On Thin Ice

by Debra Lee Brown

  “I was. I lost it all in the stock market. Two years ago, now.”

  “What?”

  “Sad, but true. I’ve borrowed a bit from some friends, but that’s nearly gone.”

  Her bones felt as if they were made of butter. “But, my engagement ring…how did you…?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a fake. A very good one mind you, but the stone’s not real.”

  “And the Porsche?”

  “Leased. Again, I have some very understanding friends.” He moved toward her, and she kept backing up. “My condo’s mortgaged to the hilt, but I’ll take care of that as soon as this baby pays off.” He tossed the sample bag in the air and caught it.

  What she’d deduced before, on the dogsled ride in to the island, was all true. Every last ugly detail. Her whole relationship with Crocker had been a sham, every bit as fake as the ring on her finger. As soulless as the life she’d been living for years now, a life she’d allowed others to control—first her mother, then Crocker.

  It all stopped here.

  She tugged the ring off her finger and threw it at him. It bounced off the expensive cloth of his custom-made, Italian suit, and skittered across the floor toward the open door of the lab.

  An icy draft from the outside chilled the room, though to Lauren the ambient air felt hundreds of degrees warmer than the frigid look in Crocker’s eyes.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll buy you a new one. A real one.”

  “You seriously believe that after what’s happened here—” she waved an arm into space “—after all that you’ve done, that I’d still want to marry you?”

  He smiled, but his straight white teeth and blond good looks had no effect on her anymore.

  “I’d think you’d want me more than ever now. You have to admit, we’re a great team. Everyone says so. Your mother adores me.”

  Her mother was about to get the biggest shock of her life, but that could wait.

  “Think of it. Together we can have everything we want. This is our chance.” He tossed the sample into the air again, but this time he missed it, and it thumped onto the floor.

  “Our chance?” she shouted, moving toward him, anger seething up inside her.

  Somewhere at the edge of her awareness she heard the sound of a helicopter. She ignored it, focusing all her attention on the monster standing before her.

  “Yes, our chance. Yours and mine. Partners in crime, so to speak. Lovers, too. A nice married couple.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “I set up the deals, Salvio gets the wells drilled, and you, my dear, analyze the rocks. It’s easy.”

  She exploded. “And was it easy murdering Paddy O’Connor?”

  “Oh, I’d forgotten about that. Nasty business, but it had to be done. He was about to talk. I liked him, I really did.”

  “You did it. You murdered him.” She flew at him, but he sidestepped her.

  “Calm down. I could never do anything like that. You know I couldn’t. Salvio did it, and a fine job he did, too. Too bad those dimwits that work for him tossed the murder weapon out in the trash.”

  “My rock hammer,” she said between clenched teeth.

  “Precisely. I’ve got the two of them digging through that Dumpster right now, looking to retrieve it.”

  “They won’t find it, because we have it. The FBI has it.”

  “Do they?” The news didn’t seem to faze him. “Well the only prints they’ll find on it are yours, I’m afraid. In any case—”

  “You seriously believed that once I knew what was going on here, what you and Salvio have been doing, that I’d join you?”

  Crocker sighed, then approached her. “Salvio doesn’t think you will, but I have faith that my bride will make the right decision.”

  She was speechless. Her amazement was off the charts.

  Crocker’s gaze slid to the open zipper of her jacket, where a man-size flannel shirt was clearly visible beneath, its tails hanging nearly to her jean-clad knees.

  “Salvio did tell me that you’d been a bad girl.” He inched closer, his expression hardening. “The thought of you letting that lowlife touch you—” his thin lips twisted “—makes me sick. A roughneck. A native.”

  She glared up at him, barely containing the rage roiling inside her.

  “But I forgive you. Things like that happen in tense situations. God knows, I’ve had my share of lovers while you and I were together. I’m just glad Adams is dead. If he wasn’t I’d have to kill him.”

  “He’s not dead, and I don’t want your forgiveness. You’re the lowlife, not him.”

