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A Chill in the Air, Chapter 5/12

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Chapter Five

The first feeling that returned to Amanda was one of cold.  The chill seeped in through the open places in her clothing, prodding her with icy tendrils.  She groaned and tried to clear the cobwebs from her brain.  Stiff muscles complained as she called them into action again.  Now I know what roadkill feels like.

I can’t believe that bastard ran me off the road!  What did I ever do to him?  She looked at the steep incline she had fallen down, and felt queasy.  I could have broken my neck.  She stood carefully, assessing her injuries.  Thankfully they were very minor – aside from the stiff muscles, a sore shoulder, and a few minor abrasions, the only other major side effect seemed to be a substantial headache.  She realized her hands were shaking, and with some effort forced them to lie still against her sides.  Shake it off, Amanda.  You’re okay.  Time to get going.

She’d been lucky; the bike hadn’t.  She examined the crumpled frame for a few moments, but suspected it might be a total loss.  Just in case it wasn’t, she retrieved the bike lock and secured the wreck to a nearby tree.  Then, for the second time that day, Amanda left the main road and began the short hike to Hannah’s campsite.

As she walked the sleuth contemplated the implications of the hit and run.  She was certain now that her hunch was correct – the Griers were up to no good at Cawdor.  Were they scheming with Colin to steal some artifact from the castle?  Even with a man on the inside, Amanda couldn’t see how burglars could breach the top-notch security system.  Mr. Donnell had said that he, as the night watchman, was almost an afterthought; all the castle’s alarm systems were controlled remotely by an offsite security company.  A confederate at the castle couldn’t simply disable it without alerting the authorities.  Could they be plotting something that didn’t involve the castle?  She couldn’t imagine what, and her thoughts kept drifting back to Cawdor’s stone edifice.

The hit and run clinched it.  She would stake out the castle tonight.  But what about Hannah?

Amanda bit her lip uncertainly.  Her Irish friend was smart and dependable – Hannah had proved more than once in the summertime that she was a good person to have backing you up.  But the Griers were clearly dangerous men.  Did Hannah deserve to get mixed up in all this?

During their backpacking summer  Amanda had fired her companions, Hannah and Kat, with her own native enthusiasm for solving mysteries and ferreting out the truth.  She’d led them into a number of traps and sticky situations, and – with equal parts resourcefulness and luck – had always led them out again.  They hadn’t lost any toes doing it, and had even managed to do some good in the process.  But they’d all had reason to fear for their lives more than once.  Each time that had happened, Amanda had heard a nagging voice in her head, saying, “If they don’t make it back, it will be because you brought them here.”

The heat of the moment was never the time for such reflections, so she’d always shoved the thoughts away to focus on the immediate task at hand.  But during the relatively quiet months of school that followed, they had sometimes crept up on her during late nights lying in bed or early morning walks to class.  What would you have done if you had to tell Mrs. Duffy that her daughter wouldn’t be coming home after some mad caper you dragged her into?  Or Kat – could you have faced Mr. Weber to tell him he’d never see his daughter again?  Could you live with yourself?  Doctors, police chiefs, generals…they had training in how to tell people that poor leadership had cost their loved ones life or limb.  No one thought to give such training to young girls still in college.

Now things seemed to be on the fast track to potential danger once again.  Amanda was determined to discover what the Griers were up to.  But Twitch had gone after her with little or no provocation.  What would they do if they found her obviously spying on them?  Best not to get caught, then.  But Amanda was unwilling to pull Hannah along into the hot zone again.

Hannah had had a long week already, and deserved some rest.  Amanda resolved to tell her friend to go ahead to Inverness, and that she’d follow sometime tomorrow.  I might even be able to make use of her camping gear.  If I promise to take better care of it than her bike.  Maybe by tomorrow Amanda might have gathered some evidence worth taking to the authorities.

Amanda looked about as she entered the small clearing where the tent sat.  She had expected Hannah to be finishing packing up the campsite, and perhaps preparing a lecture on American tardiness.  It was slightly unnerving to find the little camp deserted.  Nothing looked like it had been moved since they’d parted ways this morning.

Hoping Hannah’s research might have just run long, Amanda settled in to wait for a while.  It gave a chance for her to dig an aspirin out of her duffel, which numbed the growing headache and her other bruises.  She also extracted a couple of packages of trail mix and a protein bar, to eat a belated lunch.  As the lonely minutes mounted, she initially managed to ward off a growing sense of unease.  But after an hour had passed with no sign of Hannah, Amanda could not hold the worry at bay any longer.  Could her friend be injured?  Hannah knew how to handle herself in the woods, but accidents were always a possibility.  And non-accidents, Amanda reflected with a slight shiver of dread as she rubbed her sore shoulder.

Moving with decision, Amanda consulted the map Hannah had shown her earlier and set out in the direction her friend had indicated for today’s work.  The footprints left by Hannah’s boots made it easy to trace the path she’d taken; no other footprints, human or animal, complicated the track.  She soon reached the chill, briskly flowing waters of the Cawdor Burn, which seemed to follow her course.  Rather, she was following it; she easily noted each place where Hannah had knelt on the bank to take water samples for her research.

