Barret, p.1
Barret, page 1
Books in This Series:
Magnus, Book 1
Rogan, Book 2
Egan, Book 3
Barret, Book 4
Whalen, Book 5
Nikolai, Book 6
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
About This Book
Prologue
Day 1 Late Afternoon
Day 2 Wee Hours of the Morning
Day 2 Morning After Breakfast
Day 3 Early Morning
Day 4 Next Morning
Day 5 Wee Hours of the Morning
Day 5 Lunch
Day 5 Dinner
Day 6 Breakfast
Day 6 Dinnertime Prep
Day 6 Dinnertime
Day 6 After Dinner
Day 7 Breakfast
Day 7 Dinner
Day 8 Early Morning
Day 8 Morning
Day 8 Midmorning
Day 9 Morning
Day 9 Midmorning
Day 10 Early Morning
Day 10 After Dinner
Day 10 Nighttime
Epilogue
About Whalen
Author’s Note
Complimentary Download
About the Author
Copyright Page
About This Book
Deep in the permafrost of the Arctic, a joint task force, comprised of over one dozen countries, comes together to level up their winter skills. A mix of personalities, nationalities, and egos bring out the best—and the worst—as these globally elite men and women work and play together. They rub elbows with hardy locals and a group of scientists gathered close by …
One fatality is almost expected with this training. A second is tough but not a surprise. However, when a third goes missing? It’s hard to not be suspicious. When the missing man is connected to one of the elite Maverick team members and is a special friend of Lieutenant Commander Mason Callister? All hell breaks loose …
A teammate goes missing right as Barret arrives at the camp of horrors. Immediately he heads out to help in the search for the missing man – to no avail. And once again the numbers go down by one. No explanation, no body… nothing. Are drugs involved? Blackmail? Or stupid bets? There’s too many options and none of them make any sense.
At least Avalon is there, a woman who caught his interest on the first day. Although she’s just as confused and worried about what’s going on in the arctic camp, she’s level headed and with a great sense of humor.
Subbed in for someone who couldn’t make it, Avalon ends up helping out in the kitchen. At least there she’s warm and can keep busy. Until someone falls ill from suspected food poisoning and all eyes turn on her. She knows she hasn’t done anything wrong, but tempers are short and she’s an easy scape goat.
It’s going to take both of them to keep her safe and get her out from under the cloud of suspicion. Thankfully Barret has no problem helping a damsel in distress…
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Prologue
At dinnertime Barret Dillinger walked into the dining area of the Arctic military base and stopped, surveying his surroundings. He understood from Mason some of what had just gone down. Sure enough, off in a corner, he saw four heads, two males and two females, huddled together at a table. Smiling, Barret walked over and sat down beside them, without any warning. Immediately the nearest woman stiffened, but he gave her a reassuring smile. “The name is Barret,” he greeted her gently, then turned and looked at the men.
Magnus smiled at him. “You’re here to help, aren’t you?”
“If that’s what you call it,” he replied, with a casual glance around. “Not that anybody is supposed to know that,” he added, with a warning.
Magnus nodded. “However, you’ll find out very quickly that nothing stays quiet in this scenario.”
“Of course not.” Barret looked back at the women. “Which one of you is Berry?” Immediately the smaller of the two held up her hand.
“I’m Berry. This is Sydney. She’s the doctor here.”
“Honored,” he said, “to meet you both.” He looked around and added, “Sounds as if you guys have been having fun. You should share all those good times.”
“Now you can take over. I’ve had all the fun I want,” Berry declared, with a shudder. “Personally I’m okay to just have some peace and quiet for a while.”
“And yet you’re staying.” Barret frowned, his gaze intent as he studied her.
She took a deep breath. “Yes, I am.”
He nodded, not arguing with her at all. People had all kinds of reasons for staying after trying times such as this, and maybe she was in the right of it after all.
As another woman walked in and headed to the table, the woman grew nervous, her steps choppy. She looked over at Magnus. “May I speak to you for a minute?”
Magnus immediately stood. “Of course.”
She pointed him toward the hallway.
At that, Barret joined him. “I’ll come too, if that’s okay.”
She hesitated and frowned. “Sorry, but you’re new.”
“I am, indeed,” he confirmed. “Therefore, I’m not connected to anything already going on.” He watched as that worked its way through her thoughts, then she ignored him.
“Fine, as long as he says it’s okay.” She pointed to Magnus, who nodded.
“It’s fine,” Magnus murmured. “What’s going on?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t been able to find Scott anywhere.”
Magnus stared at her. “Scott, as in kitchen assistant Scott?”
She nodded. “We’re both new here, having come in a few days ago as replacements. Scott was here to help Chef, and I’m mostly doing reports and supplies for the compound. The base isn’t very welcoming, so Scott and I just stuck together. Scott wasn’t expecting this weather or the isolation. It’s really bothering him, so I check on him throughout the day,” she shared, with a side glance at Barret. “I step into the kitchen sometimes to give him a hand, but, when I went there a couple times already today, I saw no sign of him. Now I just talked to Chef, and he hasn’t seen Scott all day.”
