Chapter 2: The Interrogation
The coffee in Maree’s hand was stale and bitter, but the heat of the ceramic mug grounded her. She stood in the hallway outside the manager’s office, staring at the grain of the wooden door. Derrick. A name, not a person. She’d spent the morning wrestling with the aftermath of the jacuzzi, the phantom memory of the jets making it hard to focus. She’d dressed with deliberate, professional care: dark wool trousers, a cream cashmere sweater, her hair pulled into a severe knot. Armor.
She knocked.
“Come in!”
Derrick’s office was a shrine to rustic charm, almost too perfect. A massive stone fireplace crackled with a hearty blaze, casting dancing shadows over walls lined with framed trail maps and vintage skis. The air smelled of pine cleaner and expensive coffee. Derrick himself was a man in his fifties, with the perpetually sun-tanned face of a mountain local and eyes that didn’t match the cheerful welcome in his voice. They were darting, watery.
“Ms. Evans! A pleasure. How is your stay? The storm’s a beast, but we’re cozy, yes?” He came around his wide, oak desk, hand extended. His grip was firm, overly so, and slightly damp.
“The stay is fine, Mr. Derrick. Thank you for seeing me on short notice.”
“Anything for our guests! Please, sit.” He gestured to a large leather armchair facing the fire. He retreated behind his desk, a barrier. “You said you had some questions? For an article?”
Maree settled into the chair, crossing her legs, adopting her best ‘curious professional’ pose. She set her phone on the arm of the chair, the voice memo app open but not recording. A prop. “I’m freelancing a piece on safety protocols at exclusive alpine resorts. Guest welfare, emergency response times, that sort of thing. Given the… tragic incident a few days ago, your lodge presents a very relevant case study.”
Derrick’s smile tightened at the corners. “A terrible accident. Truly. Our hearts go out to Mr. Petrov’s family.”
“Accident,” Maree repeated, tilting her head. “The reports were vague. Could you walk me through what happened? From the lodge’s perspective.”
He cleared his throat, his fingers drumming a silent rhythm on the blotter. “Of course. Mr. Petrov was a guest. He went out skiing alone in the afternoon. When he didn’t return for his dinner reservation, we alerted ski patrol. They found him… well, they found him off the Aspen Grove trail. A very challenging run. It appears he took a wrong turn, fell.” He spread his hands, a gesture of helpless sorrow. “In these mountains, even a small mistake can have the gravest consequences.”
“A wrong turn,” Maree echoed, her tone neutral. “Was he in the habit of skiing expert terrain? His profile suggested intermediate.”
Derrick’s eyes flicked to a computer monitor off to his left, then back to her. A quick, nervous glance. “Guest skill levels are self-reported. Sometimes people… overestimate.”
“Did he seem distressed that day? Agitated? Meeting anyone?”
“I wouldn’t know. We respect our guests’ privacy.” The answer was rehearsed, smooth. Too smooth.
Maree leaned forward, just an inch. “The response time. How long from his missed reservation to the alert?”
“We follow protocol to the letter. I’d have to check the exact logs for the precise timeline.” He was retreating into procedure, a safe bureaucratic cave.
“I’d appreciate that.” She let the silence stretch, listening to the fire pop. She looked around the room, her gaze passing over the bookshelves, the awards, a cluster of family photos. Her eyes landed on a small, sleek air purifier in the corner near a potted fern. It was oddly modern for the room, with a tiny, dark lens on its front that looked like a sensor. Or a camera. “You’ve got a lovely office. It feels very… secure.”
Derrick followed her gaze, a flash of something—alarm?—crossing his face before he controlled it. “Thank you. We try to maintain a certain atmosphere.”
“I bet you do.” She switched tactics, smiling warmly. “It must be a nightmare, logistics-wise, when something like this happens. The room, for instance. Mr. Petrov’s belongings. Was the family able to collect everything?”
This time, the reaction was physical. A faint sheen of sweat appeared on his upper lip. He reached for a glass of water, taking a slow sip. “The local authorities handled all of that. We simply facilitated access.”
“Of course. And after they cleared the room, your staff went in for a deep clean? Standard procedure, you said.”
The glass clicked softly against the desk. “Yes. Standard.”
“Which staff member? I might like to compliment them on their thoroughness. It’s a difficult task, after such a tragedy.” She kept her voice light, conversational.
Derrick stared at her. The friendly mask was gone, replaced by a cold, calculating suspicion. “I don’t recall the specific team assigned. It was handled efficiently. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Ms. Evans, I have a conference call with our insurers regarding this very matter.” He stood, a clear dismissal.
