Lacey retreated to the door she’d entered by. “I’d better make sure all the gates are covered for the night.”
Back in the office, she made a last sweep of the real-time cameras. She couldn’t see much now that night had fallen, except the movement of men around the gates, and then only if they were smoking or staring at glowing phone screens. Wait. Wasn’t there a motion-sensor light on the main gate? She checked Wayne’s equipment roster. Yes, there was. Every time someone crossed the gate, the light should go on. She called Ike.
“Oh, yeah,” he said when she asked. “They bitched about the light messing with their night vision, so I killed it at the master switch box. It’s in a closet off the upper elevator lobby.”
“Thanks,” she said and hung up. No point calling him out for leaving her out of the loop. If any motion-sensor light could be shut off at that closet, then someone could have shut off the garage’s interior light the same way, right before they walked in. Any one of those dark digital images she’d skimmed through tonight might have included a shadow subtly moving around the Rover. She’d have to look again, but not until morning. Rubbing her gritty eyes, she started a backup of the whole hard drive to Wayne’s office server. Hundreds of gigs worth of images would take ages to upload even over Orrin’s fast data link. No point doing it in daylight when she needed the computers for other jobs. She secured the equipment, locked the room behind her, and left the garage.
The night was still and sultry, as if there was a thunderstorm in the offing, but the sky above was clear, with a half moon riding high above the peaks. Somewhere out there, young Tyrone might be settling in for his second night in a broken-down vehicle, wondering when and how he’d get back to his own bed.
As she crossed the wide terrace, heat radiated off the stones. The quiet was so intense that a calf bleating down in the valley startled her. Her footsteps crunched onto the gravel path. Branches creaked in a breeze so faint it barely stirred the shadows. It was only too easy to imagine a cougar’s eyes evaluating her from the darkness. She hurried thankfully into the lit clearing before Andy and Bart’s cabin and was just about to wave her fob at the door when it opened from the inside. She jumped back.
Ben stretched an arm inside for a backpack. “Sorry, did I scare you? I’m taking over at the south gate soon. Any news on the search?”
“None that came to me,” she said truthfully. Her speculation about the Rover wasn’t news. Yet. “The search’ll start again at first light. Hopefully they’ll have a clearer target area by then, from the RCMP’s information-gathering sweep. Or Orrin will have checked in with someone.”
Ben nodded and wordlessly disappeared into the shadows of the forest trail, leaving her standing in the slash of brighter light from the open door. His boots crunched in the silence until the trees swallowed the sound. No sign of his earlier anger now, which reminded her: he’d been yelling about Tyrone inheriting everything. As the boy’s next-of-kin, Sloane would presumably get whatever was coming to him as long as he outlived Orrin by a single minute. She might have sabotaged the Rover, not expecting Orrin to take Tyrone driving with him. Possibly she’d hoped her son would be busy with his new friend when his father left. However it came about, if Tyrone inherited the “everything” Orrin had declared he would at Jake’s dinner party, Sloane would be sitting pretty. Maybe that’s why she was hiding in her suite: nobody but her faithful companion to witness her complete lack of concern for her husband.
She wasn’t the only one with a strong motive, though. If neither Orrin nor Tyrone were found alive, with no clear way to distinguish which died first, the older brothers would inherit according to whatever default conditions were in force. Had Ben been officially disinherited after the Black Rock standoff, or was that only an angry threat made in the moment? On the whole, she thought the old man would have rubbed his son’s nose in a fait accompli, leaving Ben nothing to gain by killing his father except satisfaction, while every day Orrin lived was another chance to get his inheritance back. For the other brothers, the reverse applied. As long as Ben was disinherited, there was a bigger pie for Earl and Bart to split. She’d have to ask Wayne in the morning if he knew what the dispositions were for Orrin’s wealth, and if his secret investigation had anything to do with disinheriting a family member.
Inside the “cabin,” Bart’s voice said, “There’s really no choice but to carry on for now as if Orrin will be back tomorrow. Can you stomach it?”
