As soon as they stepped inside, Mason asked Troy, “Have you found anything?”
“Bodies,” he said, “eight of them.”
Gregor sucked back a breath. “Seriously? I thought four were missing.”
“Well, I’ll say four aren’t missing now, because eight are dead here. But, for whatever reason, it’s quite possible they want you to believe that four of those bodies won’t be here if you were to come looking.”
“What do you mean?” Mason demanded.
Nelson leaned against the back wall and studied the two of them together. But he didn’t say a word.
Troy gave him a half nod, then explained what they’d found.
“So Lionel didn’t die in the accident?” Gregor asked.
Troy shook his head. “Both Lionel’s and Charlie’s bodies were warm. Obviously they’re cooling now. But I’d say they haven’t been gone for long. This morning I’d say.”
“And nobody expected us to be here at all,” Nelson said. “So are you thinking those two would get deep-sixed first?”
“Exactly,” Troy said. “We’ve moved Lionel’s body into the freezer section. We’d really like you to take him back with you for an autopsy.”
“Consider it done,” Gregor said in a harsh tone. “Jesus Christ, what’s been going on here?”
“Potentially a lot, though some you may know,” Berkley said, speaking up. “And a lot you’ve probably ignored.”
He raised his eyebrows and stared at her.
She identified herself and said, “I’m sure you heard about the three women who were gang-raped during their stay here.”
Gregor’s face paled. “We heard rumors of a sexual assault,” he said cautiously.
She immediately shook her head. “No. Not rumors, and don’t soft-sell it as sexual assault. Take that directly as gang rape. One of them was my friend. I saw her and photographed her injuries afterward. I also got her off this rig as soon as I could.”
Nelson straightened up and came over, fury lining his body. “In a climate like this,” he said, “that is bad news.”
“It’s bad news anytime,” she said, her tone gaining a bit of temper.
“Could she identify her attackers?” Mason asked.
“My friend was blindfolded.”
Mason spoke up. “You told us about Tabitha. Is that who you’re talking about?”
She nodded. “Tabitha won’t talk about it much. She’s too traumatized by it all. We have spoken, and I’ve told her that I’d look into it, but she was terrified I’d be next. She didn’t, doesn’t,” Berkeley corrected herself hastily, “know about the other rapes. My priority was getting her away, and I pulled every favor I had to get her on the next flight out.”
“So then how will we prove what happened to her?”
“Well, I sent semen swabs off to a private lab,” she said, “with my own money. And I have the photographs. She also needs to see a shrink. I’m trying to get her to do that, but, while I’m here, she’s not being very cooperative.”
“Of course not,” Mason said, running a hand through his hair. “She wants to put it off, not think about it at all.”
“Well, she won’t be able to as soon as I can land and be with her,” Berkley said. “I’d really like to leave with you today, if I could.”
“The weather has taken a downturn,” Gregor said. “According to the pilot, we might not be leaving at all.”
“In that case,” Troy said to Mason and Nelson, “you better be armed.”
“That bad?” Mason asked, but already he knew.
“Something’s definitely wrong here,” Troy said. “And that’s in addition to the dead bodies and the three women who were raped. So, Lionel is the brother of Daniel, the foreman, who’s having a hard time right now. He flat-out told me that his brother is missing, and instead his brother is in the cooler. Lionel and didn’t die in that explosion two days ago but sometime within the past twelve hours. According to Berkley, Lionel was gay. Something that he tried hard to keep quiet but—” Then he stopped, looked at Berkley, and said, “Wait. Berkley, any chance that Charlie, the man in the body bag beside Lionel, was his lover?”
“It’s quite possible,” she said steadily. “I don’t know. Again I come and go from this place, and I kept a schedule that didn’t match up with all the staff.”
“Can you leave?” Gregor asked. “How much value are you adding by being here?”
“I can work via remote access,” she said, “but you also need to know a hacker’s going through your files.”
“What?” he said in outrage. “Did you cut him out?”
“No,” she said. “But I’m tracing every spot he touches, trying to figure out what he’s after.”
“You have to get him out of there,” Gregor said, moving a couple steps forward, pacing, but the storeroom was way too damn small. He ended up slumped against the far wall. “Jesus, what a nightmare.”
“Another thing you need to know is,” Troy said, “several of the bodies in the cooler are likely managers from this rig.”
“I assumed,” Gregor said. “It’s one of the reasons chaos ensued immediately. Once the top guys went down, nobody else knew how to handle themselves.”
“But that’s not normal, is it?” Nelson said quietly. “Three of your top managers?”
“Who are the others?” Gregor asked.
“I don’t know,” Troy said and turned to look at her. “Can you bring up your photos?”
She quickly brought out her phone and flipped through them—past Lionel, his friend Charlie, then stopped as she got to the photos of the six in the cooler. Three she suspected were managers. “Who are they?”
“Don’t know that one, but that’s Stedman … and this guy must be a crewman … but this one is Doug … and Pete,” Gregor said, stopping. “Three managers among the dead here. In fact, Pete was here early, as part of the takeover that was happening. We were doing a complete sweep of the staff, breaking up the group here. We had heard a lot of problems originated here, then after the sexual assault rumors,” he said, holding up a hand to stop Berkley’s hot response, “we decided to break them up and to move them around different rigs.”
“Moving them elsewhere doesn’t solve the problem. The men here are trouble and would be anywhere else,” Berkley said. “Not all of them. Some are damn good guys. But then you get the bad apples, and they’re just ugly.”
“Which is what we were trying to avoid,” he said quietly.
“Too little, too late,” she snapped.
Troy reached out a hand for hers and squeezed it. “I understand how much this hurts you,” he said, “but right now we have to make sure that everything stays calm, quiet, and under control. We have eight other crewmen on this rig beyond us, and all eight could have had something to do with those bodies in that cooler.”
“It’s not even a matter of extra bodies,” Mason said. “We were told flat-out four were missing.” He turned to look at Gregor. “Did you know anything about deaths being reported?”