Chapter 162: She Wasn’t There to Steal Their Kitchen

Dove sent word asking Iris to stop at the shop before they left for the hotel. If this was a bad idea, she wanted to find out while her truck was still beside a room she had paid for.

Iris read the copied sign and swore quietly. An earlier recovery team had tried to claim hotel equipment for Base A, she admitted. She had known there had been an argument, but the purchasing office had not told her about the new restriction.

"Then they were going to let me arrive smiling with their order in my bag," Dove said.

"I should have checked before offering the job."

The admission took some of the heat out of Dove’s answer. She could work with someone who owned a mistake. She had considerably less patience for being told that her reaction was the real problem.

They agreed that Dove would approach as an independent trader and disclose the order before asking for anything. If the residents refused, she would leave. Iris would not send a crew to collect equipment until Dove confirmed a trade.

Back at the shop, she washed, ate, and checked Day Eighty-Seven’s stock. She chose household goods, and Sprout offered eighteen packs of playing cards, with five sales required for forty-nine normal coins. Dove stared at the number, then thought about people stuck in hot buildings with no television and an increasingly irritating selection of roommates.

"For once," she told it, "I can see the point before you give me a speech."

"Would you still like the product guidance?"

"Only if it explains how to stop Edrik cheating."

"You have no verified evidence of that behavior."

She looked at her husband. He smiled without offering a denial, which she considered deeply suspicious and very attractive.

The three of them left in their pickup with fuel checked, large packed meals, clean water, and a clear return plan. Their larger cart stayed in the Base B yard. The smaller one traveled strapped in the bed for moving goods at the hotel.

The road ran past the pharmacy, then turned toward the lake beyond a row of ordinary houses. Meltwater had left dark marks on fences and mud across several driveways. The snow that remained hid in shaded piles, ugly and shrinking. Heat shimmered above the pavement ahead, making the frozen weeks feel like a bad joke the weather had already stopped telling.

Dove asked for a stop at a garden store whose front awning still stood. She wanted shade cloth for their window and the rear yard, not another exciting object with nowhere to live.

They checked the shop from the open doorway before entering. The front sales area was dry; the greenhouse behind it had broken panes and was left alone. Dove selected sound gloves, sun hats, intact planters, and folded lengths of shade cloth. Sprout marked the third find and tried to show her the completed task. Dove pushed the notice aside and inspected the next roll. "Lovely. You’re finished. I’m looking for enough to shade the window."

Edrik wheeled the heavy cloth out on the cart while she stored smaller goods by touch. They did not need to exhaust her to prove she had an inventory. Thorne found a hat that covered the back of her neck and adjusted it around her ears before asking whether it pinched.

She looked up at him. "You know I’m going to look ridiculous in this."

"You’ll be less sunburned."

"That’s a very husband answer."

"I’ve had practice."

She kissed him and kept the hat.

At the hotel entrance, Edrik stopped well before the chain. The drive curved through neglected grass toward a three-story building facing the lake. One wing had cracked windows and a sagging covered walkway. The other showed curtains, open windows, and a thin line of cooking smoke from the service side.

A graying lynx man came from a small shelter beside the gate carrying a rifle with its muzzle down. He introduced himself as Nolan, the hotel’s former maintenance lead, and asked who had sent them.

Dove answered from beside the passenger door, with both husbands near enough to hear. She explained Iris’s order, showed the narrow terms, and said they were buying only if the people who owned the equipment wanted to sell.

"The last men said they were recovering it," Nolan replied.

"It’s impressive how often that word means taking somebody else’s stuff. I prefer asking the somebody."

His mouth twitched, but the rifle stayed where he could use it. Edrik watched the windows and the road rather than treating a guarded owner as a personal insult. Thorne waited beside their cart until Dove knew whether they were staying.

Nolan looked at the card packs she offered to show him. A tested lamp interested him more, and the hat earned a question about how many they had found. There were twenty-three men living in the sound wing, he explained. They had food, tools, and people who knew how to use them. What they lacked was a decent choice of goods and visitors who understood that being outside a base did not make them abandoned.

Dove could respect that. She offered ordinary trades without pretending she had arrived to improve every part of their lives.

After a few more questions, Nolan lowered the chain. Men gathered at the occupied windows as their truck came up the drive, and one near the side door dropped the rag he had been using when he saw her clearly.

Dove adjusted her new hat as the man hurried to pick up his rag. She knew what they were staring at, but if he walked into a wall, that was his problem.

Nolan directed their pickup to the firm service parking area beside the occupied wing. Then he pointed past the damaged covered walkway toward a separate low building behind it.

"Some carriers are inside with us," he said. "The rest are over there. We’ll look at the yard route first. Nobody’s going under that roof."

Dove followed his finger to the broken beams, then back to the safe open ground. As she studied the route, a loose section of walkway roof dropped onto the path beneath it. Nobody stood there, but the crash silenced the men at the windows. Dove looked back at Nolan. They were going to need a very clear plan before anybody touched those boxes.