“They were the last time we checked.”
“You didn’t see a cause of death on Lionel, right?”
“No signs of beating or anything like that. But we didn’t check too closely. We saw what appeared to be a dead body and accepted that.”
“So, any chance he is still alive?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so. His body was warm though, as in recently deceased. You were there. You saw it.”
“Could he have just been unconscious? Heavily drugged?”
“I’m starting to wonder myself,” he said. “So, if Lionel is alive and is hiding somewhere here and is potentially behind some of the craziness going on here, what would be his motive?”
“Depends on if any of the dead men left here were some of the ones who tormented him,” she said.
He gave her a sharp look.
“Lionel was gay. Remember?” she said. “And his partner is one of the bodies in the morgue.”
“Right,” he said. “So you’re wondering if somebody here gave him a hard time, so he pretended to die in order to get back at them?”
“No, he’s not capable of that kind of violence,” she said. “That sounds foolish, even to me.”
“All of it does,” he said. He led her around to the far side where there was a locked door. He reached up and knocked.
She looked at him in surprise, and, when a voice answered from inside, he opened it up and guided her in.
She froze. “Wow,” she said, recognizing Dane and France easily. “So you do have more than the four of you here. I did wonder.” Even Axel was here and Nelson. Mason too. She smiled at them. “So what’s this? I get to step into the inner circle?”
“You’re the one who called us in,” Mason said, “so it seemed like a good idea.”
“And still no sign of Lionel’s body,” Troy said. “That freezer does have a button mechanism to open it up from the inside, but it’s broken. The other freezers have an inner release button or lever that’s a lot more evident and functioning as well.”
The men digested those tidbits of information. Mason studied Berkley’s face for a long moment. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
“No,” she said. “To make matters worse, Troy asked me if the hacker in my computer system while I was eating dinner could have done it remotely, since everyone was there in the dining room, and the answer is yes.”
“Hell. Remote?” Nelson said, straightening up.
She looked to where he’d been sitting on a bench, one leg on either side, but he now stepped free to stand with his hands on his hips as he looked at her.
“Theoretically he could have been at the same table. Our internet with this storm has been pretty rough, so I don’t imagine it was somebody back at the home company,” she said. “But then think about everybody who you saw touch his phone during dinner. It could have been nearly anybody.”
“Do you know of any of them who would have good enough computer skills?”
“Not as hackers per se,” she said. “Obviously Jonesy because he’s an IT guy. The engineer, Bruce, he’s knows IT to a certain extent and certainly as it applies to his system. Does that mean he can hack into mine? I don’t know. And why would he?”
“How far did the hacker get?”
“Only to the next firewall I put in,” she said. “It has an additional password attached. He gave it three tries and got locked out.”
They all slowly nodded. “What was behind that second password?”
“Controls for the drills,” she said. “Everything’s computerized these days. But the thing is, one of the drills is out of service, and two are damaged and have been taken offline. So the fourth one isn’t operating, given everything else that’s going on, but it’s still mechanically sound and intact. It’s just been put in a neutral status at the moment.”
“Would that give them anything? What would access to that area do?”
“It’s hard to say,” she said. “Everything is backed up, but, if they were looking to see if damage had been done, that’s possible. I’ve been trying to figure that out myself, but it’s not my area of expertise.”
“Could they erase damage that may have been done, if something computer-wise caused this?”
“Delete the data? It’s possible,” she said. “I’m worried about backups with the weather as it is. They do lose a lot of backups here occasionally.”
“Deliberately?”
She stopped, looked at him, and frowned. “That’s possible as well.”
“Are you the only one who comes here to do maintenance and to troubleshoot?”
She shook her head. “No, there are four of us. We travel around a lot.”
“Women or men?”
“I’m the only female.”
One of the men asked, “Have you been to this rig before?”
She nodded. “Yeah, several times.”
“Any trouble?”
“No. Not like you mean,” she said. “Definitely not like my friend had.”
“We were talking to Gregor,” Mason said. “He did know about the rapes. He said he wasn’t terribly impressed with the way the company handled it, and that it was something he’d bring up to the board next time.”
“Which means nothing,” she said. “There should have been an immediate and full investigation and charges.”
“The trouble is, they keep these things quiet,” Axel said.
“It shouldn’t have happened the second or the third time,” Troy added. When the men looked at him, he turned to her.
“I only found out after my friend was attacked,” she said. “I had no idea women were at risk on this rig.”
“The fact that this isn’t just a single rapist changes things considerably. They could be colluding to protect each other—or the opposite, trying to eliminate each other to protect themselves.”
The conversation was clearly stirring up these men.
“So how is she doing now, your friend?” France spoke up, looking concerned.
“She’s different now,” she said. “She doesn’t go out. She doesn’t date and is generally scared to be alone. Yet scared not to be,” Berkley said, feeling bad all over again that she couldn’t be spending time with her friend.
“Of course,” Dane said. “It’s not an easy trauma to get over. It changes everything.”
“Exactly.” She walked over to one of the benches and sat down. At this point the tension in the room was palpable, so she decided a change of subject was in order. “I still think Lionel could be alive and hiding here on the rig. But, if you guys have already searched everywhere and can’t find anybody hidden, what the hell is going on?”
“We don’t know.”
“We did find a storehouse of C-4 though,” Dane said. He leaned against the locker. “The locker belonging to Jude.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Interesting. So his brother did drop off something for him.”
“So this Jude, did we find any personnel files on him?” Troy looked around the room, seeking an answer from someone.