On Thin Ice

by Debra Lee Brown

  He was falling for her. Hard.

  Harder than he’d ever fallen for anyone, even his ex. The signs had been there from the beginning, from the second he saw her standing in the hallway four days ago in that ridiculous sweater, her nose tipped in the air, her pretty mouth gaping in shock as his gaze met hers.

  “We don’t even know each other.” She pushed him away from the counter far enough so she could snap her legs together.

  She tried to hop down, but he stopped her, his hands on her shoulders, his eyes willing hers to look up. She did.

  “I’d like to get to know you, Lauren.”

  “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

  He had to agree with her, but he didn’t. Standing aside, he let her slide from the steel countertop, and watched as she padded across the linoleum floor of the lab and switched on the lamp at her workstation.

  “Then…” He followed her, picking up his jacket and hers on the way, tossing them onto the hooks in the corner by the door. “We’ll just talk business. How about that?”

  “Business?” She turned on him and her soft brow wrinkled in a frown. “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to leave yet.”

  Finally—the truth.

  He didn’t smile, and neither did she, but there it was. He waited, chastising himself for getting emotionally involved with her, at the same time praying she wasn’t going to throw him out.

  “I don’t want you to leave yet, either.”

  He breathed.

  “Good.” He did smile then, moving slowly to one of the stools near to where she was standing, and eased himself onto it.

  Instead of dropping into her desk chair or perching on another of the lab stools, she pulled herself onto the countertop facing him. He knew from her cool expression that it wasn’t an invitation to repeat their groping of a minute ago on the other side of the lab. She was so much smaller than he was, it was her way of sitting above him, keeping her distance, maintaining control.

  And that was fine with him, because right now he was very much out of control. Not physically, but mentally. He was out of his frickin’ mind, as Salvio would say. He sucked in a breath, waited for his heartbeat to slow, then attempted to get his act together and salvage what was left of the opportunity.

  You’re a cop, Adams. Do your job.

  She made it easy for him. “What do you want to talk about?”

  He shrugged. “How about Tiger? Your job. What you’re doing out here and where you’re going next.”

  “That’s a lot.”

  He checked his watch. 8:00 p.m. “I’ve got time.” He smiled, and she smiled back.

  They spent the next hour talking about Tiger and the oil business, about her boss, Bill Walters, Tiger’s CEO and the other VPs. Well, all of them except one. She didn’t mention Crocker Holt’s name once, and Seth didn’t, either.

  “So this promotion means a lot to you, then?” he said, thinking about everything she’d told him, piecing together a new angle on the case. A new angle on her.

  “It means everything.” Her voice was strangely flat, her face blank, not animated like it had been when she’d told him why she’d become a geologist in the first place—about her father and their trips together into the field when she was a kid.

  “You’re not very convincing.”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. And then in a near whisper, as if she was talking to herself, she said, “No, I’m not, am I?”

  “What about Walters? Seems to me he’d be hell-bent on keeping you down, making sure he wasn’t passed over.”

  “No, Bill’s not like that. I think he’s perfectly happy being in charge of Tiger’s Alaskan prospects. If he was exploration VP he’d have to uproot his family and move to San Francisco, Tiger’s headquarters. Bill’s an Alaskan through and through. I don’t think he’d do it.”

  “What about you? You’re an Alaskan. Are you so anxious to leave?”

  He studied her face as she thought about it while absently twisting the rock on her finger. She was considering more than the job, he could tell.

  “No, I’m not anxious to leave. In fact, I love it here. Well—” she glanced at her surroundings “—not here, exactly, but you know what I mean. Alaska.”

  He knew exactly what she meant. He’d left the state when the Bureau recruited him, and was gone for five years. He’d hated D.C., and all the other big cities he’d worked cases in. Urban life just wasn’t for him. Neither were urban women, he reminded himself.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  She smiled at him, and he had to fight the urge to walk over there and kiss her. Hold her. Not like he had an hour ago, with the promise of hot sex oozing from every pore, but gently, with warmth and an understanding of the things he was beginning to suspect she loved.

