat. He was flushed, out of breath, a tangle of frustration and worry written across his face. He’d probably run the whole length of the station for her.
He always ran to put himself between her and danger.
When she didn’t respond, his gaze narrowed on her. “Rue?”
She was too tired to hide her fear and sadness, and she was sure every bit of it showed in her expression as she held out the notebook and the fox figurine. “These were Maren’s.”
“Jesus.” Instead of looking at the notebook, he stepped forward and enfolded her in his arms, pulling her tight against his chest. “Oh, Trouble, you’re shivering. Come on, you need to warm up.”
“No.” She pushed him away and turned back to the door. “I have to see what was inside.”
Before he could protest, she turned the handle and shoved the door open.