He chivalrously averted his eyes as Maggie hastily began to dress. “But Dad, how did you find us?” Charlie asked.
“I heard you calling me,” Sam said.
Maggie looked at Charlie, who looked as confused as she did, and then at Sam. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I don’t either,” Sam said with a lopsided half-grin. “But I found you, didn’t I? Where are we?”
“I have no idea,” Maggie said. “We only got here a minute or two before you did. We’d just figured out how to get the door open. It was locked, but Charlie found an open window that we could reach through and unlock it. It looks like the owners are gone?—”
She broke off when electric light flooded the foyer. Sam had turned on the wall switch.
“I wasn’t sure if that would work,” Sam said. “Guess we have electricity.”
They looked around. The house was clearly under construction; the walls were unpainted drywall, the ceiling light was a naked bulb, and there was a half-finished wall with visible studs letting them see through into a dark, shadowy space beyond.
“Creepy,” Charlie pronounced.
“If there’s electricity, there might be heat,” Maggie said. “Let’s look for a thermostat.”
The thermostat was easy to find, but controlling it was harder; the house had a complex zone system, and Maggie struggled to figure it out. Charlie vanished to start exploring.
“How’s the heat?” Sam asked, moving closer to look at it.
“I think it was already on in part of the house; that’s what was messing me up. Anyway, I’m pretty sure it’ll be warming up in here shortly.” Which they all could use, she thought. Her teeth were chattering, and Sam was shivering from his excursion in the snow in spite of his heavy coat.
“Hey!” Charlie’s voice echoed through the unfinished interior walls. “Look what I found, you guys!”
They followed the sound of her voice through several cavernous empty rooms until they found Charlie sitting in front of a gas fireplace, boots off and feet stretched out to the flames.
“Oh,” Maggie said rapturously. She crouched in front of it and held her hands out. The warmth was wonderful.
“I just fiddled with it, and it came on,” Charlie explained. “Isn’t this place amazing? Look how huge this room is.”
She was right; the room was enormous, with high ceilings. The windows looking out on the storm were mostly boarded up,the walls still bare sheetrock, but it was clear that this would be a stunning room when it was finished.
“This whole place is huge,” Maggie said. “There are at least two more floors above this one. We’ve holed up in a mansion, you guys.”
Sam snapped his fingers. “That’s it. I know where we are. My partner’s sister-in-law, Joy, and her husband are building a place out here. Rebuilding his old family home, something like that. They aren’t working on it this winter because she had a baby, but I think that’s what this place is. It’s Joy and Bar’s construction project.”
“Will they mind us being here?” Charlie asked anxiously.
“Of course not,” Sam reassured her. “They wouldn’t want us to freeze in the storm. They’re nice people. It won’t bother them a bit.”
After she stopped shivering, Maggie wandered away from the fire a little way and found a huge open-plan kitchen adjoining the room they were in, which she supposed was a living room or lounge. The kitchen was more finished than other parts of the house; the major appliances were in already, and with the electricity working, it looked like the stove’s ultra-modern induction top also worked. Which was no use if they had nothing to cook on it, she supposed. But they might be able to melt snow if they needed to.
She paused, looking up. Gusts of wind periodically shook the house, so it was hard to identify individual sounds. But she thought she’d heard something upstairs.
“What’d you find?” Sam asked, coming up behind her. He sounded much better, less shivery and shaken.
“Just looking around to see what our assets are.” She opened the cabinets, all of which were empty. “I don’t suppose you brought food?”
“I’ve got a bag of emergency gear from the snowmobile. It might have something, MREs or granola bars.”
“Let’s look through that when we’ve warmed up.” Maggie paused again at the sound of a distinctive thump that might have been a loose board banging in the wind—but might not have been.
Sam caught her alarm immediately. “What?”
Maggie put her finger to her lips and moved a little closer.
