Chapter 8
CHAPTER
EIGHT
For a heartbeat, the darkness felt alive—thick and waiting.
Then the team sprang to life.
Trick stood first, his chair legs scraping against the wood floor. “I’ll check the power.”
He grabbed the flashlight clipped to his belt, and the beam cut through the shadows in a narrow cone. Before he could take another step, his body convulsed into a coughing fit.
Olive mentally reminded herself to take more vitamin C tonight before bed.
Warren rose halfway from his chair, looking uneasy. “The generator should kick on automatically. It’s about twenty yards from the inn. Maybe there’s a delay.”
Rex’s voice came from the dark, low and steady. “Olive, Jason—you go instead.”
Olive turned toward the sound. “You don’t want Trick to—?”
“I said you two. I want to limit the number of people outside the inn. You’ve been outside enough to notice any changes better than Trick.” There was no room for argument in his tone. “Besides, Trick, whether you want to admit it or not, you’re sick. I don’t want you to get pneumonia.”
Trick frowned but lowered himself back into his chair with a furrowed brow. “Guess I’ll sit this one out. But it’s just allergies.”
No one argued with him, though they all thought this was way more than allergies.
The air in the room seemed to shift.
Something about the exchange snagged in Olive’s thoughts. Rex trusted Trick as much as anyone. So why the change?
Unless . . . he didn’t. Unless Rex was wondering the same thing she was.
Trick had shown up with Rex, both claiming they’d arrived at the same time. But what if that wasn’t true? What if Trick had arrived early and parked nearby until he could time his entrance?
It was a terrible thought, one Olive hated herself for having. These people weren’t just teammates—they were friends. Family, in their own broken way.
But JJ—though new—had been one of theirs too.
“Yes, sir,” Olive murmured before looking at Jason. “Let’s go.”
As she stepped into the living room, she spotted Mitzi rushing back toward the dining room. She’d stepped out just before the lights had gone out—something about a phone call from home.
“Power’s out, huh?” Mitzi said.
“Rex wants everyone in the dining room while Jason and I check things out.”
“Got it.”
But when Olive watched Mitzi hurry past, she saw something glimmering in her colleague’s hair—tiny white specks.
Specks that looked an awful lot like . . . snow.
Had Mitzi had time to go outside and sabotage the generator?
Olive couldn’t be sure, but she didn’t like the thought of it.
Jason had already grabbed his flashlight and tested the beam. “Ready?”
Olive turned her gaze away from Mitzi and nodded. “Yes. Let’s get this over with.”
They grabbed their coats and stepped out into the cold.
The wind cut through them from the moment the door opened, feeling like icy fingers biting through their clothes. Snow swirled sideways, stinging their faces. The beam from the flashlight carved only a small circle through the darkness.
“Did it look like snow in Mitzi’s hair?” Olive whispered as they stepped down the stairs.
“I thought I saw that too,” Jason said. “I’m surprised you didn’t ask her about it.”
“Once you throw out an accusation like that, you can’t take it back. If Mitzi’s innocent, then our relationship could be fractured. But we’d still have to work together. I figured it was safer to observe and keep an eye on her instead.”
“Smart thinking.”
The generator shed stood half-buried in snowdrifts. In front of the door, a patch of snow had been cleared—as if someone had recently opened the door.
Jason reached the door first, brushed snow from the latch, and tugged it open. The smell of diesel and oil wafted out.
Olive’s beam swept across the small interior, landing on the thick rubber line snaking from the fuel tank to the generator.
The line was cleanly severed.
Her stomach dropped. “Someone cut it.”
Jason crouched, brushing frost from the tubing. “This was definitely done on purpose.”
Olive’s pulse thudded in her ears. “So it wasn’t a malfunction. Someone wanted to strand us here without any power.”
Jason met her gaze, gray eyes hard. “Looks that way.”
As the wind howled through the trees, rattling the metal roof above them, Olive tightened her coat.
She glanced out the door and scanned the dark woods beyond. “Whoever did this is still close.”
“Then we need to be more on guard than ever.”