Had Mitzi had time to go outside and sabotage the generator?
Olive couldn’t be sure, but she didn’t like the thought of it.
Jason had already grabbed his flashlight and tested the beam. “Ready?”
Olive turned her gaze away from Mitzi and nodded. “Yes. Let’s get this over with.”
They grabbed their coats and stepped out into the cold.
The wind cut through them from the moment the door opened, feeling like icy fingers biting through their clothes. Snow swirled sideways, stinging their faces. The beam from the flashlight carved only a small circle through the darkness.
“Did it look like snow in Mitzi’s hair?” Olive whispered as they stepped down the stairs.
“I thought I saw that too,” Jason said. “I’m surprised you didn’t ask her about it.”
“Once you throw out an accusation like that, you can’t take it back. If Mitzi’s innocent, then our relationship could be fractured. But we’d still have to work together. I figured it was safer to observe and keep an eye on her instead.”
“Smart thinking.”
The generator shed stood half-buried in snowdrifts. In front of the door, a patch of snow had been cleared—as if someone had recently opened the door.
Jason reached the door first, brushed snow from the latch, and tugged it open. The smell of diesel and oil wafted out.
Olive’s beam swept across the small interior, landing on the thick rubber line snaking from the fuel tank to the generator.
The line was cleanly severed.
Her stomach dropped. “Someone cut it.”
Jason crouched, brushing frost from the tubing. “This was definitely done on purpose.”
Olive’s pulse thudded in her ears. “So it wasn’t a malfunction. Someone wanted to strand us here without any power.”
Jason met her gaze, gray eyes hard. “Looks that way.”
As the wind howled through the trees, rattling the metal roof above them, Olive tightened her coat.
She glanced out the door and scanned the dark woods beyond. “Whoever did this is still close.”
“Then we need to be more on guard than ever.”
CHAPTER
NINE
The wind droveneedles of snow into Olive’s face as she and Jason stepped back from the shed.
She lifted her flashlight, sweeping the light across the ground. The beam caught a pattern in the drifts—faint impressions, almost erased.
“Wait,” she said. “Look at this.”
Jason crouched, the light from his flashlight crossing hers. The tracks were there, just barely—boot prints, partially brushed over with a pine branch. The sweeping arcs of the needles were still visible in the snow.
“Someone came out and tried to cover their trail,” Jason murmured.
Olive followed the path with her beam.
The prints led away from the shed and curved along the side of the inn. They weren’t fresh—snow had filled them slightly—but they weren’t old either.
