Straightening, I pulled from the window. Reminded myself I was supposed to be badass. “Tell you what. There’s a locked room upstairs. Anyone else want to check it out? See what Provost decided to keep out of sight?”
I trooped upstairs, leading the others.
“Maybe this is all some kind of mistake,” Lee said. “Dorian was an accident, Jerome was the only target—he had enemies, right? Maybe from his boxing days?”
“Except there’s still that prickling on the back of my neck,” I said.
“What do you think we’ll find in there?” Tina said.
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t need to look.”
Ariel split off to knock on Conrad’s door. “Hey, Conrad. You okay?”
“I’m not coming out, so don’t ask,” came the muffled voice from within. Ariel stepped back, a startled look on her face.
“I’d have thought he’d start adjusting by now,” she said.
I gave her a wry grin. “The trouble is, there’s no way he can save face. He looks like an idiot, and he knows it.?
?
The door to the mystery room was still locked. I rattled the knob again and wondered if I was strong enough to kick it in. That always worked so well in the movies, right? “Maybe there’s an ax in the toolshed,” I said.
“May I try?” Grant stepped forward, holding a couple of small, thin tools. Lock picks. The magician had everything.
“Be my guest,” I said, stepping aside. I liked having Grant on my team, which made me even crankier when Anastasia whispered to me, “He has us all where he wants us.”
I didn’t want to have that argument right now. I didn’t want to have that argument at all.
Grant got to work on the lock, using the pick smoothly, making minute adjustments. In a moment, the lock clicked and the door cracked open. Grant pushed inside the room.
I could see pretty well in the dark. So could Anastasia, and she was at my shoulder, looking in. The room had been cleared of furniture, and a dozen or so plastic storage crates were shoved up against walls, among other random bits of equipment. A storage room, as I’d suspected. I took a deep breath and tried to sort out the tangle of smells. Lots of metal, plastic, rubber, along with the smells inherent in the lodge. Familiar smells of technology and civilization. It didn’t mean anything.
Grant was studying the room by the glow from a cigarette lighter. Tina and Jeffrey carried flashlights and panned the beams over the interior. I started looking in boxes.
One held a few extra remote cameras nestled among coils of coaxial cable. Microphones, wire, electrical tape, packing foam, forms listing inventory. All the odds and ends I’d have expected to find tucked away on a film production like this.
Then I found the box with stuff in it I couldn’t identify.
“Grant?” I said. He and Anastasia came to look over my shoulder.
In this box we found coils of very thin wire, an almost clear filament that certainly wasn’t meant for anything electrical. Sleek black boxes with tiny lenses. Batteries. Gun cases—empty.
“Trip wire,” Grant said. “Motion detectors.”
“Stuff you’d use for a security system?” I said.
“Or for a trap,” he said.
I was almost afraid to dig looking for more, but I did, and found the canisters, steel and heavy, the size of grenades. Not that I’d ever seen a grenade. But I could tell. My skin was prickling. When I lifted it, my hand seemed to tingle at the feel of it. The sheer sinister aura leaking from it. I smelled it, a quick sniff, and quickly turned away because it smelled sour, chemical. Just a faint odor, suggestive of pain. My eyes watered from it.
“Tear gas,” Grant said.
“Are you kidding?” I said, quickly setting the thing down. “What’s a film crew need with tear gas?” And I knew. Cormac’s voice whispering. All I had to do was think of what he would do with tear gas. “They could get us to panic. To scatter, if they wanted to separate us.”
Jeffrey stared at the box, encompassed by his flashlight beam. “What does this mean? That Provost and the production company are in on it?”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “I’d love to find out who owns the lodge. It might be that someone was able to get in here ahead of time and set up shop. We still don’t know enough to go pointing fingers.”