“If that’s even possible,” she said. “Unless we can call a meeting and get everybody to stay in one area. As far as I’m concerned, everybody should be off this rig now.”
“That won’t happen,” he said. “Too much money has been invested in these rigs. They have to keep a skeleton crew to keep it floating, solid, and safe.”
“There should be a repair crew,” she said.
“We understood this was the repair crew,” he said.
“No, Daniel said they weren’t coming until after the storm.”
“You know what? This company really needs to work on its communication.” Axel looked where Troy was still talking with Denny. “This company seems to have some basic problems.”
“Every big company is the same,” she said, “and the bosses never want to tell the workers what the hell is going on.”
“And yet it’s the workers who need to be in the know,” he said.
Just then Troy walked back over. He sat down with a hard thump and said, “Denny hasn’t seen the pilot.”
“Shit. Let me up,” she said. “I’ll go back to the company men and see if they’ve seen him.”
“We’ll come with you.” The three of them got up and headed toward the door.
Denny called out. “Grub is in fifteen minutes. If you’re late, you don’t get any.”
They looked at each other. She nodded and said, “He means it.”
“We’ll be back,” Axel said, and the three walked out.
She knew the rest of the guys were sitting there, watching her. She didn’t care. She knew where she was safe, whether she liked it or not, and this had nothing to do with defending herself. This had everything to do with having an inkling how to survive. It would just be ugly from top to bottom.
*
Troy hadn’t meant to go all ballistic on the guy, but something was so off in the man’s gaze, and just thinking about those three other women and how helpless they’d been on a rig like this, well, that just made his blood boil. Sure, he’d worked rigs before, and there’d been women. But not with this same nonchalance or casual disregard for their wishes, their health, their sanity. One had a full-time partner, and maybe that guy had been enough of a strong-arm influence to keep everybody else in line. But the other two women he’d known at the other camps, and a couple others as well, they’d all been fine. Treated with respect. Nobody had gotten in their face about it. And certainly not like what he’d just seen this guy do with Berkley.
As the three headed off, he realized he was stalking more than walking. He tried to ease back down, letting some of the stress roll off his back. He rotated his neck and his shoulders so that, by the time they walked into command central, he wasn’t quite ready to jump down anybody’s throat. The three suits stood in the center of the bullpen area, talking around all the computer systems. They looked up and nodded to the three new arrivals.
“Problems?” Mason asked.
Berkley stepped forward. “Have you talked to your pilot lately?”
He pulled out his phone and said, “Last contact was about an hour and a half ago.” He quickly sent a text. He looked up at her. “Why?”
“Nobody has seen him,” Troy said.
At that, Gregor, gasped. “He’s flown for me for years,” he said. “I hope he’s okay.”
“I hope so too,” Troy said. Then they filled in the suits on what happened to Chucky and their subsequent talk with Winslow.
Gregor sat back down again. “What the hell is going on?”
“Nothing good,” Mason said. “Nelson and I have just done a full rundown on all the crew who works here. Everything from felons with conviction records, to a couple guys on the dodgy side that Interpol might be interested in, and the rest appear to be harmless.” At the word Interpol, he heard her gasp. He turned to look at her. “Do you know those two?” He pulled up their names and photos.
She shook her head. “No idea, but heavy background checks were done on everybody who’s here.”
“Sure, but, if you’ve got a friend of a friend,” Mason said, “there are ways to get people in, no matter who you are.”
“There shouldn’t be,” Gregor said bitterly. “These rigs are billion-dollar investments. We can’t afford to have things go wrong.”
“Maybe not,” Mason said, “but it looks like you’re already past that point.”
“And what else have you got to say?” Gregor addressed the trio.
“Lionel’s body is missing, Daniel’s brother,” Axel said. “And no one has seen Daniel the foreman in the last few hours either.”
Mason froze and looked at him. “What the hell?”
“Yeah, not exactly sure what that’s all about.”
“What about the power outage?”
“It’s back on again,” she said. “I’ve done a full system analysis, but it’s not coming up with anything.”
“Meaning, nothing went wrong?”
“Exactly,” she said. “So the only thing I can think is that it was done manually.”
“So,” Mason asked, “who needed to move something or to get somewhere and needed the cover of darkness for it?”
“Outside of us?” Troy asked with a grin. He caught Berkley looking at him carefully, but he didn’t say anything. She had overheard Mason earlier telling Troy to get their two extra men on board. It should make her feel better, but he didn’t have clearance to tell her fully about them. If she came across them unexpectedly, that was a different story.
“What do you think is going on?” Nelson asked Troy.
Troy said, “I’ve taken a look at the blueprints, and a hell of a lot of places exist where people could hide.”
“And I think that’s exactly what’s happening,” Axel said. “I think we’ve got a couple extra bogeys on board who are here deliberately.”
“To take out the rest of the crew?” Mason asked. “Or to dispose of the dead who aren’t supposed to be here?”
“Dispose of evidence for sure,” Troy said, “and maybe clean up their tracks. I don’t know if anybody has handed in notice recently or has been fired, but that’s someone who we should take a hard look at.”
“Two men were just fired,” Gregor said. “And both Chucky and Winslow are done in ten days. They’ve told us they’re not renewing their contracts.”
“And that coincides with what they said to us too,” she said.
“What Winslow said anyway,” Troy corrected. “Chucky is pretty shook up. He’s not talking much.”
“And neither of them knew about the extra bodies in the cooler,” Axel said.
“So potentially those two are in the clear, but we can’t be sure of that,” Gregor noted.
“Exactly,” Axel replied.
“Sounds like we can’t be sure of anything,” Troy continued, “so we need to start checking things off. I want to do a full sweep in the place, and I want anybody else we find—other than the eight crewmen we expect to be here and us six right here, seven, if we count the pilot—to be brought up to the bullpen here.”