  The blow was sharp and unexpected, and nearly knocked her off her feet. Crocker hit her again with the back of his hand, and she caught the edge of the counter just in time to keep from careening backward. As it was, she slid to the floor, shaking.

  She tasted blood, and fear exploded inside her as the man she’d planned to marry drew a gun from his inside jacket pocket and pointed it directly at her.

  She scrambled for the Glock in her own jacket, but already knew she wouldn’t be able to draw it in time.

  “Go ahead, you son of a bitch. Give me one more reason to kill you.”

  “Seth!”

  He was framed in the doorway, light illuminating his tight features, reflecting off eyes so dark she’d once compared them to a winter’s night.

  As he stepped into the room, leveling a gun at Crocker, a shadow appeared on the steps behind him.

  Salvio!

  “Seth, behind you!”

  Seth rolled right. Crocker turned and fired. Salvio fired, too, and all of them went down.

  Chapter 20

  “I forgot how much that hurts,” Seth said as two of Bledsoe’s agents peeled the Kevlar vest from his body and recovered one of two bullets that Crocker Holt had fired.

  The other bullet would have to be recovered by the medical examiner when he performed the autopsy on Jack Salvio’s body, which was laid out about three feet from where Seth was sitting propped against a row of cabinets.

  Federal agents were everywhere. About goddamned time, too. The sound of more incoming choppers could be heard above the cacophony of voices in the packed trailer.

  He glanced at Lauren across the room, where she was being questioned—more like doted on—by four of Bledsoe’s agents. Where were those jerks fifteen minutes ago? He told himself it didn’t matter, that she was safe now, that it was over.

  Testing the flesh just above his right pec, Seth winced. He was going to have one hell of a bruise. When he’d realized Salvio was behind him on the steps, he’d rolled right, and Salvio and Holt inadvertently fired on each other.

  Salvio was killed instantly, but had only winged Holt. Seth hadn’t fired his weapon up to that point because Holt had been standing dangerously close to where Lauren was sprawled on the floor. By the time Holt had turned to fire on him, Lauren had slid sideways, leaving Seth a clear shot.

  They’d both discharged their weapons simultaneously. Holt was receiving medical attention now—in handcuffs. He’d live a good long time, Seth suspected, in some nice, warm, federal prison somewhere.

  Seth struggled to his feet and tried to make his way to where Lauren was standing. Bledsoe was interviewing her now. There were so many people in the room, so many agents surrounding her—and him, and Salvio’s body, and Holt, who was being carried out on a stretcher—he couldn’t get to her.

  In the resulting chaos, all they’d had were a few shared glances. Her eyes were bright, vitreous. Her hands were shaking and her skin pale. She was probably in shock. Why hadn’t that damned medic seen to her yet?

  He ached to hold her, to tell her everything he was feeling inside, to have her hold him, and hear the words from her he wanted to hear—that she loved him, wanted him, as much as he wanted her.

  “Geez, Adams, what are ya, in a trance?”

  He jerked his head around at the sound of Bledsoe’s voice.

  “Got a couple more friends of yours over here.” B
ledsoe nodded toward the trailer’s open door.

  Danny, grinning from ear to ear, nudged Pinkie and Bulldog up the steps with the business end of a shotgun. The two roustabouts were in cuffs, Bulldog’s eyes round with fear, Pinkie’s glittering with the hard-edged arrogance of a seasoned con.

  “What do you want me to do with these two?” Danny said. “I found ’em in the Dumpster behind the kitchen. They stink something awful.” He screwed up his face in revulsion.

  Seth didn’t smile. “Put them back in there until Bledsoe’s ready to take them away.”

  Pinkie swore. Bulldog looked as if, at any second, he’d need a change of underwear.

  “Good one, Adams.” Bledsoe nodded in what was, surprisingly, appreciation. “You’re all right, you know that.”

  “Lauren!” he called, ignoring Bledsoe, trying to get to her.

  The medic was finally checking her out, sponging the dried trickle of blood from her nose where Holt had hit her. What Seth wouldn’t give to get his hands on that guy for just five minutes.

