On Thin Ice

by Debra Lee Brown

She was wearing the flannel shirt Seth had loaned her, and that fact wasn’t lost on Bledsoe. She was practically swimming in it, given its size and her petite frame.

  Three more suits crowded into Seth’s small kitchen behind the stocky, blue-eyed man who explained to her that he was Seth’s superior at the Bureau, and in charge of the Caribou Island investigation. Given his smug expression, it was apparent Bledsoe thought he was Seth’s superior outside the Bureau, as well.

  Seth propped himself casually in the doorway leading from the kitchen into the hall, his fingers looped into the waistband of his jeans. But Lauren could tell from his tight expression and hard eyes that the situation was anything but casual.

  Seth’s gaze was riveted to Bledsoe. It was clear to her there was no love lost between these two. An underlying current of tension and mutual distaste crackled between the two men like electricity.

  Bledsoe smirked at him, still chewing. “So, you effed up again, eh, Adams?” He glanced at Lauren and apologized for his language.

  She didn’t offer him a response, not even a shrug. She took a step toward Seth, but something in his body language and the way he flashed cool eyes at her stopped her. From the moment he’d awakened her in the guest room, she’d felt his emotional distance.

  Perhaps it was better this way.

  She tried to clear her head of all that had happened between them, and focus on the situation. “How much have you told them?”

  Seth didn’t spare her a glance. “Pretty much everything.”

  “About Paddy’s murder? The explosion? Salvio and Walters and—?”

  “Holt,” he said, shifting his gaze to hers.

  “Yeah,” Bledsoe drawled, working the chewing gum between meaty jowls. “Crocker Elliot Holt, the boyfriend.”

  “Fiancé,” she snapped, returning Seth’s glare with one of her own. “I told you that’s not possible.”

  “Maybe it’s not,” Bledsoe said as he yanked out a kitchen chair and wedged himself into it. “Then again, maybe it is.” He shot Seth an amused glance. “Too bad you didn’t stick around the island long enough to find out.”

  Seth drew himself up in the doorway, throwing off the nonchalant guise that Lauren knew wasn’t working anyway. His eyes flashed anger. “I told you. It wasn’t safe for Lauren to be there. I had to get her out.”

  “So it’s Lauren, now. What happened to Miss Fotheringay?” Bledsoe’s gaze washed over her again, and this time he didn’t attempt to disguise his overtly sexual appraisal. He grinned.

  Seth took a step toward him, and for a heartbeat Lauren thought he might hit him.

  “All right, all right.” Bledsoe held his hands up in mock surrender. “Don’t go off half-cocked. I can see why you did what you did.” Bledsoe flashed his eyes at her again. “I mighta done the same thing, myself.”

  “Let’s get to the point,” Seth said.

  Lauren was anxious, too. She had no idea what the FBI would do next, or what she was supposed to do while they did it. She had to get that sample back. She had to call Crocker and—

  And what? Tell him she was in love with another man? A man who thought he was a criminal and that she was obsessed with some twisted idea of success? A thousand thoughts raced through her mind. It was useless trying to process them. Maybe she just didn’t want to.

  She closed her eyes for a moment and rubbed them. She’d slept nearly five hours, but was still tired. Why hadn’t Seth wakened her sooner? The kitchen wall clock read eleven. She glanced at her watch. Twenty-three hundred.

  “The point is, by now Salvio knows you’re alive—” Bledsoe looked pointedly at Lauren “—and that’s a liability for him. A bigger liability for whoever the hell is running this little operation.”

  “That’s why I got her out of there,” Seth said.

  Bledsoe grinned. “Yeah. And that’s exactly why I’m sending her back.”

  “You’re not doing this, do you hear me?” Seth trapped Lauren as she came out of the bathroom in the drafty Quanset hut that served as the terminal for Kachelik’s tiny airport.

  “I have to do it. The FBI wants me to.”

  “To hell with the FBI. I don’t want you to.”

  It took all her resolve not to respond to the unspoken meaning behind his words. She pushed past him, zipping her survival jacket as she marched toward the open double doors leading outside to two unmarked choppers sitting on the pad.

