She caught her breath in the back of her throat because, of course, that’s where Lionel was.
He stared all around the room, his eyes still wild. “Then the door shut, locking me in the damn freezer.”
Jonesy bolted to his feet. “What?”
Chucky nodded slowly. “That’s what I thought. I damn-near busted my hands, yelling and pounding on it, to get myself out of there,” he said. “The two new guys heard me.”
“What were they doing down there?” Idiot asked in a snide tone.
“You know what? I didn’t even give a shit about asking. I was too damn glad to get out.” Chucky stopped and looked at him, then shrugged. “I’ll go see if there’s any food yet or at least some hot coffee. I ain’t coming back to this godforsaken place. At this rate,” he said, “I’ll ask for a transfer out of here permanently.” And, with that, he turned, and he left again.
She slowly sank back down into her chair, studying the other men. Idiot was laughing like a loon. She wondered if he really was losing it or if he cared so little about somebody else’s fate that he enjoyed the idea of Chucky getting locked up in a freezer. But she couldn’t imagine what that had been like. No wonder he was freezing. She looked over at Jonesy. “That’s not good,” she said.
“No, it’s not,” he said. “How many of us are there again?”
“I thought just nine of us were here. You and me, Chucky and Winslow, Daniel and Denny, and the idiot over there,” she said, with a nod to Phil. “Oh, yeah, and Herman and Bruce. That’s nine. Now we have Gregor, plus the other two company men and the two new guys, so fourteen total.” She nodded. “So originally the eight crew and me,” she said.
“Right,” he said, “but now we have five more today. Six counting the helicopter pilot, I guess.”
She nodded again. Fifteen total. Fourteen men now. “Hope Denny has got hot food for us.” Her stomach growled on cue.
Jonesy laughed. “We could shut this down, if you want.”
“Well, the power seems to be back up again,” she said. “I did a reset on all the different breakers.”
“That’s often all it is,” he said. “Sorry, I should have done that. It’s hardly your job.”
“I was in all the systems anyway,” she said, with a shrug.
He stopped and looked at her. “Were you? Why?”
“Checking to make sure everything was running smoothly,” she said, as she stood up. “Part of my job.” She smiled and motioned to the door. “Are you gonna check out if there’s food or no?”
“Yeah, we should.” He looked over at Idiot. “You coming?”
Phil nodded. “I am.”
But when he didn’t move, Jonesy sauntered toward him. “Hey, Phil, get off your goddamn program and come on.”
Phil looked at them, frowned, and said, “Is it dinnertime?”
“We’ll check to see if there will be dinner,” she explained.
He looked at her in horror.
She shrugged. “Well, we don’t really know,” she said. “Plus, with that power off, Denny may not make very much.”
“Well, he better,” Phil said, as he stood. “If I’ve got to work my ass off, so does he. And I don’t care if that means he’s out there with a fishing rod.”
She started at that but grinned. “I hear you.”
Together the group walked toward the dining area. She turned and looked back at the offices. The board members were still sitting in the one office. They’d retreated there early on and had stuck it out. She wondered exactly what they were doing, but Mason was on a laptop and so was Nelson. She wished she could talk to him, but it really wouldn’t do any good for her cover. She suspected they had enough work running down all the crew members to take up a dozen men’s time. She could help, if they’d give her a heads-up on it, but, chances were, they wouldn’t take a chance on her getting found out either.
As they all trooped into the dining area, Denny looked up and frowned. “Did I call you for dinner? No. So get the hell out of here.”
Her eyebrows shot up. It never ceased to amaze her how much the cook always ruled the kitchens and how much the kitchens always ruled the rigs.
She walked over to the coffeepot, lifted it, and sighed. “Why is there never any coffee?” She set about putting on a new pot. Denny completely ignored her. She looked over to see Chucky, hugging a big cup in his hand. It explained why there was no coffee; he’d taken the last cup and was hardly in any shape to put on a new one.
What bothered her was there was no Winslow. After she put on the coffee, instead of sitting with the group that she had walked in with, she walked over to Chucky and sat down. “Where’s Winslow?” she asked.
“Gone to check the freezer,” he said quietly. “To see if, in any way, it could shut without my knowing it.”
“I thought they all had to be so that you could open them from inside or out.”
“Yeah, I thought so too.” His tone was morose, and his shoulders were stiff.
“Do you think somebody did it on purpose?”
He shot her a hard look and then glanced around the room. “How many were in the control room with you?”
She said, “All these guys, plus the company guys are still in the office.”
“That doesn’t leave very many then, does it?”
“Not if Winslow was with you, when the two new guys found you,” she said. She looked over at the others, then lowered her voice and said, “Chucky, is there any chance somebody else is still on the rig here?”
His eyes widened in surprise. “I don’t know why there would be.”
“I don’t know either,” she said, “but I’d have to presume not for a good reason.”
He snorted at that. “You know what? I’ve made a lot of enemies in my life, but facing down that cold storage door was not the way I wanted to end it.”
“Nope,” she said, sitting sideways in the booth. “I figured, in my sleep, after partying all night long on a beach in Tahiti, would be about right.”
He looked at her in shock, and then he started to laugh and said, “Isn’t that the truth. I can get behind that totally.”
Just then the door opened, letting in the two new guys. Chucky immediately lifted a hand. “She just put on fresh coffee.”
Troy looked at him and nodded, then headed to the coffeepot. It had almost finished dripping. He looked at her, lifted an empty cup, and she nodded.
“Yes, please.”
With three cups, the two men came over and sat down at the table with Chucky and Berkley. “Man, I didn’t thank you at the time,” Chucky shook his head, “but I so don’t ever want to revisit that freezer.”
“Well, while you were in there,” Troy joked, “did you at least check that the meat was okay?”
“No way it couldn’t be,” he said. “It was freezing in there. My flashlight battery was damn near gone. So I couldn’t see jack shit.”
Well, that answered one question, she thought, because he hadn’t seen the body bag, given his response just now.