Snow and the Seven Men (Seven Ways to Sin 1)

Her laughter had filled our ears. “I assure you, Mr. Appleton, Mirror, Mirror Incorporated is a reputable, publicly listed company on the DOW. We don’t engage in illegal activities.”

Still, there had been something that didn’t ring true about the entire thing.

“Why don’t you hire a security team for that?” I’d wanted to know, and she’d laughed.

“Because you already have a job out in Hof lined up, don’t you? Ice drilling?”

I recalled how her knowledge about our comings and goings had unnerved me, but I’d dismissed it.

“You keep an eye on our properties, and you’ll be handsomely rewarded.”

“What is it you’re worried about, exactly?”

“Polar bears?” Jim asked, and I’d resisted the urge to smack the back of his head.

“Reporters, mainly,” the woman said. “We’re working with some highly classified materials, and it’s always bound to cause some controversy.”

“What’s the catch?” I wanted to know.

“Aside from four hours of daylight in the winter?” she chuckled, and I gave her a deadpan stare. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but this cash flow would help us with a lot of things.

“As I just said, the subject matter is highly sensitive. If anyone ever asks what you’re doing in Hof, you simply tell them the truth—you’re there to drill.”

It had made sense then why they didn’t hire a security team. They didn’t want anyone there to seem out of place. Since we were already headed that way, they just added us to the employee list.

And I was so taken in by the dollar signs, I ignored the warning signs.

All had gone so well for that first year. I’d almost felt guilty about accepting the wire transfers coming into our account at Seven Drawers LTD. We didn’t do anything except keep an eye out on the high-tech security system that the company had provided for us, along with the luxury log cabin. If we hadn’t met Sasha, we would never have known that Mirror, Mirror was poisoning the earth.

“Where are we going to go from here?” Jim asked nervously as we made our way north. “We haven’t even talked about that.”

“Why don’t we worry about finding Sasha first and then talk about that,” Graham bit back.

“We’re not going to find Sasha.” The words came from Stevie, and I had to admit that they stunned me. He was our resident joker, after all. It was rare to hear him say anything so gloomy.

“You don’t know that!” Graham barked back, and I realized that everyone was reaching their breaking point.

It was time to make a decision about what to do.

“We need to go home,” Seth said quietly and without yawning for once. “I’m tired.”

“You’re always tired!” Graham screamed back.

“She knows how to find us…if she ever decides she wants to,” Bash said softly.

“She’s upset!” Graham insisted. “If she doesn’t think we’re looking for her…”

“We need to give her space,” Harry sighed.

Graham stared at him, his face falling as he saw that one by one, we were all throwing in the towel in this search.

“No!” Graham howled. “We voted! We voted and agreed to find her.”

“We agreed to look for her,” Jim corrected, and Stevie nodded.

“And we’ve looked everywhere we can.”

Graham shook his head miserably. “No!” he begged us. “No, just one more day…”

“It won’t make a difference,” I told him tiredly. I knew that it would be “just one more day” ad infinitum. We needed to stop the madness somewhere.

He looked around at us and seemed to see that we had made up our minds. “I guess there’s no point in voting on this, is there?” he muttered.

No one bothered to respond. The answer was already implied.

“Turn the car around, Bash,” I instructed. “We’re going back to Inverness.”

I caught Bash’s gaze in the rear-view, and he nodded curtly before doing a U-turn on the A96.

I turned my gaze out toward the Moray Firth and kept my eyes trained there. The heaviness in the car was making it hard to breathe.

Graham’s anguish came at me in full waves, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t crushed by our decision, but I was. I hadn’t wanted to let Sasha go any more than Graham, no matter how I’d maintained my stoicism. In my heart, I’d hoped she would come back, and when she did, I’d probably never been happier, despite the dire circumstances.

“I feel like we’re at a funeral,” Stevie quipped, trying his best to lighten the mood, but no one cracked a smile.

Because that’s exactly how we felt—like we were at a funeral.

26

Sasha

Six Weeks Later

I waved goodbye to Mr. McCally before slipping on my mittens and heading out into the snowy field.

“See ye tomorrow, eh, Blanche?” the old man yelled, his brogue still delightful in my ears.

“You bet,” I called back, trying to mimic his accent without being obvious about it. I adjusted my coat around my scarf and buttoned it up as high as it would go without taking off my mittens.