13. Camille
CAMILLE
By first light, the storm has weakened a little, giving us chance to move again.
The station sits where the pass narrows, a squat concrete bunker built into the mountainside by people who assumed the weather would eventually try to murder anyone inside it.
The door is half-drifted over, and we have to dig before Evander can force it open.
Inside, it's colder than out, the air dead and stale, everything coated in a fine gray dust that hasn't been disturbed in years.
I find the radio bank against the far wall and my heart lifts, then sinks in the same breath.
"Power's gone," I say, running my flashlight over the housing.
"Look at the corrosion on the primary supply.
Water got in through that seam, sat there and then froze and thawed a dozen times.
It ate the whole board." I crouch and pry the panel loose.
"The radio might be fine, the thing that feeds it is a fossil. "
"Can you work around it?"
"Maybe, there has to be a backup cell somewhere in this room, code requires it, and if it's not as dead as the main…
" I'm already moving, following conduit with my light.
"Go find me anything useful. Batteries, a working lantern, tools that aren't rusted to paste.
And food, if these idiots stocked it. I haven't eaten since a train tried to kill me. "
He huffs something close to a laugh and disappears into the back, and I get to work.
I'm elbow-deep in the guts of the supply cabinet when the door bangs again and a gust of snow announces someone who is very much not Evander. I come up with a wrench in my fist before I clock the sandy hair and the grin.
"Relax, I’m Tobias." He stamps his boots, dumps a duffel by the door, and takes in the room with a low whistle.
"Followed your trail from the wreck, figured you two could use a lineman, seeing as the last time this station worked, I was in high school.
" He tosses me a coil of copper wire. "Brought that, and proper crimpers, since I'm guessing you've been improvising. "
I catch the crimpers gratefully. "Please tell me you know this power architecture."
"Better than anyone alive. Utility work." He drops down beside me and peers into the cabinet, and his grin widens. "Oh, she's ugly. Whoever decommissioned this thing did it drunk." He glances toward where Evander's flashlight is sweeping, then lowers his voice. "So, you and my cousin."
"We are not doing this."
"We are absolutely doing this. I have never once seen him act like this about a woman." He strips a wire with his thumbnail, easy and quick. "Whatever you did, keep doing it."
"I fixed a radio and yelled at him about martyrdom. Standard service."
"Is that what the kids call it now?"
"Tobias."
"Right, right." He's laughing under his breath, and I decide I like him.
We work in tandem after that, and it's fast, easy, the same rhythm I usually only find alone.
He hands me components before I ask. I splice where he can't reach, and within twenty minutes we've bridged the dead board to the backup cell, and I hold my breath as I throw the switch.
The radio hums, and a green light, weak but steady, blinks awake.
"That's power," I breathe. "Toby, that's power."
"Told you. Lineman." He’s pleased as anything, just as Evander comes back with an armful of emergency rations and a lantern that actually works.
"You got it running," Evander says, and the pride in his voice is so plain I have to look away and pretend to adjust the frequency. "Hi, Tobias. I hope you didn’t scare her."
"Never."
I raise Stonehaven on the third try. Static, then a voice, then Owen Beckett's careful drawl crackling through the little speaker like a lifeline. I give him our position, the passenger count, the medical situation. Then I brace for whatI don't want to hear.
"When can rescue reach the wreck?" I ask.
The pause stretches too long. "Not soon, Ms. Dyer.
" Owen sounds like he's chewing gravel. "Avalanche danger's got the whole pass locked.
State won't authorize teams in until the snowpack stabilizes, and the forecast says that's hours out, minimum.
A couple of days if we're lucky. Tonight if we're not.
" A crackle. "You're going to have to hold those people together on your own a while yet. "
Evander clenches his jaw, but he doesn't argue. He's learning, I key the mic. "Understood. We'll manage. But Owen, there's something else, and I need you to write it down exactly."
"Go ahead."
"I need to know who's already talking about this derailment on the outside. Who moved first."
Another pause, and when Owen comes back his voice has changed, sharpened into the tone I imagine he uses right before he arrests someone.
"Funny you ask. There's already noise, company called Northstar Meridian put out a statement two hours ago.
Calling the derailment proof the northern line's a death trap, saying it needs permanent closure before it kills anyone else. "
The wrench goes still in my hand. Beside me, Tobias stops smiling.
"Two hours ago," I repeat. "Owen, say that back to me. Two hours."
"That's what I've got."
"That's not possible." I'm on my feet now, pacing the tiny room, the pieces slamming together too fast to sit still for.
"Nobody has been to the wreck, no investigator, no engineer, nobody.
There is no report. There is no cause of record, you cannot look at a derailment a couple hours old, in a whiteout, from miles away, and declare the infrastructure unsafe. Not honestly, not unless…"
"Unless you already knew what was going to happen," Evander finishes. His voice gone quiet and dangerous.
"Unless you wrote the press release before the train left the station." I press the heels of my hands against my eyes. "They had the statement drafted, they were waiting on the derailment like a cue. God, the arrogance of it."
Owen's voice crackles back. "There's more, and you're not gonna like it.
Northstar's offering to buy up sections of the rail corridor and a stack of distressed property along it.
Their pitch is that if the government closes the line, they'll take the worthless land off everybody's hands. Real generous, considering."
"Considering they're the reason it's about to become worthless.
" I stop pacing. My hands have stopped shaking, which is what happens to me when fear finally burns off and leaves nothing but the work.
"Owen, I need a favor, and it's a big one.
I need you to start pulling ownership records.
Every parcel Northstar's bought or bid on in the last eighteen months.
Plot them, I want to see the shape of what they're assembling. "
"That's a lot of courthouse hours."
"It's a homicide investigation with thirty-one witnesses freezing on a mountain.
Spend the hours." I soften it. "Please, I'll hand you the physical evidence the second the pass opens.
I've got sabotaged components bagged and photographed.
But I can't prove motive from up here, and motive is written in those deeds. "
"I'll start now," Owen says. "You keep those people alive."
"That's the plan."
I sign off, and the little green light keeps blinking, and nobody in the bunker says anything. Then Tobias lets out a long breath.
"So somebody blew up a train to make a real-estate deal look reasonable," he says. "That's… I don't even have a joke for that. That's just evil."
I almost laugh. "That's exactly what it is."
I catch Evander watching me, torchlight carving his face into planes and shadows.
He's not looking at me the way he did in the shelter, all heat and hunger.
This is something quieter and, honestly, more terrifying.
He's staring like I'm the thing standing between his whole world and the people trying to bury it.
"What?" I ask.
"Nothing." He shakes his head slowly. "I just realized I stopped being afraid of you knowing our secret.
Now I'm afraid of what happens to these people if you weren't here.
" He crouches beside me, close but not touching, letting me choose.
"My whole life has been about being the one who holds the line.
I don't know what to do with watching someone else do it better. "
"You say thank you," I tell him, gentler than I mean to. "And then you hand me the crimpers, because we've got a long night and a lot of people counting on us."
He hands me the crimpers. And since the mountain came down, I believe we might actually win.