Nikolai, page 16
She slowly nodded. “Is that what you think happened last night, earlier this morning?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.
“I don’t know what to think, so that’s why I’m here, doing another check.”
“It’s a pretty small space, compared to the base.”
“It is. It definitely is,” Nikolai agreed, “but some of the potential hidey-holes we find when we’re in these small places are pretty freaking amazing. Just let me be for a bit.”
She shrugged and went back to her work, watching out of the corner of her eye as he went corner to corner, checking everything out. When he returned, he had a frown on his face. “So, I presume you didn’t find anything.”
“No, I didn’t, and yet I can’t leave it alone.”
“Okay, what is it you’re expecting to find? Maybe we can start with that.”
He shrugged. “A place to hide, as I mentioned. A simple place to hide. Temporarily or as long as any search is happening.”
She got up and looked around. She pointed to the huge bin for gear storage. “So, I guess that’s technically one place.”
He walked over, lifted the lid, and nodded. “It’s definitely big enough to hide somebody.”
“But they wouldn’t have access to an escape very quickly though,” she pointed out. “So, as a hiding place, it would do temporarily but not for long.”
Nikolai agreed. “We’re up against that scenario anyway. All they need is a place to get away from the main complex, and they could be here in a heartbeat.”
She looked around and slowly nodded. “And yet what’s to stop Joe from finding them?”
“It’s not that anything would stop Joe from finding them—but Joe.” Nikolai gave her a wry smile and whispered, “Did you know that he enjoys a couple drinks in the evening?”
She stared at him in surprise and then slowly added, “So, you’re thinking somebody would have taken advantage of that and come and gone. If the dogs know who our intruder is, maybe he brings treats for the dogs, and they might yip and yelp, getting excited to see him. However, if they were well-trained, which of course these are, the stranger may get in and out without any trouble.”
“Exactly,” Nikolai muttered, with a look of mixed emotions.
“Is it possible?”
“Yes.”
“Is it plausible?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “That would be the issue.”
“Speaking of issues, I think you should be back on the base, lying down,” she noted crossly.
He grinned. “Thanks for worrying about me, but don’t you want answers?”
“Damn right I want answers,” she snapped, raising both hands. “Not having answers is freaking irritating. Not being able to tear things apart to get them is also irritating.”
“More to the point,” Nikolai added, as he looked around, “we can have this conversation later. Now, is there any other place he could have hidden? A place where he could have come and gone in a way that his presence would have gone undetected?”
She looked around with him, though he’d already done a search of the area. “Those big supply boxes were plausible, but not necessarily very feasible, not with Joe around.”
Nikolai eyed her, as he considered that. “We know Joe,” he replied in a low voice. “He does have a drink or two in the evenings. He also goes to bed early, and it’s quite possible he wouldn’t have noticed anything. Which means nothing much would have stopped anyone from coming and going.”
She winced at that. “That’s still a little bit hard to believe. What about the dogs?” And then she grabbed his arm and pointed in the direction of the dog doors. He stared at them and nodded slowly. “Particularly if Joe wouldn’t have heard much,” she added in a low voice.
“And the dogs?” he asked.
“Someone could take a little bit of time, get to know them, bring them treats. That’s what we’re all doing here,” she admitted.
Nikolai nodded. “In a way we’ve all been assigned a dog, and we’ve all been given time to work with them.”
“So, the intruder has already gotten that far with the dogs,” she noted. “All he had to do was continue on with the same training.”
“So, you’re assuming,” Nikolai pointed out, “that he was part of our base.”
“Eric was, so his partner would smell like him, act like him, talk like him. Plus, if Eric’s partner was our intruder, he was in and out and all about with Eric. Therefore, I don’t think it would’ve taken much for Eric’s partner to find his way into being comfortable with the dogs. Particularly if he’s had time to get to know them. What if he was here last night? Even among the stray people who come and go?”
“Meaning?” Nikolai asked.
She faced him. “Meaning, the pilot, the guy who does the delivery. … A couple times he’s had to stay overnight because the weather was so shitty, and he couldn’t take off for another day or two.”
Nikolai shrugged. “He’s been cleared though.”
“Sure, but we don’t know that he didn’t come in with somebody else. We don’t know for sure that he didn’t get paid to smuggle somebody in. For all we know, some of this was part of the secret training Eric set up,” she suggested. “Maybe it went a little too far, or maybe somebody used that training session to take on an extra mission of their own.”
Nikolai held up his finger. “Let’s sort out one thing first.” He looked over at Joe, who was grumbling at a clipboard in his hand, as he stared at his supplies. With a pencil behind one ear and chewing on the end of a second, he muttered his way through the inventory of some of his stock. Now moving, Nikolai slipped out the dog door.
She watched and realized that at no point in time did Joe realize somebody was using the door because the dogs came and went through those doors all the time. Joe also didn’t notice that Nikolai was or wasn’t here. When Nikolai returned the same way a little bit later, and stood up, a couple of the dogs jumped on him, anxious to be part of this new game, and he immediately calmed them with a hand signal. He looked over at her with an eyebrow raised, and she slowly shook her head to signify that Joe hadn’t even noticed.