At long last, Amanda reached a spot where Hannah had gone down the bank to the water’s edge but not returned.  A cold feeling unrelated to the winter air swept over Amanda as she viewed a cluster of ramshackle buildings in the dim light beneath the trees on the far bank.  Three quad bikes were parked under a sign identifying the Griers as the proprietors.  The sight of Hannah’s green scarf, tangled in some underbrush near the stream and waving plaintively in the breeze, confirmed Amanda’s fears.  The wolves’ lair, thought Amanda, and Red’s lost in the woods.  It looked like Hannah was involved, despite Amanda’s hope to keep her out of trouble this time around.

Had Hannah stumbled onto evidence of whatever the Griers were up to?  If so – and if they’d captured her, which seemed likely – there was no time to waste.  Amanda pulled out her phone; she’d turned it off at her friend’s suggestion, but now furtively powered it back on.  Muffled in the folds of her parka, the automatic “On” chime barely made a sound.  Quickly she dialed the volume down to zero and checked her service.  No bars.  Damn.  She’d been hoping there might be a lucky island of service here.  She was on her own.

Her fingers curled around the canister of pepper spray in her pocket.  She often carried some these days, another lesson learned from the long summer with Kat and Hannah.  It was small comfort now.  Her best weapon at this point was stealth.

Trying to keep a low profile, Amanda stepped across the stream using several large stones which rose above its course.  As she checked her footing, she glimpsed the silver glint of a darting fish; perhaps it was one of Hannah’s vendace that had led her to this forlorn place.  The creature swiftly swam away into the shadows.

Amanda wished she could hide herself as easily.  She hoped the relatively dark colors of her outfit would help conceal her in the gathering gloom of dusk, though she could do nothing about the contrast against the white snow which still lay on the ground.  She sized up the buildings as she crept close.

Picking one at random, she approached the nearer of the two small sheds which flanked the larger structure and peered in the window.  The sight of tall stacks of tires, fuel, and other accessory equipment greeted her; the place was full to bursting, but there was no one inside.  Amanda turned her eye on the large building in the center of the compound, which looked like some sort of warehouse designed to house the vehicles themselves.  There were no windows.  The light of harsh work lamps, of the sort used by road crews at night, shone through the crack underneath the massive double doors.

As she edged closer, Amanda began to hear the clamor of voices and the sound of machinery in motion, which echoed in an oddly distant fashion from within the structure.  Is it actually recessed into the hillside?  For the first time, Amanda noticed the dark watchtower of Cawdor Castle rising from the peak of the hill above.  She’d gone in almost a full circle since departing the castle earlier in the day, and not even realized it.

Even as Amanda stood outside the doors, asking herself if she dared to open them, she heard contentious voices approaching from the other side of it.  Caught in the open, she desperately looked about for a place to hide.  Lacking any other option, she made a quick dash and threw herself under one of the parked vehicles.  Sprawled low and compact beneath the vehicle, Amanda twisted around and struggled to remove her phone from the back pocket of her close-fitted jeans.  Succeeding, she activated the video camera feature and set it to recording.

Light spilled out into the dark wood as two figures emerged.  Amanda recognized Rich Grier’s broad shoulders; the smaller figure was a woman with light, shoulder-length hair.  They were arguing.

Rich seemed to be in the middle of a retort.  “All I said was she seemed a little suspicious, asking about the security and all.  I didn’t know he was going to go all Death Race on her!”

The woman spoke with artfully un-accented English.  “You are the crew chief here, Mr. Grier.  Remember that I am only on hand as oversight.  Are you admitting you can’t control your own people?”

Rich ground his teeth.  “No.”

“’No,’ what?”

“No, Miss Zawisza.”  He spat the words.  “I’m not admitting that.”

“Then keep your spastic cousin in line!  Same for the other loose cannons on your crew.”

“What?!  Who?”

“Daley, for one.  He was feeling up the girl in the admin shack earlier, when he should have been reporting straight to me.”

Amanda’s ears pricked up.  Hannah must be in the small building she hadn’t tried yet.  The reference to Daley’s actions made her stomach turn.

Grier grinned nastily.  “Oh, come on, miss – the boys don’t get paid overtime.  They have to get their perks where they can.”

“I’ll not have it on my operation!” the woman barked sharply.  Opposite her, Grier looked like a bulldog about to be slipped from the leash.

Ms. Zawisza eyed him, and her tone softened noticeably.  “Look, Richard,” she said in a velvet voice, “You know that we’ve got enough trouble with the girl in the shed as it is.  We don’t need your cousin to go borrowing more if we can help it, not so close to the end.  If you’re sure the other girl was dead, we’ll leave it at that.”  As she talked, she turned and walked half a dozen steps to one of the other quad bikes.  She leaned against it, majestic legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles.

If the woman turned her head just a bit, she’d see Amanda for sure.  Amanda’s muscles tightened.  Hearing herself referred to posthumously did nothing to ease the tension.

