Christmas with Nick Klaas

Part 25: Sound the Alarm

By the time she'd followed Nick inside with the feline safely huddled against her chest, he had already searched the room.

"It's empty. There's no one here," he said, rushing past the queen-sized bed with its disheveled comforter as he headed back to the door.

"But Avery," Noelle objected when he walked out again. Peeking inside, she tried to turn on the lights with her free hand, but popping the switch up and down did nothing.

"The power's out," Nick said from the hallway, reaching for her waist to gently nudge her toward the exit. "And your friend is also obviously not in the room. Come. We need to see what's causing all of this. She probably already got out when the alarms first went off."

Would she leave the cat behind, though? And how did the room end up locked from the inside if she did? Noelle felt uneasy about leaving without Avery or at least logical explanations to those questions, but they wouldn't get answers by sticking around, either.

"Fine," she relented as she followed Nick.

The lights guided them down the stairs all the way to the tunnel entrance. Once again, Nick used his antique key—which apparently he either had on him at all times or was able to conjure out of thin air when needed—to unlock the heavy door. Otso ran ahead as they traversed the underground path all the way back to the concert hall. The alarm that had been continuously been sounding went silent as Nick entered the high-tech, Christmas Eve navigation room.

"Oh, thank the gods you're here!" exclaimed a woman monitoring one of the workstations as she stood and waved him over. Because of her messy bun, flannel PJs and no makeup, it took Noelle a second to recognize her as Nick's assistant Ronja from the day before. Although everyone else was dressed normally, she—like them—must have also just rolled out of bed and run straight over.

"Catch me up," Nick said as he joined her. Spreading his legs, he crossed his arms and stared at the large digital map covering most of the far wall. The image was centered over the North Atlantic with Europe and northern Africa on the right, North America on the left and Greenland on top. A dotted red line had criss-crossed from the east and made an almost web-like pattern as it moved westward, until abruptly cutting off over the Labrador Sea. There on its end, a black dot blinked like a lonely cursor waiting for input.

Ronja cleared her throat. "Well, the thing is . . . uhm, at three twenty-nine GMT time we lost contact with the sleigh."

Nick was quiet. According to the clock above the map, that was nearly an hour ago. He took a deep breath before responding. "All right. Glitches happen. And delays can be made up. So when did you re-establish the connection?"

Ronja shook her head. "We didn't, Mr. Klaas. It's as if they've just disappeared."

Noelle gasped. Her worst fears about Halla's interference were coming true. "You said everything would be okay. You told me nothing bad would happen if we—" she addressed Nick, but he cut her off.

"Calm down, Noelle," he said, facing her and holding up his hand. "We don't know what exactly has happened, so no need to panic."

No need to panic? NO NEED TO PANIC?! Her blood pressure shot up as her anxiety turned to anger.

"But Avery is missing. How do you explain that? Don't you think these things are connected?" she asked, walking to his side fully aware that all eyes were on their squabble.

"Who's Avery?" Ronja asked, thrusting her chin forward in Noelle's peripheral vision.

She snapped her gaze toward the woman; shocked that in her position she wouldn't be on top of everything that happened in Nick's immediate sphere of influence, if not in all of Keskitalvi itself. "Avery Cooper is the woman I came here with. She's my colleague from the New York City Concert Orchestra, and she was laid up with the flu in Nick's house until—I don't know—a couple of hours ago?"