“All day?” Magnus repeated.
She nodded. “Chef told me Scott wasn’t feeling well and went to lie down. I talked to him this morning, and he said he just needed some fresh air. This place, the isolation, being stuck inside, … he found it very claustrophobic.”
“Ah, shit,” Magnus said, as he turned toward Barret. “Nothing like jumping into the deep end.”
“I’m all for it,” Barret replied, still studying the woman. “What’s your name?”
“Avalon Pritchard,” she said, with a smile. “Please help Scott. He’s a nice guy, and honestly he’s not like a lot of the men here.”
“When you say that, what do you mean?” Magnus asked.
She shrugged. “He’s definitely not the alpha type. He’s quiet, studious, shy, and a really nice guy. I’d hate for something bad to happen to him. Since arriving, we’d heard all kinds of horror stories. With all the shit that’s been going on around this place,” she explained, “when somebody goes missing …”
“If anybody goes missing,” Barret corrected her immediately, then turned to look at Magnus. “I suggest we do a full-scale internal search and then head outside.”
“Yeah, already on it,” Magnus noted, holding up his phone. “We’ll set up the sirens and send out a full search party,” Magnus added for Avalon’s benefit, with a smile.
Barnett turned to face Avalon. “Thanks for letting us know.”
“Just find him please. I’d really hate to think of something else happening here.” And, with that, her arms wrapped around her chest, she walked slowly back to the kitchen.
Barret turned to Magnus. “I guess you weren’t expecting that, huh?”
“No, but we also don’t know that it isn’t a false alarm. Scott could just be out with the dogs or something.”
“Ah, maybe I’ll start there,” Barret offered.
“Sure, you do that, but we can’t waste time. If he’s there, that’s great. If he’s not there, we’ll be hitting the road real fast, before we lose out on any sunlight hours. In these temperatures, without proper outerwear and supplies, in twenty minutes you’re done.”
“Got it,” Barret noted. “Considering that Scott might have been missing since sunup today, he’s already well past that point.”
“I know,” Magnus replied, his voice dark. “Yet we can’t assume anything, not yet.”
Day 1 Late Afternoon
Hell of a deal up here, Mason. Fear is an undercurrent. Suspicion the overcurrent. Already out here to search for the newest missing person. No one can survive in these temperatures for long. Heard Teegan Rode has been missing, and still is, for weeks now. Doesn’t bode well.
To say jumping in with both feet was to put it mildly. When Barret finally made it back inside too many hours later, he was cold and tired. His toes were thankfully numb for the moment, and his cheeks were burning red, as he quickly attempted to warm up. He’d been in cold environments before, and in ugly weather too, but both of them together, up here, was something else entirely. The dogs though, … they were loving it.
He loved working with dog teams, and it hadn’t taken Barret long to get them onboard with the day’s search. Joe had helped Barret harness the selected dogsled team, and he’d taken off. But to no avail. Not quite whiteout conditions but still very limited visibility, so he’d had to rely on the dogs’ innate navigation abilities a time or tw o. Now back, with Joe’s help, Barret had given the dogs a good rub behind the ears, and they were all happy and spread out, ready for a good nap. Barret was looking for some hot food and drink. “Joe, do you want me to bring you back something from the kitchen?”
Silent as ever, Joe shook his head, muttered something under his breath that Barret couldn’t hear properly and probably didn’t want to. In fact, Joe hadn’t had a whole lot to say, but his expression had been pretty ugly when they’d come back in empty-handed. Barret had the same attitude himself.
Leaving Joe to his solitude and his canine companions, Barret felt a little jealous that he couldn’t have a couple dogs in the main building with him. Barret headed to the kitchen area. When he walked in, many other people milled around, and the news had already filtered inside. An ugly rumbling murmured throughout the main dining room. Barret hadn’t had a chance to get to his room yet or to get anything else accomplished, but, hey, he was here. So far, the suddenly missing person, Scott, was not.
It blew Barret’s mind that somebody could just go out for a walk and disappear into thin air like that. It didn’t make any sense to him, so, of course it made him suspicious as hell. Yet the entire camp had been turned inside out, and there was no sign of Scott. As Barret walked into the dining room looking for the nearest hot drink, he saw several of the men he had already met.
Magnus stood and waved at him. “Come on over here,” he said, motioning to the group.
Barret nodded and pointed toward the front. “I’ll just get a hot drink.”
As soon as he grabbed a hot coffee, he moved slowly toward the group. The table was full with heated discussions regarding the situation. As he sat down, several of them looked at him, a question in their eyes, and he shook his head.
Shoulders sagged and Avalon, who he remembered from earlier, cried out in frustration, her voice shaking. “I don’t understand. How could he have just disappeared?”
“If he didn’t hook on to a lifeline,” Magnus pointed out, “it would be way too easy to get lost in the present near-whiteout conditions here.”