He walked back over quietly and held a finger against his lips. “I’ll disappear, and then I’ll come back that way, with no warning. Let’s see how feasible this is.”
She nodded and went back to her work, but she kept looking around, watching to see if Nikolai was here.
Finally, even Joe noticed her worry, as he asked, “What’s wrong? Why are you so edgy?”
She groaned. “I don’t know. It’s one of those days, I guess.”
“Well, hurry up and finish and get lost then,” he replied, with his usual grumpy tone. “That edginess of yours is making me edgy,” he grumbled.
She laughed. “Okay already. I’m almost done here. I’ll finish this off and then head back. Besides, I’ll need food soon.”
“That’s what happens when you get too cold just once,” Joe explained. “It’s like your body, the furnace in your system, constantly needs reinforcement after that. You have to pay attention and don’t ever run short again.”
“How is that even possible around here?” she asked, with a groan. “Avalon and Chrissy and Chef work hard to feed us pretty well.”
“Probably too well.” Joe smiled, as he patted his stomach. “We’re definitely getting spoiled on this trip, and I understand why—in terms of keeping everybody’s spirits up,” he noted, “but it’ll show up on my waistline.”
“Oh, come on. You get tons of exercise.”
“According to my wife, my pants are getting a little on the tighter side.”
She burst out laughing. “Tell your wife to come here for one of these training sessions and see how well she handles it.”
He gave her a fat grin. “Nope, these are my sessions. I want to come alone, and it also gives me a break. Sometimes I want to tune her out. When you’ve been with somebody for so long that you know what they’ll say before they open their mouth, you kind of fall into the habit of not really listening anymore.”
“You wouldn’t.” Emily gasped.
“It’s probably not the best thing, but life falls into a bit of a rut when you’re together for so long,” he shared. “These visits, these missions? They’re good for me. They keep me sharp.”
She nodded, not sure what to say about that because obviously whatever sharpness he was talking about wasn’t something he had displayed so far. “I’m done here, so why don’t I head over. Do you want a coffee or something?”
He looked at her and smiled. “Sure, if you feel like delivering it. I used to go over and get things, but, with the weather and the hassle of getting all geared up to go the distance, half the time I can’t be bothered. And then, if it’s really ugly, I won’t even do that much. So, if you’re up for it, I won’t say no.”
“Sure,” she said, with a smile. As she exited, she cast one more glance around, saw absolutely nothing amiss and no sign of Nikolai.
She headed into the kitchen area of the base. As soon as she got inside, Mountain looked at her sharply. “Where’s Nikolai?”
“Testing out a theory,” she replied, “and honestly it’s a pretty decent theory too. It won’t make one member of this team look very good, and that is something I feel really bad about.”
His eyebrows shot up, and he groaned. “You want to explain that?”
She hesitated. “That should be a Nikolai thing.” Mountain grumbled at her, and she nodded. “I don’t know where he’s at right now, but I know he wanted to do a test run to see if his theory was feasible.”
“Maybe you should tell me a little bit more about that theory,” Mountain said in exasperation.
She shrugged. “Or you could wait a few minutes, and we’ll see if it works.”
He poured a coffee and turned, almost tapping his feet impatiently. When her phone buzzed, she found a message from Nikolai.
I’m hidden. Can you find me?
In the same location?
Yes.
Then Joe walked in. She promptly slid her phone in a back pocket, as he grinned at her openly. “I decided to come over and get some food anyway, so skip the coffee delivery.”
“Okay. I think I must have left my phone over there.”
“You better go get it,” Joe replied. “You don’t want to leave it in those temperatures for too long.”
“Even inside your place?”
“Hey, it doesn’t take long to cool down electronics.”
She nodded and, with Mountain looking puzzled, she motioned at him to follow.
“What are we doing?” Mountain asked, as he geared up, and they headed over to the dog barn.
“Yeah, we’re about to go see if we can find Nikolai.”
“Where?” he asked.
“With the dogs.” As they approached, she explained how Nikolai had gone in and out of the dog run through the dog doors, all without Joe noticing.
Mountain stopped and stared, then nodded once. “And that would make sense.”
As they stepped inside, she looked around, frowning. She whispered to Mountain, “Earlier today we thought of multiple places in the barn that could hold a man, where someone could get in or out on their own, and wondered if anybody would notice,” she explained. “We assumed that, with a little time to work with the dogs, they wouldn’t be a problem, and, if the intruder could find a time when Joe was either tired, not paying attention, sleeping, or whatnot, it might be quite feasible in terms of hiding from him too.”
Mountain stared around the dog barn, looking at the stacks of supplies and dogs in multiple corners, and he nodded excitedly. “Okay, at first glance, it doesn’t appear anything’s here,” he muttered, his gaze narrowing, as he walked over to the big storage trunk and quickly opened it.
She winced, thinking that Mountain would find Nikolai right off the bat. But, as soon as the trunk was opened, it was empty. “That’s where I thought he would be,” she said.
