Cass matched his stare. “I’m telling you.”
It had been a day since her harrowing journey through the tunnels. The tiny wounds she’d received from the exploding timber shoring weren’t serious, but the resin or the preservative in the wood had caused a reaction and her normally clear skin blazed like she had the measles. After staggering back to her quarters, she’d spent an hour picking out splinters, debating what she should do about her experience in the tunnels. Report it or keep the whole thing to herself? Expose herself to questions and potential ridicule, or act like it hadn’t occurred? She went back and forth with herself until, exhausted, she’d simply crawled into her bunk, giving herself permission to sleep on the issue.
The next morning, she’d decided there was no way she could simply ignore what had happened; her only choice was to tell either Hanratty or Taylor. Of the two of them, and despite her innate dislike of the man, her instinct told her Hanratty would handle the situation more professionally. But now looking at him across his desk, faced with his icy indifference, she had her doubts.
His gaze slid off her and over her shoulder. “Jennings, some of the infrastructure down there is nearly seventy years old. It’s not beyond comprehension that the lights might stop working.”
“What about the sewer pipe? The vertical split? That’s not natural.”
He shrugged. “Says who? I respect the fact that, of the two of us, you’re the one with the degree in mechanical engineering. But strange things happen at the Pole, and just because a pipe broke in a different direction than you expected doesn’t mean there’s a grand conspiracy.”
She gritted her teeth. “And the person in the tunnel? The one who turned the lights out? The one who I almost knifed ?”
“But didn’t.” Hanratty ran his hands wide along the lip of his desk, like he was smoothing a wrinkle in a tablecloth. “You said you returned later.”
“Yes.” With three flashlights and a crowbar .
“You found evidence of this other person? Blood, maybe, or a footprint?”
Cass paused. “No.”
“Was the . . . assailant a man or a woman?”
She swallowed. “I don’t know.”
He nodded, as if expecting the answer. “And the voice . . . no help there?”
“No.”
“What did they say, again?”
“They whispered my name.”
“Demonstrate.”
She looked at him. “What?”
“Say it to me like you heard it.”
“Why?”
“I want to hear what you heard.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
Cass cleared her throat and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Cass.”
It sounded profoundly ridiculous. What had been sinister and life threatening in the darkness of the ice tunnel sounded like the soundtrack to a bad movie in the warmth of Hanratty’s office.
He looked down at the surface of his desk for a beat, then back up at her. “Jennings, how are you sleeping?”
“Oh for Christ—”
“How well?”
“Shitty,” she said, exasperated. “Just like everyone else on base. And that has nothing to do with what happened yesterday. I didn’t hallucinate this. Just like I didn’t hallucinate that person in the back of the VMF the day you, Taylor, and Keene were in my garage. Which I’d like to know more about, by the way.”
“What would you like to know?”
“Why were the three of you there? And who did I chase down the tunnel?”
Hanratty tilted his head as though unable to understand her. “I told you at the time that Taylor and I were overseeing the loading for the last flight. We’d just come from the warehouse and Keene had joined us because he was tired of sitting in his office. There isn’t much for a morale officer to do when eighty percent of the staff has left.”
Cass gritted her teeth at Hanratty’s infuriating equanimity. So helpful, so curious, so full of shit. “Was the person who ran down the tunnel also there to inspect the loading of the last flight?”
“I didn’t even know there was anyone in the back of the VMF. In fact, the three of us were surprised when you took off like a shot toward the carpentry shop.”
“You didn’t hear anything? See anything? Nothing out of the ordinary.”
The manager shook his head. “No. The only strange event was you sprinting out the back of the VMF like you were on fire.”
“You were gone when I got back.”
He shrugged. “Were we supposed to wait for you?”
Cass looked at him, sure he was lying, but unable to comprehend why. “You saw no one? Really?”
“I know you want me to say yes, but I didn’t. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t anyone there. It means I didn’t see them.”
“Why would they run away?”