Maree rose slowly, picking up her phone. She hadn’t gotten what she came for, but she’d gotten something better: confirmation. Derrick was terrified of something. And he’d lied. He’d looked at his computer when asked about Petrov’s skill level. There would be a record. A profile. He knew.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Derrick. You’ve been very… illuminating.” She turned to leave, then paused at the door, looking back at the air purifier. “You might want to check that unit. The filter light seems to be blinking.”
She slipped out, closing the door softly behind her. In the quiet hallway, she leaned against the wall, her heart pounding. He was hiding something. Someone had gotten to him. Or paid him.
A soft chime from her phone. A text from an unknown number.
Room 217. Now.
Todd’s room was a mirror of her own, but neater. Impossibly neater. The bed was made with military precision. A single laptop sat open on the desk, facing away from the door. He was standing by the window, watching the blizzard rage, a silent figure against the white void.
“He’s lying,” Maree said, not bothering with a greeting. She stayed near the door. “He knows Petrov wasn’t an expert skier. He checked the system. And he’s scared. The cleaning story is a cover.”
Todd didn’t turn. “I know.”
“What do you mean, you know?” The irritation was sharp, cutting through her residual nerves.
He finally looked at her, then nodded toward the laptop. On its screen, perfectly clear, was a live video feed of Derrick’s office. The manager was pacing behind his desk, running a hand through his hair, talking animatedly on his phone. The audio was a faint mumble from the laptop speakers, but the image was crystal clear. The angle was from high in the corner, near the bookshelf.
The air purifier.
“You bugged his office,” Maree whispered, the realization a cold sluice down her spine.
“Before you ever walked in. The unit was installed this morning during routine maintenance.” His voice was matter-of-fact. “You did well. You rattled him perfectly. He’s making a call now. To whoever he’s really afraid of.”
Maree stared at the screen, a sick feeling mixing with her anger. She’d been a tool. A deliberate, calculated provocation. “You used me as a stalking horse. To see who he’d call.”
“Yes.” No apology. No justification.
On the screen, Derrick hung up, his shoulders slumped. He walked to the fireplace and leaned his head against the mantel, a picture of exhaustion and dread.
“Who did he call?” Maree asked, her voice flat.
Todd tapped a key. The audio from the laptop clarified, switching from the room mic to a phone intercept. A digital voice, genderless and clipped, replayed the last thirty seconds of the call.
Derrick’s voice, tinny and strained: “She was in here. The journalist. Asking about the cleaning, about his skill level. She knows it wasn’t an accident.”
A pause. Then the other voice, filtered but unmistakably cold and authoritative: “Evans is a complication. A predictable one. She’s connected to the other one. Keep her observed. Do nothing else. We are handling it.”
Click. The call ended.
The other one. Maree’s gaze shifted from the laptop to Todd’s impassive profile. They knew about him. They knew about her. They were ‘handling it.’
Todd closed the laptop lid with a soft snap, cutting off the view of Derrick’s private despair. The room felt suddenly colder.
“Who are ‘they,’ Todd?” The question hung in the air between them.
He turned to face her fully. For the first time, she saw no hint of the quiet vacationer or the playful provocateur from the jacuzzi. This was the man from the bar, the one who assessed. The problem-solver in his natural state.
“That’s what we need to find out,” he said. “But now they’re active. And they’ve seen you. The storm has grounded everything. We’re all stuck here together.” He picked up a ski pass from the desk, flipping it between his fingers. “Your safety just became part of the operational equation.”
Maree barked a short, humorless laugh. “My safety? You painted a target on my back the minute you sat down next to me at the bar.”
“Perhaps.” He didn’t deny it. “The options have narrowed. You can go back to your room, lock the door, and hope ‘they’ decide you’re not worth the trouble. Or you can keep asking questions, with the full knowledge that every step is being watched by very dangerous people.” He paused, his slate eyes holding hers. “But if you choose the second option, you do it with me. Not as a stalking horse. As a partner. For real.”
The wind hammered against the window. Downstairs, the faint sounds of the lodge living its normal life—laughter, clinking dishes—seemed to belong to another world. She was in the silent, high-stakes one now.
He’d manipulated her. Used her. And he was offering the only thing she truly wanted: the truth. The real story, not the sanitized press release.
“Partners don’t hide surveillance from each other,” she said.
“Noted.”
