Egan, page 3
“I’m sorry. That’s tough.”
“It is tough, and she’s not handling it well.”
“No, of course not.” He hesitated and then asked in an undertone, “Was there any chance that somebody was jealous of him?”
She looked at him. “What do you mean by jealous?”
“That somebody else may have wanted your sister’s affection and decided to kill off a rival?”
Her jaw opened in shock, and then she slowly closed it. “Wow.”
“Wow?” he repeated, looking at her. “What do you mean by wow?”
“That was not even a question brought up so far.”
“Did people know that they were an item?”
She winced. “No, you’re right. They probably didn’t. I shouldn’t be telling you all this.” She looked around, with a worried expression. “Why the hell am I even telling you that?” she asked, turning and glaring at him.
He didn’t say anything, just smiled at her gently. “I’m not trying to get you in trouble, but it’s a valid question.”
“Of course it is,” she agreed, stumped. “And it never occurred to me that her relationship should be questioned. We were asked if we knew of any reason why someone would want Yegorahn dead, but I didn’t have any response because I didn’t think anybody would want him dead.”
“How about now that you’re considering it from this point of view?”
She blinked at him several times, trying to process the information. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Was anybody else around your sister, spending time with her?”
“A couple guys are pretty interested in her, and she’s beautiful.” At that, his eyebrows shot up, and she stared at him, confused. “What’s the matter?”
“You both look very much the same,” he pointed out, smiling. “You stated she’s beautiful. Yet it seemed as if she was beautiful, and yet you are somehow not.”
She flushed. “I didn’t mean that at all,” she replied defensively.
“Yet that’s what you told me.”
“Fine, it was just a phrase though,” she muttered, as she waved a hand. “Regardless, some people were pursuing her, but never anybody who seemed to be over-the-top about it.”
“Did you have any arguments with Yegorahn over it?”
“Over his relationship with her? No, not at all,” she responded in an apprehensive tone, “and they seemed to be truly happy, although they were keeping it very quiet.” He just nodded. Immediately feeling as if she’d betrayed her sister, Berry added, “I’ve got to go back to our room, before she comes looking for me. She set a timer when I went to get tea.”
“Is there a reason for that?”
“Yeah, our safety, and she’s probably panicking now.” She winced. “Christ, I’ve got to get away from you. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t normally talk this much.”
“It’s not as if you’re breaking any secret code,” he noted, “and I’m not trying to put you in a position where you feel you’re betraying her. I’m just trying to get up to speed on what’s going on here.”
“My sister would say, Watch your back because nobody saw it coming. Nobody, not a single person. Nobody has a clue what’s going on, and the fact that somebody as big and as physically fit as Yegorahn was taken down means that nobody here is safe.”
“Is that what you would say?”
She sighed. “I don’t have quite such a negative view of the world or of being here, so it’s a little hard for me to be as negative as my sister. Yet I do understand where she’s coming from. I get that pain is doing the talking right now for her. But it’s still good sound advice, so watch your back.”
And, with that, she smiled up at the man, who, for whatever reason, was way too easy to talk to. “And now I’ll definitely be in trouble.” And, sure enough, as she turned to face the door, her sister stood there, glaring at her. She threw up her free hand. “I just told him that I had to get back, before you decided to come look for me.”
At that, her sister grabbed her by the arm and marched her back down to their room.
“Seriously?” Berry protested. “I’m not a child.”
“What are you doing talking to him?” Cherry muttered, then stopping at the doorway, she looked back to see him staring at them, frowning.
“Do you see how you treated me just there?” Berry asked her sister, with a clipped tone. “Why would you do that? That just brings attention to us.”
“That’s fine. I don’t care,” Cherry stated. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”
“This has nothing to do with keeping me safe,” she cried out. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not fine, and you were talking to him. We don’t know anything about him.”
“Yeah, he just arrived, so that also means he didn’t kidnap Yegorahn,” Berry snapped. And, with that, she entered their room, carefully placed her tea on the floor, and crashed on her bed, waiting for her sister to say something. When all she heard was quiet sobs, Berry groaned, then rolled over to face her twin on the nearby bed. “Look. I’m sorry, but you have to stop panicking.”
“I can’t,” Cherry wailed. “I just can’t. I see him everywhere. I feel guilty because I didn’t do something to stop it.”
“You didn’t know, so what could you do to stop it? And why are you even saying that? You must have a guilty conscience to feel guilt, but you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“No, but I slept with him.” Cherry sighed, then walked over and sagged down on the other bed, beside Berry.
“It doesn’t matter, and it was an adult relationship. The two of you were happy. You were excited that you found each other, and life was good. That’s not against the rules. It’s not as if you broke any mandate here. Nobody cares about fraternizing up here.”
“And yet we kept it a secret.”
“Yes, and how much of keeping it secret was because it was special?” Berry pointed out.
Her sister smiled through her tears and nodded. “It was special. I had really high hopes. And now? … Everything is lost.”
“It’s not lost,” Berry corrected. “Even though he may be lost temporarily, don’t you even think that.”
She shook her head. “How can you be so positive all the time?”