  The night was clear and cold, the first clear night they’d had in ten days. The storm was over—at least where the weather was concerned. Stars twinkled overhead.

  “It’s too dangerous.” Seth stopped her again at the open doors.

  “I’ll be fine. Bledsoe’s arranged for six agents to go in with me.”

  Their eyes met, and she read a bitter fusion of anger and helplessness in his. Bledsoe had refused to let Seth go with her. In fact, he’d given him his walking papers, had taken him off the case.

  Seth had spent nearly an hour arguing with him at the house while arrangements had been made to fly her back to Caribou Island. At first he’d flown into a rage that Bledsoe would even consider the idea of sending her back there. But Doyle Bledsoe was immovable as stone. He wanted the ringleader, and he wanted him now.

  Lauren was the bait.

  From Bledsoe’s perspective, Seth had failed in his mission. All he’d managed to do, according to the section chief, was to tip the bad guys to the Bureau’s investigation. He’d blown his cover and nearly the whole case, which was the exact reason for Seth’s dismissal from the FBI five years ago.

  She’d gleaned that much from Bledsoe’s cutting comments during the past hour. He was good at twisting the knife. She’d seen Seth’s face when Bledsoe mentioned Jeremy Adams had called him—tonight, in fact—to find out how his son was doing on the case. It was clear Bledsoe had delighted in telling the powerful oil man that his son had blown it—again.

  “I don’t trust that bastard as far as I can throw him,” Seth said. “He says he’s sending in backup, but—”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  She hoped to God she would. It had chilled her to the bone when she realized Bledsoe placed literally no importance on the fact that Seth had saved her life in that warehouse.

  “It’s the sample, isn’t it? That’s why you’re going.”

  She wanted so badly to touch him, to graze a finger along his chiseled jawline, brush a kiss across his lips, but she held herself in check.

  “That’s part of it,” she said softly.

  “That’s all of it.” He stormed toward the first chopper, whose rotors were beginning to turn in wind-whipping revolutions.

  That wasn’t all of it, but she didn’t want to share with him her other reason. She needed to deal with it on her own, to think clearly without her feelings for him clouding the issues.

  Seth ripped opened the chopper door for her. Bledsoe was already inside, along with the pilot and, as promised, six agents in full combat dress, weapons hanging off them like Christmas ornaments.

  “Take this,” Seth said, and handed her his Glock. “Know how to use it?”

  She did. Her father had taught her to shoot when she was a kid. “Yes, but what about you?”

  He laughed bitterly. “Yeah, like I’ll really need it here, in the middle of the night, in this bustling metropolis.” He nodded at the twinkling lights of the village.

  She took the gun from him and stuffed it into the pocket of her survival jacket.

  “You didn’t tell him, did you?” She flashed a look at Bledsoe, who sat in the copilot’s seat, jawing his wad of gum as if his life depended on it.

  “Tell him what?”

  “About the sample.”

  Their gazes locked. “No. I told him about the second well, but not about the sample.”

  “Why not?”

  He looked at her hard. “I figured I’d leave that to you.”

  They both knew that once the government confirmed the presence of the second well—the illegal well dri
lled into the wildlife refuge—it would immediately be plugged and abandoned. Tiger would never be allowed to go back in and collect more rock samples or run more tests to confirm or refute the existence of oil.

  That one sample was everything.

  “Thanks,” she said simply, and climbed into the waiting chopper.

  Seth grabbed the door before one of the agents could slide it closed. “Lauren, wait!”

  She turned and looked down at him. The harsh sodium lights illuminating the tiny airstrip reflected back at her in his eyes. His breath frosted the air, and she could tell he was breathing hard.

  “You were right,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “My father. Everything.”

  He grasped her gloved hand in his and held it—seconds, a minute, an hour, she didn’t know how long. The raw emotion in his eyes undid her. At last, she let him go so the agent could slide the door shut.

  As the chopper lifted off she tried to remember the exact moment she knew that she loved him.

  Chapter 19

  “H e’s a little out of his league, don’tcha think?”

