“It would take a while to reload.”
Xavier nodded. “Forever. But better than nothing if you’re sneaking up on an armed merc.” He returned his attention to the paper. “What else does it say?”
She studied the drawings, words, and numbers, reminding herself George was an artist. None of the markings on the page was done in error.
“Those are lightbulbs.” She pointed to the three balloon-shaped drawings by Harriet’s name. “He’s colored them in with black dots, like a comic book drawing. I presume that indicates black powder? And this one on the end…it’s shattering, and inside is a shape that looks like a comic book kapow! bubble. He couldn’t know we’ve seen Jeb’s workbench, so I think he’s telling us the lightbulbs are bombs.”
“He’d probably guess that once I saw the match guns in the canister, I’d recognize other improvised explosives.” He touched Harriet’s name on the page. “So…does this mean he’s planted explosive lights in the second-floor Jamison Library?”
“How could he? He’d need to have gotten inside to do that, before he left this message for me.”
“Or he has a plan for getting inside. And he left you this note to tell you what he’s up to. We just need to figure out how he plans to do it.”
“He has special access because he uses the woodshop year-round and has wintered here for the last three years. He has the full employee key chain. Hell, he probably has keys I don’t even have.”
“His keys wouldn’t work because we substituted all the exterior doors.”
“All the doors? Even the third-floor doors and windows?”
“The balcony doors don’t have mechanical locks with keys. It’s all pegs and bolts that can only be locked and unlocked from the inside. Same with the windows.”
“Not the attic window on the end, and not the interior door that leads to it.”
“What do you mean?”
“On the third floor, there’s a half door at the end of the hall. It goes to the old fire escape.”
“That door goes to the eave crawl space. No outside access.”
“At the far end of the crawl space is a largeish octagon-shaped window that opens onto a widow’s walk. Once upon a time there was a wrought iron fire escape ladder that extended down, but it was removed as a hazard about fifteen years ago. The bolts for the old escape are still in the wall. An agile person could climb up using the bolts as handholds, open the window—which I doubt has a lock because it was an emergency escape—and slip inside the lodge. The hallway door is locked to keep guests from snooping and getting injured in the attic, but it’s probably the same key as the other utilitarian exterior doors. I bet my basement key could open it.” She pointed to an octagon that sat above Harriet’s name. “This isn’t a stop sign. It’s the shape of the window.”
Xavier stared at the drawing, disbelief peppered with excitement coursing through him. Was it possible George Shaw was inside the lodge, setting a trap for the mercs? It was clear from what they’d found in Jeb McCutcheon’s workshop that Shaw was exceedingly smart and capable. But damn, this note for Audrey was a level of cunning he’d never have dared to hope for.
Shaw had ensured that if anyone spotted him planting the message and intercepted it, it would be meaningless. And it said something about Audrey that George had trusted she’d zero in on their teatime spot.
Fucking brilliant.
Shaw must have slipped into soldier mode the moment he saw his friend murdered at the hands of mercenaries. His home territory was under attack, a friend and fellow vet killed. At some point, he saw Audrey’s vehicle, knew she was in danger too, and George went to work.
What had been McCutcheon’s role? Xavier was beginning to think that the man had shown up at the yurt to give warning. He might have stayed in the training zone so he could spy on the SEALs, but then he saw something that alarmed him enough to reach out to the people he distrusted most.
Xavier cleared his throat. They needed justice for McCutcheon. And he needed to get Audrey out of danger. “We need to find the SEAL team. Tell them we have an ally who might be inside with bombs planted in the library.”
“And the dining room,” she said, pointing to the lightbulbs by the name Bastian Ford.
“That’ll be risky. It’s on the same floor as the mercs and hostages.”
“But the other end of the lodge from the ballroom. As a point of surprise attack, it will leave the hostages out of it.”
She pointed to a drawing that looked like a skeleton key and what he recognized from the gift shop as a Native American sasquatch drawing. “He’s going to unlock the exterior door by the bigfoot display. That’s how your team can get in. The display is by the public restrooms on the forest side of the lodge.”
He knew exactly the door she was talking about. “It would help to know when he plans to do all this.”
Audrey stared at the page another moment and let out a squeal, then pointed to a series of symbols that were next to both sets of lightbulbs. “It says right here twelve thirty a.m.”
“What?” He stared at the lines of neatly printed stacked symbols. From top to bottom they read:
?