“Well, for one thing, I don’t focus on all that negativity you keep spouting,” Berry replied. “We’re twins, but, jeez, in some ways, we are so opposite.”
Her sister groaned. “You keep saying that.”
“People tell us that all the time, that—outside of our looks—we really have nothing in common. I’m not sure that nothing in common fits either, but our life experiences have changed things.”
“They have, whether that’s a good thing or not.”
“It doesn’t matter because it’s in our past. Our life experiences up to this point in time are what made us who we are. It doesn’t matter that we have what we have,” Berry stated. “You must start somewhere, and you start by getting over that fear.”
“I’ll get over that fear when I’m out of here,” Cherry snapped through her teeth, rubbing the streak of tears off her cheeks. “Somebody here killed Yegorahn,” she muttered under her breath, “and, damn it, I’ll find out who.”
“But, Cherry, we don’t know that he is dead,” Berry replied. “He’s treated as missing, and people are out there every day searching for him.”
“He’s dead,” she wailed. And, with a huff, Cherry scrunched against her pillows, pulled the blankets up over her head, and wouldn’t say anything else.
*
Day 2 Morning
The next morning Egan woke, the chill of the Arctic in his bones. He quickly dressed and headed to the cafeteria for some coffee, and, if not coffee, hoping at least for hot water. He wouldn’t complain regardless; coffee would be awesome, and, if not, he would adapt. He wasn’t here for the coffee after all. And, if he didn’t have to stay the full term for this survival training, at least the original twelve-week term, then he didn’t have to stay, no matter what other people said, thought, or speculated.
As he walked into the dining area, several other people were eating breakfast. As expected, a lot of them stopped and stared.
He smiled at everybody and lifted a hand in greeting. “Yep, I’m new. Name’s Egan.” Then he grabbed a coffee and a plate of food. When he sat down at the table with a dozen other guys, they slowly introduced themselves. Even as they kept eating, their gazes were on him.
He nodded. “I heard. Nobody else is supposed to be coming in, but I’m an exception.”
“Why the hell would you want to be an exception?” one of them snapped, his English heavy with a Russian accent. “People are dying up here. You know that, right? Our countries have forsaken us and have left us here to rot.”
Egan winced at the vehemence in his tone. “I’m sorry to hear about the deaths and the missing people. I’m an engineer, here to help with the mechanics of the generator.”
“Right, of course, you’ll help them keep us here. You’re here to keep this miserable jail functioning,” he bellowed, followed by a snort, as he got up and slammed out of the room.
With the agitated man gone, the atmosphere eased up a little bit.
Egan looked over at the others as he ate. “I gather he’s not too happy about being here.”
Several of the men shook their heads in unison. One of them shared in a sympathetic tone, “That’s Raffi. His teammate Yegorahn is missing and feared dead.”
“Ah, sorry to hear that, although I’d assume maybe Raffi would want to stick around until we can find his brother-in-arms.”
“With absolutely no progress and the weather so ugly, I think he’s given up, thinking his brother will just be buried out there in the middle of nowhere.”
“Which would be pretty rough,” Egan admitted.
“So, you won’t be staying here? Is that the deal?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was a trick to get me up here and help boost the numbers, and they won’t let me go home again,” he suggested, halfway joking, though he’d seen that happen before.
One of the men nodded. “Salmo’s my name. I wouldn’t be at all surprised—a typical brass tactic.”
“Right.” Egan groaned. “Once I was sent to a camp in north China that they were working on, supposedly for forty-eight hours, and it ended up being forty-eight days.” He shrugged. “But what do you do? You go where they tell you to go.”
At that, the others laughed. “I’d take China over this too.”
“It was also damn cold there,” Egan muttered. “Some parts of China can rival this region pretty well.”
At that, their conversation turned to geography, temperatures, and weather.
When a shadow fell across Egan and Magnus sat down beside him, Egan asked, “Are we heading out to work on generators today?”
Magnus nodded. “Yeah, and we also have to check up on the scientists’ camp to confirm that Amelia hasn’t shown up again.”
“I don’t understand that,” said one of the men in an irritated tone. “If she has shown up and was capable of showing up, then why the hell isn’t she down here already, where we have heat? Why are we wasting supplies by going back to the scientists’ camp again and again, plus sending out search parties looking for her?”
“It’s not just her,” Magnus corrected. “Two of them were together, as best we know. It’s hard to say exactly what’s going on there and why she’s not contacting anybody, especially if she’s okay. If she could, she would. So, if she can’t, that’s why we presume we haven’t heard from her and why we continue to search for her. Just as we do for missing base members.”
That shut them up for a while, and, when their table emptied, just Magnus and Egan remained sitting here. He looked at Magnus and murmured, “Definitely some hard feelings around here.”
“Yeah, did they hate on you about you coming in?”
“A little bit.” Egan shrugged. “Mostly because a lot of them just want to get out and don’t want to see new people coming in—especially one who can maintain the facility and then bulldoze their hopes of getting out of here fast.”
“Yeah, I get that,” Magnus agreed comfortably. “I’m not leaving because Sydney won’t leave.”
