Page 38 of Gunn's Mission

“I saw Eric and Nate working on the wire,” Perry said. “I figured something happened to the cable.”

Gunn waited a moment, not changing his expression. Perry sat back and frowned.

“The break in the wire wasn’t because it frayed or crushed. It was deliberately cut.”

It seemed no one breathed.

“But who…?” Hanna began, and then her eyes rounded and began to look glassy. “One of us? It wasn’t some person who invaded our site?”

“Oh, fuck,” Perry whispered.

“One of us killed Mateo,” Maddie said, her voice quiet but even.

Nate and Eric remained quiet. Em’s face grew pale.

Gunn stood. “I was brought here to keep you all safe. I have to search the site.”

“What will you be looking for?” Perry said. “We all have knives. Hell, there’s a drawer full of knives in the kitchen. Any one of us could’ve cut that cable.”

“I’m not saying what I’m looking for,” Gunn said. “But while I’m searching your rooms, I’ll need for you to remain in here.”

Maddie’s crew shared glances, some wary, some annoyed.

Eric clapped his hands on the arms of the chair he was sitting on. “Since we’re stuck here, anyone up for a game of trivia?” His gaze went to Maddie, and he gave her a crooked smile. She returned a grateful one.

Gunn walked to the end of the hallway and began his search, entering every room, occupied or not, and meticulously searching under beds, in drawers, between mattresses, inside shoes, around doorframes…anywhere someone might stash something they wouldn’t want to be found.

Other than secret food stashes and a couple of porn magazines, he didn’t find anything until he examined Hanna’s room. Between her mattresses toward the foot of the bed, he found a satphone.

He continued searching her room, feeling under drawers, emptying her backpack on the bed and rifling through papers, but he found nothing else that might be considered incriminating. He put the phone in his pocket, then left the rooms off the hallway to search the mudroom and the kitchen, avoiding looking at the folks still sitting in the common room as he passed them.

After he’d exhausted his search, he decided he’d confront Hanna before he asked everyone to leave the common room so he could search there.

He entered the room and walked up beside Hanna.

She gazed up at him, a frown denting her forehead.

Gunn reached into his pocket and then handed her the phone. “I need you to open this for me.”

She stared at it then glanced up at him. “Why?”

“I found it between your mattresses. I want to see who you’ve been talking to.”

She pushed up from her seat and met his gaze, her eyes narrowing. “It’s not my phone.” She plucked it from his hand, flipped the antenna up, then tapped the screen. The screen asked her for the password. “Not my phone. I don’t know the password.”

Gunn tightened his jaw. “I’ll be passing this along to Commander Navarro. He’ll know who to send it to in order to get it opened up.”

Nate stood and moved beside Hanna. “Gunn, if she says the phone’s not hers, it’s not hers. And if you think she’s the one who cut that coax, you got it all wrong. She hasn’t set foot outside of this building since it started snowing. Not at night either, I’ll vouch for that.” He encircled her waist with his arms and pulled her back against his chest, his jaw tilting stubbornly. He was her alibi.

Gunn knew the phone wasn’t enough. He’d hoped she’d flinch and reveal herself, but her expression, the slight frown, the confusion in her eyes, seemed real enough.

“I’ll be keeping this,” he said, sliding the phone into his sweatpants pocket. “I need everyone to clear out of this room now.”

Maddie stood with the rest of them and passed him, not looking at him as she did. He knew she was angry with the way he’d confronted Hanna. If Hanna was innocent, he could understand her anger as well as Nate’s quick defense.

After they filed out, he spent the next hour searching every nook and cranny of the room and its furnishings.

At last, he sat on the sofa and squeezed the bridge of his nose because he could feel a headache coming on.

---