Mountain turned around, found another storage bin, and opened it. Then found a third one, underneath a bunch of tack. He turned to her, frowning. “There isn’t any other place in here.”
She studied the area, then looked over where Joe’s bed was. Walking over, she bent down to look underneath it, but gear was so close by, it was hard to see. Letting her eyes adjust, it didn’t take long to see Nikolai under there, grinning at her.
He slowly came out and Mountain glared at them. “Damn it.”
“I know.” Nikolai grinned broadly. “If you hadn’t known I was supposed to be here, would you have found me?”
Mountain shook his head. “No,” he snapped, harsher than he intended. “And did you get in through the dog door while Joe was here?” he asked, with a questioning look at him.
Nikolai nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly how I got in and out—a couple times actually. The dogs are quite happy to play the game. So, with anybody who’s done it a time or two, the dogs would be completely okay. But, even in a pinch, this is how they’re getting in and out and away from here. Plus, no tracks were anywhere close by, and the dog doors lead out to the dog runs which are covered—wait for it—in dog tracks. So it probably isn’t all that hard to camouflage your own footprints.”
“Sure, it is,” Mountain countered. “Yet now we know more about what to look for.”
At that, she made a strangled noise in the back of her throat. “If you look closely at all the prints out there, remember how Joe has been creating boots for a lot of the dogs to protect them from the ice?” Mountain nodded, and she walked over and pointed out several examples. “All these will make different-looking tracks. So even having these out there will do a ton to camouflage actual footprints.”
Wanting to try it, Mountain went through the dog door himself. It was a tight fit, but then Mountain was huge. When he got out to the other side, she followed, and so did Nikolai. There, the big man walked the pen, carefully looking at the tracks, and, when they got to the far end, he started to swear. “He’s gone over the fence at this corner.” He pointed to the underbrush there.
“So, that’s how he’s been getting in and out.” Nikolai shook his head.
“Seems like it.” Mountain frowned.
“Now the question is whether just Eric was doing this or if this is also where we got our intruder from?” Nikolai asked.
“I’ll guess it’s both,” Emily replied with finality. “Once they found a pathway in and out that they could keep using without being detected, that became a no-brainer.”
Mountain nodded. “I’m heading out on these tracks.” He looked over at Nikolai, who was already glaring at him.
“I’m coming too,” he snapped.
“Yeah, you’re coming, as long as you’re not hurt,” Mountain stated, with a word of warning about his latest injury. They both turned and looked at her, and she nodded.
“I’m coming too.”
At that, they both shook their heads vehemently. “No.”
She glared at them. “I’m not some hothouse flower that needs to be protected,” she snapped. “I’ve been a part of this, and I want to see it through.”
“You are a part of this,” Mountain replied, “but I want you to stay here in case this asshole decides to come back in again. With Joe gone and quite likely gone for an hour, what’s to stop our intruder from either coming in, crawling out from another hidey-hole”—he frowned at that thought, as he looked back at the barn—“or planning to return for something later?”
“But …”
“No buts, I need you here. We’ll follow the tracks, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t already hidden somewhere close by. It may seem foolish to think that he is, but I’m not comfortable with the idea that he’s not around,” Mountain pointed out. “I’ll put a couple other people on alert as well,” he noted, as he pulled out his phone. “And we’ll ensure our intruder doesn’t end up behind us.”
“I can help with that,” Emily said.
“Nikolai is enough for that, and I will track.” He looked over at him. “You any good at tracking?”
Nikolai immediately nodded. “Damn right, I am. Particularly in this case.”
“As in?”
“As in tracking men,” Nikolai stated, “particularly assholes.”
*
Nikolai, energized by this turn of events, pushed ahead, strong, with Mountain at his side. They followed the tracks for what seemed to be a good hour. When they made a big circle and started to confuse the footprints as they backtracked on each other, Nikolai paused and studied them carefully.
“What do you see?” Mountain asked, as he looked at the tracks himself and then around the area.
“I see an attempted deception,” Nikolai shared, “with too many tracks and no purpose for them. I suggest we make a much bigger circle and see if we can find out where the main tracks lead.”
“Given the attempt to hide the tracks, it can’t be too far away,” Mountain declared, excitedly rubbing his hands. “Keep looking. You’ll see it.” When Nikolai frowned at him, Mountain nodded. “Yes, I can see it.”
“You holding out on me?”
“No, and don’t feel bad. I’ve been doing this for a hell of a long time,” Mountain declared, “and right now I’m seriously motivated.”
“You and me both.” Nikolai turned his attention to study the tracks. “Okay, this track heads off, and it’s definitely going somewhere.”
“Why is that?” Mountain asked, as they studied the track.
“It’s deeper, heavier, with stronger slides. He’s trying to move out quickly.”
“Agreed. So, why?”
“I think he’s moved his campsite. I think whatever we’ll find here has already been moved elsewhere.”
“Let’s see if we can find what we’re looking for, then, and if we can track him to the next place,” Mountain said, “because I’m not going back until I find this asshole.”
