“This uncle of yours,” he whispered. “Was he a real slob?”
Dakota’s hazel eyes were wide with shock and horror as they scanned the now foreign surroundings. Nate took that as a no. Which didn’t surprise him. Far from being the nutjobs they were made out to be in the media, the preppers he’d read about were thoughtful and incredibly well organized. What was the point in preparing for the worst if your survival gear was strewn haphazardly around the house?
They moved from the kitchen into the living room and that was when Nate froze. Amidst the clutter lay a chair covered in blood. Next to it were two dead bodies. In any other season the house would have been stinking to high hell. But judging by the icicles dangling from their noses and mouths, whoever was lying there was frozen stiff―no pun intended.
Dakota let out a little cry and ran over, looking to see if either of the men on the floor was Roger. Next to the dining room chair were four broken zip ties.
“Either one of them him?”
She rose to her feet, a look of distaste plastered all over her delicate features. Dakota shook her head. She’d seen dead bodies along the way, several in fact. But it seemed somehow these particular ones had struck close to home.
“What happened here?” she wondered, glancing down, searching for answers.
Without realizing it, Nate had made the seamless transition back into private detective mode. “My guess, Five sends a couple of goons to ambush your uncle. Get the location of his bunker and that cache of weapons. Somehow they manage to get the drop on him. Tie him to his chair. Judging by the blood on the chair, at least one of them was working him over while the other tore this place apart.” Nate knelt down next to one of the bodies and pulled back the dead man’s parka. A clean line bisected his throat. “Looks like at some point your uncle found a way out of his restraints and pulled a knife or a scalpel on them. Slashed this guy’s throat.” A quick search of the other revealed he’d been shot, possibly with his own gun since his holster was empty and no weapon was in sight. “Lucky for him, they underestimated their target.”
A trail of blood led from the scuffle and into a nearby bathroom. There, more blood was on the floor, along with a number of gauze pads. In the sink was a discarded thread and needle kit.
“Someone was wounded,” Nate surmised, reading the scene. “Could have been your uncle or one of Five’s men. Either way, they patched themselves up.” He tried to be careful, not wanting to get her hopes up. Chances were good Roger was lying face down somewhere else in the house.
Several minutes later, a quick search revealed the rest of the house was empty.
Relieved, Nate circled back and found Dakota in the study. The place had been torn apart, except for the bookshelf, which sat largely intact. Nate shook his head in disgust. “Maybe if these guys had actually stopped to read a book, they might be less inclined to act like savages.”
Dakota ran a finger along the cold, dusty spines, searching through the titles.
“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but we don’t have room for more stuff.”
“Here it is,” she said. Nestled between a copy of The CIA World Factbook and a book on farming was something called Cracking Codes, Ciphers and Other Secret Communications. She pulled out the title and peeled back the cover.
“I didn’t know your uncle was into cryptography.”
Going back millennia, cryptography was the art of coding and decrypting secret messages. One of the more famous examples was the substitution cipher used by Julius Caesar during his conquest of Gaul. If you were to take two alphabets and lined them up so that A coincided with B and B with C, you could encrypt a letter that would read like gibberish to any enemy who intercepted it. Anyone who knew the ‘code’ could just as easily translate the message back into English―or in Julius’ case, Latin.
“Into it? Are you kidding? He was crazy about the stuff. Thought it was the only way to keep his communications from being spied on. But that isn’t why I pulled this book.” She fanned the pages until she found the spot she was looking for―a secret compartment. Inside was a single gold coin. She stuffed it into her pocket. Nate understood as well as anyone the importance of keeping portable wealth in times like these. If they were pure enough, coins could be melted down and recast into smaller denominations. Except a single gold coin wasn’t going to get them very far. He told her so.
“You never know when a little moula will come in handy. Besides, the money’s not what I’m after.” She pulled out a length of string from the hollowed-out book. Dangling at the end of it was a silver key, winking back at him in the dim light bleeding in from outside.
“What’s it open?”
“I’m not sure. I just remember him telling me if I ever ran into trouble to check his book on cryptography.” Her eyes were alight with hope. “There’s one other thing,” she said and ran past him.
Nate followed her into her uncle’s bedroom, which was mostly tidy. It seemed Five’s men never got the chance to tear it apart. Dakota dropped down next to the bed, searching beneath it.
“You don’t think he’s actually under the b―”
Dakota sprang to her feet, grasping loose scraps of duct tape. “He’s alive,” she bellowed with a howl of utter joy.
“Alive? How can you be so sure?”
“He kept a bug-out bag taped beneath his bed. And this room hasn’t been ransacked. I think after he killed those two men, he sewed himself up, grabbed his emergency bag and took off.”
“Impressive,” Nate said, leaning against the door frame. “You would have made a good detective.”
The moment was shattered by gunfire. This time, it sounded as though it was right outside.
Chapter 2
Nate rushed to the front window, hugging the wall and drawing back the white sheer curtains to peer outside. Two men stood in the middle of the street firing pistols at an unknown target. Dakota approached, planting her feet in plain view and angling to see what was going on.
“Hey, you trying to get yourself shot?” Nate asked, bewildered. Cats weren’t the only ones done in by unchecked curiosity.
The men outside whooped and hollered as they took turns firing.
“Sounds like they’re target shooting,” Dakota said, reluctantly moving out of sight.
She was right. Whoever these hooligans were shooting at wasn’t returning the favor. With purpose, Nate zipped his parka and headed outside.
“Where you going?” Dakota asked, alarmed.
His reply was terse. “Stay here.”
Nate pushed his way out the side door and into the cold, his pistol drawn. The men on the street were busy with whatever dangerous game they were playing and didn’t see him exit the house and move around back to where Wayne and his H&K G36 were waiting. Unholstering the weapon, Nate began heading back to confront the men when he saw Dakota charge out yelling at them.
Hurrying forward, he shouted for her to stop, but either she didn’t hear him or wasn’t listening. The two men turned at once, their ruddy faces twin masks of sick pleasure.
The man closest to them wore a puffy black winter coat. He raised a hand and pointed down the street. “There’s a rabid fox over there, so mind your own business if you know what’s good for you.” His words came out slurred, which was hardly a surprise given the sixteen-ounce can of Budweiser in his other hand.
“That’s not a fox, you idiot,” Dakota shouted. “It’s a wolf. Our wolf.” She raised her pistol, aiming it at them.
They laughed and went back to what they were doing.
Nate’s senses all perked up at once. Scanning down the road, he saw Shadow dart between snow drifts as the men rattled off fresh shots. The wolf appeared unharmed. Nate raised his rifle and fired two warning rounds in the air. The drunken men might not have taken Dakota seriously, but the crack of his G36 certainly got their attention.