“Well, Paul did say it was top secret.” I exhale deeply. “Okay, so the convention is scheduled for two days away. When can we get going to Lake Baku?”

A smile tugs at the corner of Tobias’s mouth. “Are you ready to go now?”

23

Down in the basement of the cottage, there’s so much sporting equipment it looks like a branch of a mountain equipment store. There are pairs of skis of all sorts of shapes and sizes, but I head toward the shape of skis that look familiar to me from my brief time on a mountain.

“Uhh, those are downhill skis,” says Tobias, gently guiding me away. He points instead to some skis that are long and skinny. “These are for cross-country.”

I grimace. They look intimidating. How on earth are you supposed to turn in those?

“Don’t worry, if you can’t get used to it then Oka can help pull you,” Kai says. I check his face for sarcasm or mockery, but it seems to be a genuine offer. His baku is a husky, after all. Maybe additional horsepower is one of the benefits of having a level three baku.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Come on, let’s find a pair of boots that fit you,” says Tobias, dragging out a box from beneath the bench.

“Holy cow, that’s a lot of spare equipment,” I say, when Tobias happens upon boots that are a perfect size for me.

He grins. “We have a lot of guests who come up here, so we like to have a range of equipment to make sure no one is left out.”

“Benefits of the superrich,” mutters Kai. But he does up his boots with expert flair, as if this is far from his first time.

Ashley seems comfortable too, selecting her skis quickly.

“Have you done this before?” I ask Ashley.

“Yeah, my family has a cottage in the Gatineau, near Ottawa, where we go skiing sometimes too. Nowhere near as nice as this place, of course.” She winks at me.

“Are you going back there for Christmas Day?”

“If I’m no longer needed here,” she says with a firm nod.

Her determination warms me. We’re all in this together.

Tobias speaks up. “We’ll use Aero as a drone, to help guide us. He’s got the map and coordinates set on his internal guidance system. I’m not 100 percent convinced that we’re going to find anything—I’ve been out that way before, and I’ve never seen anything that could remotely be considered a test center—but we’ll see what we find.”

Hearing Tobias’s skepticism makes me cringe inside and long for Jinx. I need a supportive ear right now. Presuming he was able to find a way through the security, he should be back in touch again soon, but I have no way of knowing whether he’ll be successful. I just have to trust him.