“Yeah, but it feels so sneaky, doing it here,” Andy replied. Then she called, “Shut the door, Ben. You’re letting in flies.”
Lacey walked in, pondering those ambiguous comments. Carry on with what? Clearly Ben knew, or they wouldn’t have talked about “it” while believing he still stood in the doorway. Could three people keep a conspiracy a secret if two of them were twins?
Andy was sprawled on the couch, her head on Bart’s thigh, while the evening news flickered mutely on the big screen. She looked up. “Was that you? Sorry, I thought it was Ben communing with the night. Are you packing it in?”
“Yes. I need to be rested for whatever tomorrow brings. Will you be able to sleep?”
“I hope so.” Andy yawned. “I’d barely dozed off last night when Sloane called us in a panic.”
“I’m not sure I will,” said Bart. “I’m still waiting for word from Orrin’s secretary, but on thinking it over, I’m not buying the ball game theory after all. More likely the truck broke down on some forsaken cutline to nowhere when he was stranding Ty. That’s one tough kid, but he’s never been abandoned in the wild. Not like the rest of us.”
“All of you?”
“Oh, yeah. Orrin made a point of dumping us individually in the forest to find our own way home.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Andy sat up. “He’s not. His father started when they were little, would take them for an afternoon drive and say he wanted to show them something special. Once they got out of the truck, he’d drive away without them and let them find their own way home.”
“That’s barbaric.”
Bart nodded. “I thought so. It was terrifying trudging down a cutline or back road knowing there were cougars around as tall as me. My mother put a stop to that as soon as we told her, but Earl’s mother never stood up for him. I think he was lost for something like thirty hours one time.”
While Lacey was still wrapping her mind around the abusive parenting Bart had so casually revealed, Andy said, “Do you want a cup of tea or a snack before you go up?”
“No thanks. Good night.” Lacey climbed the stairs, rinsed off the day in a shower, and fell into bed. She slid into sleep accompanied by a thousand images of a solitary boy plodding through a dark forest while animal eyes glittered from behind every second tree.
Early the next morning, before anyone in the house was moving, Lacey headed down to the workout room and ran for a solid half hour. The treadmill faced the north window, allowing her to watch the shadows creep away from the valley floor as the sun climbed. Someone in a cowboy hat went from the bunkhouse into the stables, but that was the only sign of life. She finished her run and walked the space to cool down, exploring it. The only surprise was behind the mirrored west wall: a washroom, spotlessly clean and clearly not intended for use by the ranch hands. It included a shower stocked with body washes, lotions, razors, and hair care products, plus drawers labelled with family members’ names, which she assumed contained personal changes of clothing. Open shelves were stacked with towels and washcloths. Rather than shower only to put her sweaty workout clothes back on, she stripped off her T-shirt for a splash and then draped a towel around her neck while she stretched. She’d get properly cleaned up back at Andy’s.
Before leaving, she took a better look at the misaimed camera. It seemed undamaged and only needed tilting down to cover the exterior door again. She had to stand on the treadmill’s handlebar and surge upward to reach it, bracing herself with her left hand on the window frame. Her other hand connect
ed twice, with barely enough combined force to nudge the back end up and around, pointing the lens end a bit farther down. She scrambled down and was about to head up to Andy’s when the external door opened. Ben entered. She took in his lined eyes and tousled hair, the jeans and jacket he’d been wearing last night.
“You look bagged. Were you out on the gate until now?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve just been relieved by the day shift, planned to knock out some kinks going up the walls. Any chance you know how to belay?”
Spending another half hour with him, now that his anger at Earl had faded some, might get more of her questions about the family answered and give her a better sense of whether he was truly a straight shooter who’d rather punch someone in the face or a devious creep who’d tamper with a vehicle. She’d stay.
“I’ve belayed once before. I can probably do it again if you run me through the basics.”
“Great,” he said. “Give me a minute to get out of these jeans.”