  In the back of his mind, in a place he didn’t like to visit very often, he wondered if a woman like her could love someone like him. A regular guy. A native. A cop.

  All at once he felt guilty. Here she was spilling her guts to him with no idea who he really was, or why he was here with her now.

  “What about you?” she said.

  “Me?”

  “Yes.” She smiled again, and slipped from the counter, landing softly in stocking feet on the floor. “Altex. Your job. I can see you’re good at it. Do you like it?”

  He felt uncomfortable, now, lying to her—which was ridiculous. On an undercover job like this, it came with the territory. He had to lie if he was going to crack this case. And he was no closer to it than he had been ten days ago when he first arrived on the island.

  “It’s okay,” he said with deliberate vagueness, and shrugged.

  “Where do you live? I mean, when you’re not working?”

  “Kachelik. It’s a village about—”

  Her face lit up. “I’ve been there! Years ago with my dad. I remember it. It’s small and…”

  “Quaint?”

  “No. That’s not how I remember it at all. I was going to say…well…warm, but that sounds so stupid. I don’t mean the weather. I mean—”

  “I know what you mean. Yeah, it is warm. It’s the people. They’re open, friendly. Just the opposite of New Yorkers or District types.”

  “District types?” Her brows arched. “You’ve been to D.C.? New York, too?”

  Once, he might have been irritated by her surprise that a guy like him—a half-native nobody from Kachelik—had been anywhere. But she hadn’t meant it like that. Besides, the only one he was irritated at right now was himself.

  He couldn’t believe he’d made a slip like that. It wasn’t like him to screw up. Bledsoe—and his father, too—would have argued that point, but Seth knew he was good at what he did. He was just too relaxed around her. That was the problem.

  They’d been chatting together for over an hour now, and he felt himself connecting with her in a way that he never had with his ex, or with any woman, for that matter.

  Keep your cool, Adams. Remember why you’re out here.

  “I’ve been a lot of places,” he said with a noncommittal tone that bordered on cool. “Tell me more about Holt.”

  She went rigid, her gaze flying to his. “I thought we were going to talk strictly business?”

  “Holt’s a Tiger VP, right? That’s business.”

  Her tight expression and body language told him he’d overstepped the bounds of their conversation. He expected at any second she was going to ask him to leave. But she didn’t. To his surprise, she collected herself and shot him a matter-of-fact look. “All right. What do you want to know?”

  “He’s a pretty big fish, isn’t he? In the oil business, I mean.”

  “Yes, he is. In banking, too. Or he was.”

  “VP of finance for Tiger Petroleum. A job like that’s got to pay a lot.”

  She nodded.

  “About ten times more than say a…roughneck, or a plumber, or even a borough cop.”

  “So?”

  He s
hot her a bitter smile, knowing he was straying dangerously close to territory he shouldn’t be anywhere near. “Guess a guy like that’s pretty appealing to most women.”

  She looked at him for what seemed a long time before answering. “To a lot of women, yes. But—”

  “Forget it,” he said, and abruptly stood.

  “Money isn’t everything, you know.” She moved toward him, slowly, gauging his reaction. “It doesn’t really mean a lot to me.”

  “No?” As she inched closer, his mouth went dry.

  “No. I mean…” She stopped and grabbed hold of the frayed ends of the baggy brown cardigan he’d seen her in from the second she’d arrived on the island. “Well…can’t you tell?”

  He laughed. “Yeah. I was meaning to ask you about that.”

  “It was my father’s field sweater. The week after he was killed, my mother cleaned out his closets. She didn’t even send his clothes to charity, she just dumped them in the trash. I rescued this.” She smoothed the well-worn wool over her hips. “It was his favorite.”

  “It’s beginning to be my favorite, too.”