If he hadn’t hooked on the safety line as soon as he stepped out, and only held on with a hand, it was easy to release the rope to wipe the blowing snow from your face, to pull your hood in closer, or to do any other number of hand gestures people made without thinking. After that? Then trying to find the safety rope—probably still within arm’s reach but now completely invisible—well, without that guiding rope, it would be almost impossible to find his way back.
In a storm such as this, as soon as you go out more than a couple feet, you couldn’t find where you belonged. And the heavy snowfall would cover your body in very short order.
“Damn it, that’s exactly why those ropes are there,” Barret snapped. He glared around at the group, trying to get his temper under control. “I know he was well trained in these dangers, so I’m not sure what the hell went on.”
“He had a fight with somebody this morning,” Avalon noted in a clipped tone. “I know that he stormed off, pretty upset. It’s possible that he just didn’t think about it.”
“That temper may have just gotten him killed.” Magnus looked over at Barret in agreement.
She hesitated and then whispered in a lower voice, “But wouldn’t you have found his body?”
“Not yet,” Barret replied. “We can’t find anything out there in these conditions. We’d have to trip over it, and believe me. Right now you can’t tell a lump in front of you from a dip. Therefore, until this weather calms down—”
At that, somebody at a nearby table snorted and called out, “Mother Nature’s a bitch.”
Barret looked over at him and nodded. “Yeah, it seems as if we’re in for a spat of ugly weather again.”
At that, the other people in the dining room slowly dispersed. In silence. The crowd too depressed to grumble. Or too afraid.
As he sat there pondering what Magnus had just said, Barret faced Avalon. “Do you know who he had the fight with?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t. I just heard somebody mention that there had been some yelling and grumbling, so I presume Scott just headed off in a temper.”
“Could be a bunch of reasons for that too,” Barret pointed out. “What we have to do at the moment is make sure we stick to facts.”
She glared at him. “If I had any more facts, I would have found him myself.”
“Did you go out looking?”
“I did right away,” she stated, “but I didn’t go outside the building. I just stood in the open doorway looking for him, and, of course, I couldn’t do that for long either,” she muttered, wrapping her arms around her shoulders. “God, this place is just … it’ll take us all out, won’t it?”
“No, it won’t,” Barret snapped. “It never has before. I don’t know why this particular training session is so jinxed.”
“I hear a lot of the gossip,” Avalon replied. “An awful lot of people on base think that the curse is powerful enough that the survival camp should be shut down before anyone else dies. I know a lot of the guys are rumored to be contacting their bosses and asking for a way out.”
“Sure they are,” Magnus agreed in a quiet tone. “They’ve been doing that since the first guy went missing, yet the same reasons for denying those requests still apply. We could have a murderer in this group,” he pointed out, his voice low. “So nobody leaves.”
“Yeah, but,” Avalon argued, “I also heard that nobody else was entitled to come either, and you guys keep breaking that rule.”
Magnus smiled at her. “Different rules for different folks.”
“Sure.” She raised both hands in frustration. “Doesn’t that just confuse the issue?”
“I don’t see how,” Magnus noted calmly. “We must have some men to replace the ones who died or went missing.”
She shot a look at Barret. “So, how do you feel about being a replacement for a dead man?”
He gave her a flat look and shrugged. “It’s not as if it’s the first time.”
She winced. “Great, as if I needed that in my thoughts.” She got up and added, “I’ll lie down for a little bit before dinner.”
“Maybe you should stay here and get warm,” Barret suggested to her. “I noticed that you haven’t stopped shivering.”
“That’s why I wanted to go lie down,” she muttered. “I know I wasn’t out there all that long, but the cold has been with me all day now, and I still can’t get warm.”
He moved a chair into the corner and pointed. “Sit here.”
“Why?” she asked, staring at him as if he were off his rocker.
“Because my body heat will help warm you up,” he stated. “And this isn’t the time to think that I’m coming on to you. I’m not.” His tone sounded harsher than he intended. “You’re obviously freezing, which isn’t something to fool around with.”
She hesitated and then slipped between him and the wall. She gasped almost immediately. “You’re a bloody furnace,” she blurted out, twisting to look at him. He shifted over a little more, and she ended up almost too tightly up against the wall.
“Now, just stay where you are, and let’s see if we can get that body temperature back up.”
“I hate to admit it, but I was wondering if I should see Sydney.”
Barret raised an eyebrow. “The doctor?”
“Yes, although why she’s still here, I don’t know. Especially after what she’s been through.”
“She’s here because she wants to see this thing to the end,” Magnus stated from the other side of the table.
Avalon nodded. “Believe me. It’s nothing against her. It’s just, if there were a way to get out of here …” Avalon groaned. “I shouldn’t whine, but sometimes you just wonder if there is some reason, something voodoo that you don’t know about going on here. Then, because you didn’t know, it’s coming around to get you.”
Magnus’s lips quirked. “I do know what you mean, but I’m pretty sure that all the problems here are man-made.”
She hunched into a smaller ball. “If you’re trying to make me feel better,” she said in a hoarse whisper, “that’s not working.”
He nodded. “You haven’t seen too much action, have you?” She glared at him, and he held up a hand. “Hey, I’m just asking.”