She walked over to the window, standing beside him to look out at the blinding, swirling white. There was no visible path forward. “What’s on the drive, Todd? What’s the ‘little moon rock’ really for?”
He was silent for a long moment. “It’s a key,” he said finally, his voice barely above a whisper. “Not for data. For a place. Coordinates and access codes for a decommissioned geological survey station, buried in a mountain two valleys over. A station my branch didn’t build and wasn’t supposed to know about. Petrov stumbled onto the power signatures. He was trying to be a patriot.”
A hidden station. Buried. The pieces were aligning into a shape she didn’t like. “And what’s in this station?”
“That,” Todd said, turning from the window to look at her, “is the only question that matters now. And to answer it, we need to find that drive before they do. It’s not in Petrov’s room. It’s not on his body. It’s here, in this lodge. He was supposed to meet me. He must have hidden it.”
Maree watched the snow, thinking of Derrick’s terrified face, of the cold voice on the phone. Handling it. She thought of the violent pulse of the jacuzzi jets, a sensation that had stripped away pretense. This was the same, but colder. Deadlier.
She looked back at him.
“Alright, partner,” she said. “Where do we start looking?”
“We start with his habits,” Todd said, moving to the desk. He opened the laptop again, but to a different file—a timeline. “Petrov was a creature of routine. Breakfast at the buffet every morning at seven-thirty. Two hours on the intermediate slopes, then the lodge bar for a hot toddy before lunch. After lunch, he’d spend time in the library nook near the game room. He was a man who liked quiet corners.”
“A man who liked to observe,” Maree added, thinking of her own habits. “He’d want to hide it somewhere he could keep an eye on it. Somewhere he had a reason to be, often.”
“Exactly. Not his room. Too obvious, too insecure.” Todd closed the laptop. “The public spaces. Somewhere no one would think to disrupt.” He grabbed his key card and a dark, nondescript jacket. “You take the library and game room. I’ll canvass the bar and the boot room. He spent significant time in both.”
“What are we looking for, specifically? A tiny scratch isn’t exactly visible from across the room.”
“Think of hiding places a nervous man would use. Inside a board game box. Taped under a chair. Slotted behind a loose fireplace stone.” He handed her a thin, pen-sized metal tool. “This is a light. It’s also mildly magnetic. The drive’s casing is ferrous. If it’s behind something thin, you might feel a pull.”
She took the cool weight of it, sliding it into her pocket. It felt alien and official. “And if someone sees me poking around?”
“You’re a journalist researching a story. You’re curious. It’s your brand.” He almost smiled. “Just don’t get caught jimmying anything open with that.”
The library nook was a small alcove off the main lobby, lined with fake leather-bound books and stocked with worn board games. A couple sat on a sofa by the window, sharing headphones and watching a tablet. Maree browsed the bookshelf titles, her fingers trailing over the spines. Nothing felt loose. She examined the games: Monopoly, Scrabble, a chess set with heavy pieces.
She picked up the Scrabble box, pretending to examine it. The weight was normal. She slid the lid off slightly, her fingers probing the interior under the pretense of feeling the tiles. Only wood and plastic.
The chess set was more promising. She lifted the board. The base felt solid. Each piece was weighted, but hollow? She picked up the black king, turning it slowly in her fingers. The couple glanced over, then went back to their screen. The piece was solid wood. She replaced it, frustration a low hum in her veins.
Her phone buzzed. A text from Todd: Bar clean. Boot locker 42 was his. Empty. Moving to service corridors.
The boot room was a cavernous, humid space radiating the smell of wet wool and foot powder. Rows of locked wooden cabinets lined the walls. Todd’s work was evident; the small, simple lock on door 42 hung loose, its mechanism neatly disabled. Inside was empty, just a drippy shelf and a faint chemical smell from a forgotten sanitizer puck.
This was too slow. They were thinking like spies, not like a scared analyst. Petrov wasn’t a field agent. He was a desk guy who’d gotten in over his head. Where would a desk guy hide something?
Somewhere digital. Somewhere he could access without drawing attention.
She left the boot room and walked back through the bustling lobby. People milled about, complaining good-naturedly about the storm, their voices a blur of vacation static. Her eyes swept the room—the front desk, the concierge podium, the giant stone hearth.
Then she saw it. Mounted to the left of the fireplace, framed in rustic cedar, was an old-fashioned ski trail map. It was the kind with a light behind it, illuminating the different run difficulties. A sign beneath it read: INTERACTIVE TRAIL MAP! TOUCH A RUN TO LIGHT IT UP!