  She blushed, and he had to physically stop himself from taking her in his arms again. He made himself check his watch and move his feet, until he was reaching distance to his jacket and the door.

  “Shift starts soon. Gotta go.”

  She nodded, wrapping her arms around herself as if she was suddenly cold.

  He slipped on his jacket and zipped it to the chin. His hand was on the doorknob when he remembered. “You came up to the floor last night. Why?”

  “I was…” She paused, flustered. “Looking for Salvio.”

  “Oh.” What had he expected her to say? That she was looking for him?

  He was halfway out the door when she called his name. He turned, blowing snow flurrying around him.

  “The door was locked and you came right in.” She nodded to the doorknob and his gloved hand still around it. “How’d you get a key? There are only two. I have one. Salvio has the other.”

  He smiled. “I don’t have a key.”

  “Then how?”

  “I picked the lock.” He stepped into the yard and cocked a brow in her direction.

  “You can do that?”

  “Yeah. I can do a lot of things. You’d be surprised.”

  She gave him a smile, her eyes dancing like snowflakes in an unexpected storm. Nothing like the razor-sharp ice shards that were pummeling him now. But it didn’t matter. He couldn’t even feel them—just the warmth of her smile and the memory of her kiss.

  “See you tomorrow, then?”

  Why was he doing this? Innocent as a spring lamb or guilty as the last perp he’d put behind bars—it didn’t matter which she was. He couldn’t get involved with her. She was wrong for him. All wrong. And he was wrong for her.

  “Tomorrow,” she said, and pulled the door closed, clicking the lock into place as he stood there in the wind and silently swore.

  That night Lauren slept better than she had in days. The next morning, after dropping a copy of her daily geologist’s report in the overflowing in-box on Salvio’s desk, she went to the kitchen in search of something to eat.

  She’d forced herself to stay in her trailer during the hour she knew Seth and the rest of the crew on the midnight to noon shift would be in camp for breakfast.

  “Steak and eggs?” the cook called out from behind the row of steam trays when she walked in.

  “How about just one egg and some toast?” she said, and grabbed a tray. “I’ll skip the steak.”

  “You got it.”

  She smiled at him, and poured herself some coffee. The kitchen was deserted except for the cook, which was why she’d planned her meal at this particular time.

  The military-style clock on the wall read oh-nine-hundred. Salvio’s office had been empty a minute ago when she’d dropped off her report. His hard hat was gone, too. That meant he was out on the rig somewhere, probably supervising the drilling.

  They were close to target—less than fifty feet, now, judging by the rock samples she’d looked at that had been delivered to her lab earlier that day. The drilling was slow going, but given the weather—which still showed no signs of breaking—they had all the time in the world.

  “Here ya go.” The cook handed her a plate stacked with enough eggs, toast and hash browns to feed a family of four.

  “Thanks,” she said, and moved to a table.

  The food was good, and she ate more than she intended, but afterward she felt better. Strong. Ready to do what she knew needed to be done.

  There were two things, really. The first was the most important, and had to do with Seth. Their discussion would have to wait, of course, until he got off shift at noon. Besides, she wasn’t quite sure how she was going to handle it.

  She supposed she would simply tell him that they couldn’t get involved. That she was engaged and had a whole life planned around Crocker and her work at Tiger. That what had happened between them shouldn’t have happened. That the only reason it had, was the situation. Paddy’s murder, the storm, Salvio’s behavior, all of it.

  She was alone here, isolated. What did he expect? It was totally natural for her to turn to someone strong and compassionate like him for comfort. And, well…she supposed she couldn’t deny the animal attraction between them. But that’s all it was. Attraction. Lust.

  Healthy and to be expected, even, under the circumstances. She was merely sowing some last-minute wild oats before committing herself to the man she would spend the rest of her life with.

  As for Seth…she didn’t think for a minute his desire for her was anything more than the natural reaction of a man living in close quarters with eighty other men who didn’t like him, and where she was the only woman for a hundred miles.

