“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Really? Damn, Neither do I.”
The warehouse the two men were standing in was surprisingly cold, and windy. Or maybe not all that surprising, seeing as they were in the arctic, it was the middle of winter, a blizzard was raging, and the warehouse was less of a warehouse and more along the lines of a two-walls-and-a-piece-of-roof building. Technically speaking, they were more outdoors than they were indoors.
“Look at it this way-” The man with the scarf began.
“Look at what?” His yellow-capped companion asked.
“Nevermind. Shut up. How long have we been here?”
“In the warehouse? About 30 seconds.”
“Not the warehouse you ninny. Here, in the arctic?”
“About 30 seconds. Shouldn’t we be worrying about the plane?”
“No. No we shouldn’t. Why would we?”
“Well, it’s full of explosives for one thing. And on fire.” He gestured to the flaming, explosive filled, crashed plane that was maybe 60 or so feet away from them. Come to think about it, the plane crashing was probably the reason that the warehouse only had two walls and a little roof. Before the plane crashed through it, it probably met the definition of a building.
The two men stared at the plane. A new spout of flame blossomed from the open c***pit.
“Okay. Walk and talk?”
“Walk and talk.”
They began to walk out from the shelter of the remaining walls. There was a little rubble in their way, but it wasn’t anything too difficult to navigate. Away from the walls, the wind hit them full force.
“Good lord it is cold out here.”
“And do you know why that is?”
“Is it because we’re in the arctic?”
“It’s because we’re in the bloody arctic. Now, why are we in the arctic? I want to hear, in your own opinion, why we’re here.”
“Well, because we were hired to be here.”
“Go a little farther back.”
The man in the orange cap sighed.
“Well, we got hired to look for someone’s overdue library book.”
“And why?”
“Why are you interrogating me? You set this job up!”
“We’re here to get a stupid book to get money to pay for that bird sanctuary you burned down.”
“Hey now,” the orange capped man said. “If I hadn’t done that, we’d never have flushed that guy out.”
“You’re logic never fails to astound me. You know, my idiotic, pyromaniacal friend, we could be using the cash from this job to look for the vault, but no, we have to give the money to a Bird Sanctuary so they don’t take our knee caps.”
“Always the vault with you.” The orange capped man said.
“You remember why we need to get in that vault?”
“Yep.”
“Well?”
“What, you don’t remember? You set that job up!”
“No, of course I remember, Tim”
“My name’s not Tim.”
“It’s not?”
“No, it’s Timothy.”
The man in the scarf paused. “I hate you.”
Behind them a ball of fire erupted into the sky with a thunderous clap. The man in the scarf jerked around to look, jaw unhinged. Timothy didn’t react. Thick black smoke poured out from the explosion; a black thumb sticking out against a white backdrop. one of the remaining walls keeled over in a shower of dust.
“Good God!”
“I told you it was full of explosives. Also, we should probably run. Pretty sure there’s gonna be some shrapnel.”
As if to emphasize his point, bits of brick and mortar began pelting the ground around them, followed by the front half of the plane a mere stone's throw from where they were standing.
“Aye. Let’s get going.” the man in the scarf said.
They began trotting farther out from the ruinous remains of the warehouse, when Timothy swerved off and went over to the plane’s remains.
“What are you doing?”
“I think my business cards survived!”
“Forget them! We’ve probably only got minutes before the mounties show up.”
“Why should we care about the mounties? Wouldn’t it be the Alaskan Park Ranger?”
“We’re close enough to the border for both to show up.”
They began moving again, Timothy holding his burnt box of business cards, and his scarf wearing companion listing all the reasons that it was stupid to bring them.
Meanwhile the blizzard had turned into a light snow flurry, and the wind wailed with less power. The two men hiked their way up a ridge overlooking the warehouse. Or at least what was left of it.
“Timothy,” began the man in the scarf. “what the hell did you pack?”
The warehouse no longer existed. It had been replaced with a massive, smoking crater, the epicenter of which was the plane’s final resting place. Remarkably, the warehouse seemed to be the only landmark in what was otherwise a featureless white expanse.
“Where the hell are we?”
“Bogart, if I told you where we were every time we got lost, we wouldn’t get lost.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ll let you know when I figure that out myself.” Timothy said, brushing past his companion. “Hold up. Who’s that?”
A single truck was roaring at rather unsafe speeds towards the decimated grounds of the warehouse. It skidded sideways to a stop at the lip of the crater as the driver leaped out of the cab. He then began pacing back and forth and waving his arms animatedly. Over the dying winds they could hear hints of his angered screaming.
“Maybe we should go down and talk to that guy.”
“How about no,” Bogart told him.
“Quiet you, he might be able to give us a ride out of this frozen wasteland.”
And with that, he began walking down the ridge towards the truck and its driver.
Bogart cursed under his breath and began to follow. A few minutes of walking got them within hearing distance of the truck driver. A few more minutes of walking got them to the white truck.
“Hello, good sir!” Timothy cheerfully announced.
The man paused in his cursing, and turned around. “Who’re you?” he asked menacingly.
“We’re Bogart and Raleigh, private investigators. Here’s our card.” Timothy began fumbling with the burnt box.
“We’re looking for an old book, Roman origins. Our source said it was kept somewhere
out here, in some sort of building. Supposed to be hard to miss. But that doesn’t matter too much. Could we catch a ride to the nearest town?” Bogart said.
The man stared at both of them, working things out in his head.
“Private investigators? What are you… Did you have anything to do with THIS?” he gestured wildly to the place the warehouse had been.
“Nope. Like that when we got here.” Bogart lied. “Now, we’d like very much not to freeze to death out here, so could we hitch a ride?”
The truck driver got up suddenly. “What book are you talking about?” he demanded.
“Um, It had a very long, convoluted latin title. Think it translated to something like ‘The Mysteries of Worms’ or something?”
“Heretics!” The truck driver pulled a fillet knife out from his coat and charged. Timothy responded by swinging his box of burnt business cards at his head, which connected with an audible thwap. The truck driver crumpled, unconscious.
“Darn, my cards fell out.” Timothy said as the cards fell out of the box.
Bogart pointed at the incapacitated truck driver in confusion. “What? How?”
“Eh, I can always print more. Not like these things were laminated.”
“How did you knock him out?”
Timothy pulled a large steel block out of the box. “Use this to keep the box sturdy. Should we take his truck?”
Bogart paused. “Yeah, let’s do that.”
They piled in the truck, Bogart at the wheel. Timothy pushed the old McDonalds wrappers and soda cans out of the car before getting in.
“Hey, the book we’re looking for! What luck!” Timothy said, bringing up the ancient grimoire from its place beneath his seat.
“At least something good came out of this. Don’t call the plane rental place. Hopefully they’ll think we died in the crash.”
“Can do. Funny, I think things are going our way for once.”
“Well, that guy back there seemed pretty territorial about that book. Never had someone attack me with a fillet knife before.”
“Probably just a local crazy. Who cares? I think our luck is finally changing!”

The truck driver got up groggily to see that the two investigators had taken his truck. Which had the Book in it. He flushed with anger and shouted obscenities into the air before he noticed the large amount of business cards that were scattered around on the ground. He picked one up, looked it over. On one side it showed both investigators waving cheerily. On the other side it had the phone number, address, and email of their business. The truck driver took out his phone and dialed in a number.
“Boss, bad news. I got jumped. The book is in someone else’s hands. But I got some good news.” He looked back at the card. “I know where to find them.”