  When the medic was finished with her, he started toward Seth. Seth waved him off. “I’m fine.” He tried to push past the medic so he could get to Lauren. The people, the chatter…his head was throbbing. Where the hell was Lauren?

  When the path was finally cleared, he saw her, squatting on the linoleum floor of the lab, retrieving a plastic bag that had, in the chaos, been kicked out of the way under the cabinets.

  The rock sample.

  She pocketed it before anyone saw it, not that it would matter. He hadn’t told Bledsoe about the sample, nor had she, it seemed. As she rose from the floor their gazes locked. Lauren went stock-still. Seth forced himself not to go to her.

  So they stood there like that, not ten feet apart, just looking at each other. If he had one wish, right now, at this moment, it would be to know what she was thinking. Funny thing about wishes…they only come true after you’ve about decided you don’t want them to.

  “I guess you got what you wanted,” he said.

  “What?” She stepped toward him, her brow softly furrowed. A flood of new agents poured into the room, and what little progress she’d made toward him was arrested.

  “Okay, Miss Fotheringay.” One of the fresh-faced agents took her arm. Another one flanked her other side. “Time to get you out of here.”

  “Seth,” she said, twisting her head around to look at him as they escorted her out.

  He didn’t respond, he didn’t smile, he didn’t move.

  A moment later she was gone.

  He stood there like a guy who, for a few fleeting days, thought he’d had in his possession a winning lotto ticket, only to find out it was all a mistake.

  “About your old job at the Bureau,” Bledsoe said, strutting up to him like a fat peacock. “It’s yours if you want it.”

  “Hmm?” Seth wasn’t listening. He was thinking about Lauren, about what would happen next. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. It was up to her now.

  “Your job. A real job. Back in D.C., away from that frozen hellhole of a town you play cop in.”

  “What?”

  “You did all right. My boys were on top of it, but it helped that you showed when you did.”

  “It helped?”

  “Yeah.” Bledsoe nodded. “I didn’t want my guys in too close. I wanted to see what went down. I was thinking that maybe the Fotheringay broad was really in on it all along, that once she got together with her boyfriend, it would all unravel, and we’d be there to clean up the mess.”

  “That’s what you thought? That’s why you left her unprotected?”

  “Yeah. Guess I was wrong.”

  Seth launched at him.

  “Whoa!” Bledsoe sidestepped him. “Cool down, boy. It all worked out in the end. So, about that job. What’s your answer?”

  Seth didn’t even have to think about it. “You want my answer?”

  Bledsoe stood there, grinning. “Yeah.”

  “Here it is.”

  It was the first time in his life Seth had actually broken a guy’s nose when he’d hit him. It felt good. Damned good.

  By the time Lauren lifted off in the FBI chopper, Caribou Island was crawling with people, vehicles and more helicopters than she’d ever seen at one time in one place. Federal agents, borough police, Tiger personnel and representatives from half a dozen state agencies swarmed the brightly lit yard.

  Lauren sat back in her seat and closed her eyes, breathing in cold, calming drafts of arctic air.

  The nightmare was over.

  She’d spent over an hour locked in Salvio’s office with her boss, Bill Walters, who’d known nothing of Crocker’s illegal activities or what had happened on Caribou Island. Bill had explained that he’d started to worry after he’d heard her voice on the phone that day, and had tried countless times to reach her ever since. Each time, Salvio had put him off with some excuse. Bill had known something was wrong even before he’d gotten the news about Lauren’s disappearance and subsequent return to the island.

  During their conversation, Tiger’s CEO had arrived on the site and had joined them in Salvio’s office, along with Doyle Bledsoe who, curiously, sported a bandage on his nose. When Lauren had asked him what happened, he changed the subject.

  By the time she’d finished bringing her boss and the CEO up to speed on the events of the past two weeks, on what she’d deduced about Crocker and the conversation they’d had in the trailer, Seth was already gone.

  She hoped he’d be waiting for her at the airport in Kachelik when she arrived. The FBI wanted to take her back to Anchorage to make statements, fill out paperwork, submit to more questioning, but she’d insisted they fly her to Kachelik first.