She went into the climbing centre and looked up at the bare rock. With the spotlights augmented by the skylights, it looked less seductive, more forbidding. She’d never been afraid of heights, but the thought of Ben, Bart, and Tyrone as little kids following Earl up that nearly sheer cliff was enough to make anyone nervous. It was a wonder young Tyrone had only broken an arm.
Ben came in behind her, wearing spandex shorts and a T-shirt that clung to his impressive upper body. Despite the general physical resemblance to Dan, in a bench lift she’d back him over her ex any day. Maybe in a fight, too. Whether he was psychologically stronger, too — well, her gut wasn’t committing either way on that.
He called her over to the gear shelves and handed her a harness. He climbed into another one, snugging it up his thighs and fastening the belly strap. She got her harness into position while he selected other gear. He threw a pair of climbing shoes onto the bench for her and held up one oddly shaped clamp.
“You’ve used a GriGri before?”
“I know enough to keep my fingers out of it and to keep one hand on the braking rope at all times, because even though it’s supposed to auto-lock, you don’t risk a life on it.”
“Safety first. I like it.” He grinned. “Okay, clip it on you. Now, I outweigh you by a good thirty kilos. I’m probably not going to fall, but if I do, I could drag you off your feet. Would you feel safer with a floor anchor?”
A full hour later, Lacey backed down the beginner wall, supported by the rope attached at her waist, with Ben’s sure hand feeding out the slack as she needed it. Exhilaration flooded her body and mind. How long since she’d had a real physical challenge to master? Her hands were chalky, her fingers ached from crimping on the holds, and she really needed a shower now. As her feet flattened onto the floor, she blotted her forehead on her sleeve.
“That was awesome!” Even better, she hadn’t felt the slightest twinge of terror when, at the top, she’d hung for a moment to look down at the floor, which had to be nearly four storeys below. The moment had quelled her wee, lurking worry that she, like Chad, harboured a fear of heights from the Capilano Gorge. She’d been up high, and she was okay. Better than okay. “Climbing is seriously extra.”
Ben handed her a water bottle. “I won’t say you’re a natural, but I’d let you climb with me.”
“Thanks.” Lacey drank. “It was a better workout than I expected. All my large muscle groups are shaky.”
“Come on up to the cabin and I’ll scramble us some eggs.”
When they’d both changed their shoes, he led her out past the elevator to the south door. At the sight of the footpath leading along the bluff, her endorphin-high brain kicked back to work mode. The camera at the top of these steps wasn’t working; she’d fix that early today, and the higher one in the climbing centre, too. The camera over the door she’d just exited was recording her chalk-covered butt right now, and it wouldn’t be the only one before she could change clothes. Orrin’s camera fetish was almost Hitchcockian.
As she tackled the first of those five flights of stairs up the bluff, she checked out the surroundings. That aspen-grove path led not only through the copse but also veered out to the dusty road beyond it. Could a person entering through one of the distant gates — last week, before the new cameras were added — avoid the surveillance along these buildings and get into the garage without being seen? Maybe, except the fob system recorded every door access. If she nailed down a time for possible vehicle tampering, she could correlate that with the fob log and find out who had opened which doors at that time. It might even be possible to tell from the footage whether the person using a particular fob was the same one it was signed out to.
Trying not to stare at Ben’s ass, shifting easily at eye level ahead of her, she climbed on with not quite enough breath for conversation. She hadn’t learned much more about him this morning, except that he was patient with noobs. Their entire climbing hour had consisted of his clear, short instructions and her responses — on-belay?/ belay on, climbing/climb-on, take/brake — all interspersed with simple suggestions and corrections from him on her climb, such as “try the green to your left hand” and “are you three-points stable?” His voice hadn’t once slipped into impatience; nor had his words implied she was incompetent for not following instructions better or faster. So not like Dan, who had always claimed he was toughening her up by berating her like the drill sergeant at Depot. Either Ben wasn’t the misogynist his father was, or it was buried deeper.
