Grant moved to the cockpit and opened the door. “Look at this. It’s the radio,” he said, gesturing to a box that had been gutted, wires hanging out. So much for making contact with the outside world that way.
“What’s going on? Who did this?” And where were they now? I turned, looking out over the meadow and surrounding woods. I walked around the airplane, searching, smelling, trying to find a trail. I smelled people, moving back and forth. The whole path smelled like people, and the airstrip smelled like fuel and tire skids overlaying the natural smell of the valley. Nothing stood out, nothing gave me a clue about who had done this or where they’d gone.
Grant was sitting in the pilot seat, flipping switches—that he’d know anything about flying a plane didn’t surprise me. The engine coughed, sputtered, and died. “Out of fuel,” he said. “Someone’s drained the fuel tank.”
Leaving us good and stuck. I tried to be shocked but felt resigned.
Grant hopped out of the cockpit and closed the door. I returned to staring at the bodies in the cabin. They didn’t deserve this. This had been just another job, and now—
Grant
closed the cabin door, blocking my view. I shook myself clear of the image.
“What should we do with them?” I said.
“Leave them for now. We need to wake the others.”
As it turned out, we didn’t have to wake up the others. We heard a loud, shocked scream as we approached the lodge. This one was different than when Tina discovered Jerome’s deer carcass. This one was all about volume and fear. Not another murder came my first thought, and I ran. I’d find the murderer, catch him and tear him apart—
Ariel had discovered Dorian’s body. She was standing on the front porch, hands over her mouth, looking down. Tina, Jerome, and Jeffrey were with her.
How were we going to tell them that this wasn’t the worst of it? Slowly, I climbed the steps. The group on the porch followed me with shocked, questioning gazes, expecting me to say something. I didn’t know where to start.
“The power’s out,” I said. “The phone’s gone, and the radio in the airplane is busted. We can’t find Provost anywhere.”
“What are you saying?” Jerome demanded, angry. Like being fierce could solve this, could make everything right again. “What the hell’s going on?”
Grant stepped up beside me, his lip curled into a thin smile. “I think we’ve been had.”
The others went inside to wake up Lee and Conrad and gather everyone in the living room. Grant and I examined the area where Dorian had been standing and where he’d fallen. Looking for footprints, odd smells, hints of foul play. Like some kind of detective novel. Didn’t Agatha Christie do this one already?
I smelled Provost. Didn’t mean anything, because he’d been in and out of here all week, on the porch, sitting, standing, walking. I found footprints, but again, Provost and his crew had been going back and forth the whole time we’d been here. I didn’t know enough about forensics to know if the wound on Dorian’s head was caused by the fall or by someone sneaking up on him and hitting him.
Grant found something, a scorch mark at the joint that had held the railing to the post. “A small explosive might have weakened the joint at an opportune time. It wouldn’t even have to be loud enough to hear.”
“So it’s sabotage. Not an accident,” I said.
“Seems reasonable.”
None of us had touched Dorian up to that point. For a second I entertained the thought that maybe he was just unconscious, and if I put my hand to his neck there’d be a pulse and he’d survive. But the Wolf senses knew otherwise, couldn’t be fooled. He smelled dead.
Grant, Jeffrey, and I took a spare blanket, wrapped Dorian in it, and brought him inside to one of the empty bedrooms upstairs. We closed the door softly, out of respect. It seemed almost laughable; we weren’t going to wake anyone up. But the whole situation seemed to call for moving softly, carefully.
Then we gathered in the living room to discuss—to confront—the situation.
“So we’re stranded,” Jeffrey said. “We don’t have any power, and there’s no way to contact anyone.”
“Has anyone checked the generator?” Lee said.
“We were on our way to do that when we found Dorian,” I said. “But do you really think this is just a matter of turning the power back on? We’re on our own here.” I wanted to pace, but I stayed in my chair, my feet tapping nervously. Jerome did pace, back and forth along the picture window, looking out.
“I don’t get this. What does this mean? What are you all saying?” Conrad said, shaking his head. “Because if this is some kind of haunted-house gag for the show, it’s in really poor taste.”
“There are bodies, Conrad,” I muttered. “This isn’t TV anymore.”
Grant said, “Until we contact the authorities, I suggest no one go anywhere alone. We should stay in this central area until we come up with a plan to contact the authorities and find out where Provost is.”
“We’re what, sixty miles from the nearest town? If I shifted I could run that in a day,” Jerome said. “Kitty and I both could.”