But the woman’s eyes were on her cohort.  “When we go up to Cawdor tonight,” she continued, “I want every man focused squarely on the job at hand.  That’s how we avoid any more complications.”  Her fingers had imperceptibly crept up and begun working her blonde hair into a long single braid.  “After tonight, they’ll be paid off and they can paint the town red if they like.  But business comes first.”  As she twisted it, her hair almost seemed to glow in the reflected light from the open door.  “I can’t get them in line.  You can.  You’re the alpha – they look up to you.  The whole thing falls apart without you.”

The bulldog, now a puppy, trotted across the open space to stand before her.  With the braiding finished, Ms. Zawisza looked up at him from her leaning position.  “Please, Richard?  Can you do it for me?  We only need them on task for another ten hours or so.”

Grier swallowed.  “Of course, ma’am.”

Amanda scoffed noiselessly from her hiding place.  Smooth operator.

The woman stood, and her voice regained some authority.  “Good.  Why don’t you check the cargo cradles?  We don’t want any breakage, and you know how fragile some of the stuff is.”

“Alright…what are you going to do?”

“I still need to check on our mystery guest.  She’s been out a lot longer than I expected.  Her notes don’t reveal anything about our operation, but I can’t be sure of the extent of her knowledge.  She’d better wake soon; we’ll be cutting into operational time soon enough.”  She paused thoughtfully.  “I will decide about neutralization once we find out what she knows.”  

Grier nodded wordlessly and then turned to head back into the building.  He paused and cast a lingering look over Zawisza’s captivating figure as she headed for the admin shed.  If she knew he watched her go, she made no sign of it.  Both of them disappeared into their respective doorways, though Grier left his standing open.

A light drizzle of freezing rain began to fall.

After a few moments, Amanda slid out of her hiding place and tiptoed to the open door.  She pocketed her phone, inhaled and exhaled deeply, then peeked carefully around the frame.

The enclosed space was quite wide, but what struck Amanda most was its depth.  The cavernous interior area extended far back toward the edge of the hill, and well into it.  She could see that there was no back wall, and that a tunnel shored up with timbers stretched backward into the hillside, angling gradually upward.  The panels of what was evidently a false back wall lay along the edges of the space.  In the rear area, several digging machines and caterpillar tractors were parked amidst prodigious piles of dirt and rock, with two men bent over and tending to the machines.  In the middle of the room were a couple of crates of dynamite and other explosives.  

Slightly nearer to the door was a small fleet of quad bikes, all fitted with four-wheeled flatbed trailers.  Constructed atop some of the trailer beds were elaborate frameworks of PVC piping, with cloths and bungee slings hanging in the center of each.  Bundles of rope and diverse packing materials lay in some of the other trailer beds.  Rich and Twitch Grier, together with another man, were checking the soundness of the PVC frameworks.  Amanda’s eyes burned at the sight of her earlier attacker, but she forced herself away from the door.

A tunnel!  Amanda realized now the extent of the Griers’ plan.  This is no smash-and-grab.  Her discussion with Mr. Donnell had implied there was not much security in the castle cellars – why would there be, if they weren’t normally used for storing valuables?  And Amanda doubted that the vaunted perimeter security of Cawdor Castle included ground motion sensors.  The idea of crooks digging a tunnel to break into the basement was so ridiculous, why would the castle owners spend the money to cover that possibility?

They must have been hiding this operation for months.  Amanda thought about the thickness of the walls she could see from her vantage point in the doorway.  I’d bet good money that these walls contain soundproofing material.  And with the conversation she’d just overheard, it sounded like the whole operation was coming to a head.  She would need to move quickly in order to stop them…but her first priority had to be Hannah.

At that moment the door of the admin shed creaked; Amanda leapt away from the door and dove back under the bike that had hidden her previously.  The blonde woman – whose place in the scheme Amanda still could not entirely guess – stalked past, muttering something equally angry and incomprehensible.  Her consternation increased as she reached the main building door and found it standing open.  She quickly stepped through and slammed it shut.  Amanda heard a muffled shout: “Which of you obesraniecs took my smelling salts?  If you’ve been huffing them again, there will be hell to pay!”

Amanda swiftly rushed to the door of the admin shed; if Hannah was unattended, now was the best chance to set her free.  Time to move, Jones.  She slipped inside, shutting the door behind her.
No, Amanda isn't down for the count!

For those who have read some of the stories in Torqual3D's Summer Sleuths anthology, Amanda's thoughts here hearken back to that period.  "Amanda Jones & the Dark Widow of Wicklow" was written for that anthology.  Here, I wanted to show some of the longer-term effect that those events had on Amanda.

The story continues here: A Chill in the Air, Chapter 6
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DOAFan247's avatar
This was pretty exciting, the amount of danger and risk of Amanda being caught while looking for Hannah made it fun to read. I really liked how Amanda stopped to think about how events in the past have gotten not only herself into trouble, but her friends as well. Shows her maturity.