  They were both alone on the island. Outsiders, each in their own way. That’s all it was between her and Seth. That’s all it could be.

  If Crocker was here with her, she’d have never gotten involved with Seth, period. Crocker would have been the one she’d have turned to for comfort and for help. Though, she had to admit, Crocker wasn’t very good at what he liked to call “the warm and fuzzy stuff.” Lauren accepted that. Besides, she was used to standing on her own two feet.

  Crocker had other attributes. He was a savvy businessman, a decision maker, and he knew how to handle tense situations. Like the one she found herself in now with Jack Salvio.

  Which reminded her of the other issue she needed to deal with today. The cloak-and-dagger stuff going on with Salvio and those samples, not to mention that weird equipment she’d seen Pinkie and Bulldog moving off the rig two nights ago.

  It was time to get her butt in gear and find out what was going on. Tiger wasn’t paying her to sit around and moon about her personal life. They weren’t paying her to question the actions of their best company man, either, but she had a feeling Bill Walters would back her up in this.

  She downed the rest of her coffee, bussed her tray, and thanked the cook on her way out the door. Five minutes later she was suited up. Survival jacket, insulated boots, hard hat, gloves. Standard equipment for a walk in temperatures approaching fifty below zero.

  Her destination was the warehouse at the edge of camp, not far from the chopper pad. If that crate of samples Salvio had confiscated was still here on the island, Lauren bet that’s where it would be. Staged with other sample crates, used drill bits, and pallets of equipment waiting to be trucked back to Deadhorse when the weather cleared.

  There was no guideline set up between the warehouse and the camp, and it took her ten minutes of fighting the wind to get there. The big roll-up door was closed, as expected, the camp’s forklift idling outside.

  She tried the small entrance door beside it. Locked. After making her way around to the back, she pulled open the rear emergency exit and stepped inside.

  It took her a moment to catch her breath, which frosted the air only a bit, since the warehouse was heated to a warm thirty-
five degrees. Shirtsleeves weather in the Arctic. Some of the overhead lights were out, casting shadows over the haphazard rows of stacked sample crates, empty pallets and mounds of equipment packing the good-size metal building.

  The aisles should have been wide enough to accommodate the forklift, but the storm had delayed their regular trucking schedule, and the warehouse was packed. Pallets rose in teetering stacks twelve feet high all around her. Sample crates were packed three deep in disorganized rows. It was downright claustrophobic.

  Lauren retrieved a penlight from her pocket, then snaked her way through the labyrinth of crates, double-checking the name of the well, the date and the depth measurement scrawled on each label.

  All of them were the same. Caribou Island 1. Depths ranging from five thousand to nine thousand feet. Nothing unusual. The mysterious sample crate she’d found in front of her trailer hadn’t had a label, which was unusual. Roustabouts had gotten fired over less.

  She heard voices as she made her way down the cramped aisle. No surprise there. The warehouse was a mess. It would take a dozen guys a week to get it sorted out. The voices grew louder, but not because she was moving closer. She’d stopped to listen.

  They were arguing. No. Someone was chewing someone else out. And it wasn’t too hard to figure out who the chewer was. Only one man on the island had a temperament that nasty.

  Lauren switched off her penlight and inched around the corner into the next aisle. She was right. Jack Salvio stood beside a pallet of sample crates, his back to her, hammering a young roustabout she’d seen but didn’t know, up one side and down the other. Poor kid. He looked all of about twenty. Jack was really tearing into him.

  She noticed a few of the sample crates were open. Their wooden lids had been pried off and tossed into a pile on the floor, bent nails sticking into the air. Jack had the crowbar in his hand, gripping it as if he was trying to squeeze the life out of it.

  He was yelling something about the samples. Lauren couldn’t help herself. She inched closer, watching the Adam’s apple in the kid’s thin, white neck move up and down as he mutely weathered Salvio’s abuse.