  Though the nightmare was over, the rest of her life was still up in the air. Bad pun, she thought, looking out from the low-flying helicopter over the boundless expanse of ice blanketing the arctic slope.

  The rest of her life started now, she realized, but she had something to set straight before she could start it.

  Back on the island, the FBI had relieved her of Seth’s Glock, but there was still one thing left in her jacket pocket. She pulled off her glove, slipped her hand inside the insulated fabric and retrieved it.

  The most valuable rock sample in Alaska.

  She weighed it in her hand, considering its importance—what it would mean to Tiger, her career, to the wildlife refuge, even to Seth’s village in a roundabout way, not to mention a million gas-guzzling SUVs that might be able to run one more day on the oil hinted at by the sample.

  “Hungry?” One of Bledsoe’s agents offered her half a submarine sandwich from a cooler stowed under his feet.

  “Hmm?”

  It was nearly noon, she realized, glancing at her watch in the growing light. Since they’d been in the air, the sky had gone from inky black to a clear midnight blue edged with an impossibly brilliant orange, indicating to her that the sun, which had slipped below the southern horizon nearly two months ago, was about to show its face.

  A lone polar bear came into view on the ice ahead of the chopper. The pilot slowed to a hover so they could look at it.

  “Ya know those babies can eat a seal whole, bones and all,” the agent said, leaning across her to get a better look. “I hear they’ve got stomachs like sharks, can digest just about anything.”

  A mischievous smile bloomed on Lauren’s face. “Let’s hope so,” she said, and accepted the half sandwich he’d offered her.

  When the agent turned his back to peer out the opposite window, Lauren ripped open the sandwich, along with the plastic bag housing the valuable rock sample. It was half-crushed already, practically sand. It was easy to stuff it between the thick layers of salami and cheese.

  A bracing whoosh of frigid air iced her skin as she wrestled the chopper’s window wide. As the pilot thrust forward, with no one the wiser, she tossed the sandwich to the bear.

  “Bon appétit.”

  Seth was standing on the ice when Lauren’
s chopper set down in Kachelik. The look on his face when she climbed out of the jump seat and walked calmly toward him was nothing less than astonishment.

  He dropped the line he was using to help Danny secure the borough chopper to the pad. Danny smiled at her as she approached, then slipped off to deal with the federal agents, leaving her and Seth alone.

  “What are you doing here?” He took a step toward her, then stopped.

  She stopped, too, less than an arm’s length from him. Sunlight bled over the horizon, turning his skin to bronze, his eyes a brilliant chestnut suffused with wonder and warmth.

  “I, uh, came to return this.” She unzipped her heavy jacket and pulled on the long front tail of the borrowed flannel shirt. “It’s yours.”

  The light went out of his eyes. “Keep it,” he said, and turned his attention back to the dilapidated chopper.

  “I’d like that.” She moved toward him, her gaze washing over the helicopter’s rusted, patched-together frame. “I can’t believe you came all the way to the island in that.”

  He shrugged, his back to her.

  “You saved my life, you know. Crocker meant to kill me.”

  He stopped what he was doing and looked at her. “You saved mine. I didn’t know Salvio was behind me until you called out.”

  “We’re even, then.” She risked a smile.

  He didn’t smile back. “Yeah. Even.” Dismissing her with a cool look, he reached down to retrieve the tether he’d dropped a minute earlier. It was then he noticed it.

  “Your engagement ring. It’s…gone.”

  “That’s right. The engagement’s off. You were right, Seth. It was Crocker all along. I knew it in my gut on the trip back out to the island, but I had to see it for myself—see him—for my own peace of mind. I had to go. Don’t you see?

  He rose, towering over her, his jaw set, eyes hard but searching. “What if it hadn’t been him? What if he was innocent?”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered. I’d have had to call off the wedding anyway.”

  “You would?” She watched the pulse point throb at his temple, saw his Adam’s apple as he swallowed hard.