Page 14 of Odin

Which meant the body had to still be on the premises. Hidden somewhere.

Either in cold storage, or in a box big enough to keep it cool until they could transport it to a buyer. She couldn't miss something that big, and whoever had hidden it had likely used a trolley to take it to its hiding place, so she could probably limit her search to anywhere you could take a trolley. But not the mortuary trolley, because they'd left that in the fridge.

Which was weird, really. Why wouldn't you take the trolley it was already on?

Unless the new trolley was the way they intended to transport it offsite, when the roads were clear.

So she was probably looking for something big, with wheels.

After all, it wasn't like the body had gotten up and hidden itself. That thing had been dead for at least a thousand years.

Mummies didn't move except in really weird movies, and she definitely wasn't in one of those. She was far too practical for that sort of thing.

She marched out to start her search.

SEVENTEEN

It wasn't until Freyja was finished checking the fridges and freezers in the kitchen that she realised she hadn't actually had breakfast yet. So while she waited for another frozen pizza to cook, she paced across the cafeteria, trying to work out where she hadn't looked yet.

Because wherever it was, that's where the body had to be.

As she chewed thoughtfully on a slice of pizza, she mused on where she'd hide a body, if she really was a body thief.

Somewhere it wouldn't be found, obviously. Somewhere no one else would go.

Well, no one would be crazy enough to go outside in this weather, that was for sure. But if they'd stolen the body as soon as it had arrived, before the storm started...maybe...

Swearing, she headed down to the loading dock, where she'd left her snow gear. Crossing the snow filled courtyard provoked even more swearing, but she had to be sure. One by one, she trudged to each of the outbuildings, and checked those. One shed held the waste barrels, which she left well alone. The body was too big to fit in one of those, unless someone cut it up, and what was the point of that? The ice mummy was important because it was intact.

Unless it really was a modern murder victim...

No. No one went out to the Jotunheimen Mountains for anything except hiking or an archaeological dig, and if someone had gone missing out there, she'd have seen something about it.

This was Karl's ice mummy. The body wouldn't be in a barrel.

Gardening tools, hazardous chemicals, more shovels, a whole lot of salt and something that looked like a cross between a lawn mower and a mulching machine, which she figured must be a snow blower or something, seeing as it had SNO written on the side.

Just like inside the main building, there were no bodies here, either. Not that she really expected there to be. She'd struggled to reach the other side of the courtyard, just by herself. Carrying something huge like a corpse...no, it just wasn't possible.

Her traitorous memory popped up an image of Olaf, his muscles bulging through his overalls as he lifted the scooter like it was weightless, striding through the snow with effortless ease.

He could have done it. Not just on Friday, but any time since the helicopter had landed. After all, she'd slept late yesterday and today, and who else was here but the two of them? They were snowed in, for Odin's sake. If she wasn't the body thief, then he had to be.

Now, if she was a massive Norse muscle man who wanted to steal the body of one of his ancestors, where would she put it? Somewhere she'd never look, and never reach, but also where it would be easy to transport.

Had he taken the scooter to the garage not just to be nice, but to keep her from finding the body?

If he had, she was going to kick him in that massive groin of his. It was a big enough target.

She marched to the garage and kicked at the door until the ice freezing it shut fell away, then threw the door open. It was half full of cars, most belonging to the expedition crew, all with the keys inside, in case anyone needed to move them while the owners were out at the site.

A quick scan of the garage told her the body wasn't in sight, so she tried the cars next. Opening all the doors and the boot of each one, only to come up empty.

Damn it, where was it? She would have put it in the back of a car, for easy transport. The garage was easily as cold as the mortuary fridge, so it wasn't like keeping it cold would be an issue. It could stay out here until the snow melted...if it was here. Which it wasn't.

Which left...where?

She stomped outside, slamming the garage door behind her. She'd looked everywhere. Tramped all over snow that shouldn't be here in summer. And she still hadn't found the bloody body.

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