  “What?” Lauren hadn’t been paying attention. The rhythmic vibration of the chopper’s engine had lulled her into a calming trance. They’d been in the air about twenty minutes now.

  She twisted around in the rear-facing jump seat so she could see Doyle Bledsoe. It was dark, and she could just make out his squishy features in the dim glow of the chopper’s flight instruments.

  He had to shout over the near-deafening din. “Adams. With you, I mean.”

  She ignored the comment. She’d met the FBI section chief only a handful of hours ago, and had known in the first minute she didn’t like him.

  Bledsoe nudged the pilot and laughed, which was mercifully drowned out by the engine noise.

  Lauren settled back into her seat for the remainder of the trip out to Caribou Island. They would touch down nearly a mile from the site on what remained of the ice road from Deadhorse. She would travel the rest of the way in a dogsled that was already standing by.

  The musher was an FBI agent posing as a villager from another of the tiny outposts skirting the Alaskan coastline. The story Bledsoe had leaked over local airwaves was that a Tiger geologist was found wandering and disoriented after the storm. That her companion was dead. That as soon as she was strong enough, she’d asked the people who’d rescued her to take her back to Caribou Island.

  It was plausible. In fact, it was probably exactly what Lauren would do if those circumstances were true, and not a fabrication designed to make her a target the bad guys couldn’t resist.

  Salvio, Bulldog, Pinkie…they’d all be waiting for her. Bledsoe was betting someone else would be waiting, too. That’s what this ruse was all about, bringing down the puppeteer of the whole, ugly operation.

  At the airport Seth had argued with Bledsoe that he should go instead of her. That if his cover was truly blown, Salvio and the others would want him just as dead as they’d want her.

  She believed Seth cared about her safety, but maybe there was something else he cared about more. She couldn’t help but wonder if the heated argument he’d had with Bledsoe had simply been one last, desperate attempt to get himself back on the case, to redeem himself in his father’s eyes.

  She recalled his mother’s revelation about the deal he’d cut with Bledsoe, winning his old job back with the FBI if he identified the Tiger ringleader and obtained enough evidence for a conviction.

  That wasn’t possible now.

  Bledsoe hadn’t bought Seth’s argument that he should be the one to return to the island. They all knew that nothing short of Lauren’s reappearance would draw out the key player. Even that was a long shot. What if he simply didn’t come?

  Bledsoe was banking on the fact that this guy was a whole lot smarter than Salvio. That he’d want to know exactly how much Lauren knew about the covert operation before he decided what to do with her. He wouldn’t risk murdering a prominent Tiger geologist unless he had to.

  “It can’t be Crocker. It just can’t,” she whispered to herself.

  She turned in her seat again and was about to tap Bledsoe on the shoulder, but realized he was speaking into the pilot’s radio handset. The conversation lasted about a minute, then he twisted around and gave her a thumbs-up.

  “Big fish took the bait.” Bledsoe’s grin was downright eerie in the glow of the instrument lights. “Our boy’s in the air right now.”

  “Oh, God.” Lauren’s stomach clenched. “Wh-who is it?”

  “Don’t know. We have agents at the airports in Anchorage and Deadhorse, but this guy’s smart. He didn’t take the usual route, or make use of the corporate jet. All we know is that, a couple of hours ago, some guy flashing a wad of hundreds and a Tiger ID chartered a long-range chopper outta Barrow headed east.”

  “Then, he could reach Caribou Island before I do.”

  “Not likely, but you never know.” Bledsoe’s grin spread like a nasty disease across his face.

  “Wh-whose name was on the ID?” She wasn’t sure she could stomach the answer.

  Bledsoe shrugged. “Nobody knows. The guy dealt directly with the pilot. He was wearing a hooded jacket, standard Tiger issue. Nobody got a look at his face. All anybody remembers is the money.”

  She sucked in a breath and tried to clear her head. “Where’s Bill Walters tonight?”

  “Home in bed. Just had it confirmed. Your boyfriend’s unaccounted for, though. He’s supposed to be in San Francisco at some charity thing.”

  Oh, God.