He smiled. “I heard about you two.”
“All good things I presume?” he asked, with a smirk.
Egan nodded.
“And she’s worth a dozen of a lot of people I’ve met in my lifetime,” Magnus shared. “She’s good people, so, if you need anything, you can count on her.”
“Good enough, and if I can’t get a hold of you?”
“Yeah, she’ll probably know where I am,” he said, with a fat grin. “Unless we’re out on a mission, and that’s a whole different story. Anyway, finish eating, and let’s get going.”
“I’m done already. Where are we starting this?”
Magnus stood. “First, we’ll ensure we’ve got gear for you. We’ll be out there for the better part of the day.”
“Not inside the base?”
“We’ll be inside for a while,” Magnus confirmed. “That will give our bodies a bit of a break from the cold, and then we’ll be back outside. Have you ever done time with the dogs?”
“I have. Will we take a dogsled team?”
“Yeah, we’re a little low on gas,” Magnus noted, a bit too cheerfully, “so we’ll take the dogs. We’ll also walk the two dogs—Toby and Benji—that were injured and need to go stretch out a bit. Then we’ll be hauling them the rest of the way on the sled. Toby’s my favorite. Kinda hoping to convince Joe to let me keep him, when this is all over.”
“Sounds good.”
They headed over to get the dogs, stashing their supplies to fix the generator in a sled.
Joe nodded at Egan. “Hey, I know you. You’re Egan.”
Egan smiled, reached out, and shook his hand. “Hey, Joe. How are you doing?”
“I feel better now, if it’s the two of you taking my dogs. I can get behind that.” But then he glared at them. “But, if you hurt them, you better—”
“The dogs’ll be fine,” Egan declared. “You know as well as I do that, if need be, I’ll walk back and carry the damn dogs.”
He laughed at that. “Just like old times, huh?”
He nodded. “Just like old times. Especially if we’re supposed to be exercising the hurt ones.”
“Yeah, one got a bullet in the rump and the other a bullet to his leg,” Joe uttered in a dark voice. “That didn’t go over very well.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“The dogs are healing up, but both must be walked to build their strength,” Joe explained in a somber tone. “So, you go ahead and use Toby and Benji for a little bit. However, as soon as you see one of those two flagging, you take him off his feet, give him a rubdown, and keep him warm,” Joe instructed in a strictly businesslike tone. “We can’t have any dog getting chilled out there after a workout, especially these two injured ones.”
“Got it,” Egan stated, and Magnus gave Joe a thumbs-up.
Within minutes, the two of them were heading out with the dogs toward the scientists’ camp. With Magnus riding in the sled and with Egan skiing along at the back of the sled, it was hard to talk, so Egan kept quiet and kept notes in his head about locations, landmarks, and directions, the navigation first and foremost in his mind. When he saw the camp building up ahead, Magnus raised a hand.
Egan slowed the dog team, noting Magnus was now pointing to a broken-down sled off to the side. Egan immediately changed directions but also realized that one of the injured dogs was slowing. He stopped, and the two men quickly shifted Benji onto the sled and covered him up. With that done, Magnus took control of the team, while Egan skied beside the dogsled, as they headed toward the broken rig.
As they neared the wreckage, Egan’s heart slammed against his chest because, on top of it, bundled up and strapped down, was a body.
Day 2, Midmorning
In the communication center hub, Berry looked up from the data she had been inputting, watching a hard and fast discussion going on in front of her.
Her sister sat beside her and nudged her, then murmured, “Something’s up. Look.”
Something might be up, but the twins sure weren’t privy to whatever was going on. As they waited, other people raced over, then quickly disappeared again. She looked over at Dave, who oversaw the data collection and reports. She asked him, “What’s going on?”
He walked closer to her and replied, “They found a broken-down sled at the scientists’ camp, complete with a body wrapped and strapped on top.”
“Wrapped and strapped up? As if someone …”
“Yes, as if somebody was traveling with the body.”
“Maybe trying to bring it back to scientists’ camp then,” Berry guessed.
“Maybe,” he murmured. “We don’t have any answers yet.”
She nodded because answers were elusive up here and had been since they’d first arrived. It was frustrating to know that everything the investigators were working toward had come down to this problem. Yet she also knew that they were doing what they could.
Berry turned to her sister, who sat completely still, as if frozen. Berry smiled at Cherry reassuringly. “Hey, it’s all right. … Don’t panic. No need to.”
“I’m not panicking,” Cherry snapped, “but I know that look all too well, and it means that somebody else is dead.”
“Or,” Berry suggested, “somebody was trying to help, and they were bringing him in. At least this way they could be found.”
“Maybe, and yet it makes no sense that they didn’t find anyone with the body.”
“We don’t know that yet,” she stated, looking at her sister. “This is just the first communication. They’re going through the scientists’ camp right now.”
Cherry nodded but seemed completely unconvinced.
Berry wasn’t exactly sure what was going on. However, with an awful lot of the essentials stripped from the scientists’ camp, once all were evacuated due to no heat, Berry couldn’t imagine that anybody bringing back a body, with the intent of picking up supplies, would be terribly happy.