It was a public fixture. Utterly innocuous. And it was, fundamentally, a computer.
She walked over, her pulse a quickening tap in her wrists. The frame was thick. She reached out and touched the map on ‘Aspen Grove,’ the run where Petrov was found. It glowed a ominous red. She traced her finger along the frame, feeling for a seam, a gap.
Nothing.
A family came up beside her, the father lifting a child to press a button for the beginner’s slope. Maree stepped back, forcing a smile. As she did, her hip brushed against a small, decorative side table holding tourist brochures. A laminated card on a metal stand caught her eye: Lodge Wi-Fi Information.
The network name was WhitePeakLodge. The password was Schuss!2024.
Petrov was a telecom analyst. His world was networks, signals, access points. He wouldn’t hide a physical drive in a board game. He’d stow it in the infrastructure.
She turned from the map and walked quickly to the front desk. A young woman with a name tag reading ‘Anya’ smiled brightly. “Can I help you?”
“Hi, yes,” Maree said, leaning on the counter with a conspiratorial whisper. “I am so embarrassed. I think I left one of my wireless earbuds in the lounge last night. It’s still paired to my phone, and the locator shows it’s here, in the lobby, but I can’t see it. Is there any lost-and-found for tech items? Or maybe somewhere a cleaner might have put it?”
Anya’s smile turned sympathetic. “Oh, of course! We have a bin for small electronics right here.” She bent down behind the counter and lifted a plastic tub filled with chargers, sunglasses, and a single, forlorn-looking Bluetooth speaker. “See it?”
“No,” Maree said, peering over. “But the signal is so strong. Is there… maybe a router or something nearby it could have fallen near? I’m so sorry, this is silly.”
“No worries! The main router for the lobby is actually right under this counter. Maybe it fell behind?” Anya gestured to the knee-hole space.
“Would you mind if I just…?” Maree mimed crouching down.
“Go for it!”
Maree slipped behind the desk, her skin prickling with exposure. She crouched in the dim space. There was a tangle of power strips and Ethernet cables leading to a sleek black router, its lights blinking green and amber. And there, tucked neatly between the router and the wall, held in place by a single loop of clear tape, was a small, black metal thumb drive.
Her breath hitched. She reached out, her fingers finding the cool metal. She tilted it toward the light from the lobby. Near the USB port, a tiny, precise scratch caught the gleam.
A crescent moon.
She peeled the tape gently and closed her fist around the drive. It was cold. She stood up, her legs trembling slightly.
“Any luck?” Anya asked.
“Yes,” Maree said, smiling widely, her fist buried in her pocket. “Found it. Thank you so much. You’re a lifesaver.”
She walked away from the desk, her pace steady, her mind screaming. She passed the fireplace, the interactive map now glowing with a child’s random pattern. She headed for the hallway leading to the rooms, to Todd.
As she turned the corner, a man in a lodge-issued maintenance uniform stepped out of a service door, holding a toolbox. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with a bland, forgettable face. His eyes, however, locked onto hers. They dropped, for a fraction of a second, to the hand she had clenched in her pocket.
He gave a small, polite nod and continued on.
The nod was all wrong. It wasn’t deferential. It was an acknowledgement. Her blood went from warm to icy in a single beat. She walked faster, her shoulder blades itching, expecting a hand to land on them at any moment.
She rounded another corner and saw Todd emerging from a stairwell. She didn’t break stride. She walked straight into him, her body colliding with his in the empty hallway.
She pressed the cold, hard shape of the drive into his hand.
“We’re made,” she whispered, her voice taut against his chest. “Maintenance guy. Near the front desk. He knew.”
Todd’s hand closed over the drive. He didn’t look at it. His eyes were over her shoulder, scanning the hallway behind her. His other arm came around her back, holding her close for a moment. It wasn’t affection. It was cover, and a way to guide her swiftly down the hall toward his room.
“How long ago?” His voice was low in her ear.
“Sixty seconds.”
He quickened their pace, his grip firm. “He’ll have called it in. They’ll know it’s gone. The stakes just changed.” He slid the key card into his door lock. The light flashed green.
He pushed her inside, following swiftly, and locked the door behind them. The sterile, quiet room felt like a trap now, not a sanctuary. He held up the drive, examining the tiny scratch in the light from the window.
“The little moon rock,” he said. There was no triumph in his voice. Only a grim finality.
Outside, the storm seemed to redouble its fury, hammering at the glass. Inside, the only sound was their hurried breathing. The search was over. The real danger had just begun.