  Vaguely, she remembered the function. She was supposed to have been there, too, along with her mother, but that was before the Caribou Island job had landed on her plate.

  “Holt never showed.”

  She didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t believe it.

  That’s why she was out here.

  Not because of a rock sample worth a fortune. Not for Tiger, or to further her own career. She was returning to Caribou Island for one reason only—she had to know for sure if Crocker was the one. She had to see his face before she’d believe it.

  “This is it,” the pilot yelled.

  The helicopter flashed its lights at something on the ice, then made a wide, slow turn before touching down.

  Show time.

  Lauren felt the comforting shape of Seth’s Glock in the pocket of her survival jacket as she stepped from the chopper. Bledsoe alighted first and was already talking to the undercover agent who would escort her the rest of the way to the island. She crunched over to the sled and petted one of the dogs.

  “Good boy,” she said, and tried to keep her teeth from chattering. It was a clear night, but the temperature had dropped considerably. A dizzying array of stars peppered the ink-black sky above her.

  She wondered if Seth was looking out on the same sky, if he was thinking about her, and, if so, what he was thinking. She forced herself to push him from her mind, to focus on her part in the FBI’s plan to catch a criminal who might very well be the man she was supposed to marry.

  Bledsoe barked some last-minute instructions at her, snapping her back to the moment. She nodded, repeating his orders back to him.

  “I guess Adams wasn’t so useless after all,” he said.

  “What?”

  Bledsoe shrugged. “At least he had the sense to pack it in and call me after he bungled his cover. I wouldn’t have been able to set up this little charade if he’d decided to go ‘rogue warrior’ on me.”

  “What do you mean, he called you?” Lauren grabbed his arm. “You mean you didn’t just show up? He actually called you in?”

  “Yeah. It was the only smart thing he did do. Good thing, too. If he hadn’t, I’d have had his ass in a sling quicker than you can say Eskimo Pie.”

  She stood there, stunned, breathing in huge gulps of frigid air that burned her lungs on contact.

  “He said you wanted back on the island, and that he didn’t think he coul
dn’t stop you, or protect you, on his own.”

  “He said that?”

  The light of a half-moon illuminated Bledsoe’s smirk. “Yeah, well, it’s not like it’s the first time Adams has made a fool of himself over some babe too rich for his blood.” He was referring to Seth’s first wife, but Lauren ignored the comment.

  She was too stunned for words. She’d thought Bledsoe and his men had simply shown up in Kachelik. But they hadn’t. Of course they hadn’t! Why would they?

  Seth had called them.

  He must have done it when he was at the station earlier that evening, or while she was asleep. He must have known Bledsoe would take over the case once he told them about Salvio, Paddy’s murder, the secret well. Oh, Seth. He’d given up his last chance to solve the case, to win his job back, his father’s respect.

  He’d done it for her.

  He’d done it because she’d been hell-bent on returning to the island, because she wouldn’t listen to reason. He’d done it because her safety was more important to him than his own success. More important than his pride, and a last-ditch effort at winning Jeremy Adams’s love.

  “Okay, let’s get this show on the road,” Bledsoe said, arresting her thoughts.

  The six FBI field operatives who were supposed to protect her on the island stood off to the side, awaiting Bledsoe’s orders. They’d go in on foot from here, accompanying the dogsled until Lauren was dropped on the island. Supposedly one of them would have her in sight every second from now on.

  They looked almost unreal, dressed all in white like spies from a James Bond movie set on a Russian ski slope. The guns they were carrying…now they looked real.

  “Ready?” Bledsoe asked.

  As ready as she’d ever be. “Let’s do it,” she said, and climbed into the sled.

  Seth poured another shot of black sludge into a stained ceramic mug bearing the motto, Kachelik—My Kind of Town.

  “That’s your fifth cup,” Danny said, swinging his feet off a desk cluttered with reports, pictures of his nieces and nephews, and yellowed editions of the Anchorage Daily News.

  “Yeah, so what?” Seth shot him a warning glance.

  Danny shrugged. “Just think you oughta back off a little, Chief. You’re already wound tighter than a yo-yo string.”