Ben talked as they climbed. “I’ve been racking my brains to think where Orrin might have gone. When we were little, he used to take us out over the ranch, but not much farther.”
“Your brother said,” Lacey gasped, “that he used to drop you off to make your own way home.”
“I forgot about that.” Ben paused on a landing, looking down at her with a frown. “Our mom made him stop early on, but Orrin got around it by not coming all the way home. If we caught up to where he was having a nap in the truck, he’d reward us to keep our mouths shut. I think he’s been better with Ty, but maybe since Ty turned twelve, Orrin thought the time had come.” He looked out over the valley, his frown deepening. “If he drove away and then realized Ty’d gone the wrong way and set out hunting for him, they could both be lost separately. But not on our land. It’s impossible for Orrin to get lost here, even if Ty did.”
More grateful than she liked to admit for the halt, Lacey leaned on the railing beside him. “Why wasn’t your mom more, well, subservient to Orrin, the way Earl’s mom was?”
Ben’s laugh had a sour edge. “He was hoist on his own pre-nup. A million bucks for a son, he’d included, and she popped out the two of us first go. She threatened to sue him for the double payout.” He started up the next flight too soon for Lacey’s lungs. “When she got it, she put half in trust for us and invested the rest for herself. Once you’re no longer dependent on Orrin’s money, you don’t have to kiss his ass quite as much.”
“Is that how you financed your environmental studies?” Lacey barely got the long words out without gasping for breath in the middle.
“It’s a trickle, but it lets me give back to the world to make up for Orrin plundering everything he touches.” At the top, he looked over the valley with the hard expression she recognized from yesterday. “He should have been stopped long ago. As much as I can give back, it will never be enough.”
After breakfast with Ben and a fruitless phone check with the SAR base, Lacey hurried to the office to get her tool belt. Today she’d repair those cameras, and then she’d get into the technicalities of lightening up dark garage images. Too bad Orrin hadn’t sprung for infrared sensors. A warm-blood crossing that cool concrete would light up beautifully. But this wasn’t the movies, and there wouldn’t be a satisfactory conclusion after two hours. At least now she had an idea what might be tampered with. Wayne’s text from an hour ago had specifically said to get the brands of transmission, brake, and power steering fluid used by t
he Rover.
The garage was not deserted, for a change. At barely 8:00 a.m. on a Monday, one man was checking oil and radiator levels on two SUVs while a second did tire pressures, topping up the valves with a compressor hose. When the compressor’s racket stopped, Lacey introduced herself.
“I didn’t meet you two yesterday down at the common room.”
Oil guy shook his head. “We don’t live here. Don’t work weekends unless they’re haying or hauling stock.”
Not even when their employer went missing? “What’s with these SUVs? Are you going out to help with the search?”
“No, ma’am,” said tire guy. “We’re loading up with food from the kitchen to take to the airstrip. Cheryl says we gotta keep those searchers fuelled up.”
“Good idea,” she said. “Which of you would’ve last checked the oil and stuff on that Range Rover of Orrin’s?”
Oil guy wiped his hands on a shop rag and picked up a clipboard. He made a note with a pen hanging by a filthy string and then flipped back a page. “Me. Fifteenth of August.”
Two weeks ago. That gave her a starting window. “And everything looked normal? No leaks or worn belts or anything that might cause a breakdown?”
He shook his head. “All tickety-boo.”
“You didn’t have to add any to the power steering, brake, or transmission fluid?”
He shook his head again. “Why?”
She pointed. “There’s something like that on the floor where it was parked.”
He crouched and touched the puddle on the concrete. After rubbing the stuff between finger and thumb, he smelled it. “Steering,” he said. “Likely it dripped when the boss topped it up. If he was goin’ for a hard run and we weren’t around, he’d poke under the hood first.”
“A hard run? Like off-roading? Fording a river? Going up a cutline?”
He shrugged. “Any or all of ’em. That truck’s been everywhere. I’ll get that cleaned up now you’ve mentioned it.”
Why the Rock Falls Page 12