by Milly Taiden
“Probably to make the ground easier to dig into,” Ice replied. “Permafrost is damn near impenetrable. The only way to soften it is to set it on fire to thaw.”
She then looked around the area and noted all the land she could see had been burned. “Why so much?” she wondered out loud.
“Great question,” Frost commented. With a grunt, he turned away. “They’ve been out here a while if that much ground is destroyed.”
Raven stepped back to follow him when something blowing in the wind caught her eye. She squinted to focus in and shaded her eyes from the sun. She wasn’t sure what, but something red was caught on a bush.
She grabbed Ice’s arm. “Can you take me to that?” He looked where she pointed.
“Sure. We’ll keep low so as not to get their attention.” He shifted, once again awing her speechless, and snatched her in his claw similar to how Frost picked her up when they left the cabin. Before she opened her eyes, they were landing. They were close enough that she recognized the coat right away. To be sure, she grabbed it from the brush and found the front. The blue circle with NSIDC in white letters was embroidered on the chest.
“This is her jacket, Ice.” She clutched it to her chest as she fought back tears. “If she’s out here without her coat, how long can she survive?”
Ice reached out. “Let me smell. Maybe I can pick up on her scent trail.” Raven handed the coat over and he breathed in Juliet’s unique aroma.
“What are we sniffing, here?” Frost asked, climbing to his feet after shifting.
“This is Juliet’s coat,” she said. Ice handed said coat to Frost and he took in the smell. Both men lifted their noses into the air. Raven waited on pins and needles for an answer. She knew her friend was in trouble. You simply didn’t leave your coat off in the colder days unless you wanted to become an ice cube in history.
Both guys shook their heads. “I get a trace,” Ice said.
“Me, too, but nothing else,” Frost said. “She was here, but it’s been a while.”
“I smell something weird,” Ice said, bending over and sniffing. Raven saw a white stick and went over to pick it up. Ice followed her. He eyed what she held.
“It’s a Q-tip,” she said, “with a dark indigo swab end.”
“What’s it for?” Ice asked.
She shrugged. “No clue. Don’t remember Juliet ever mentioning something like this.” She put it in her coat pocket.
“Here are some more,” Frost said. “Her coat pocket has a baggy with several.” He pulled out two baggies. One with clear tips and one with the dark purple/blue tint.
Raven shivered from fear for her friend. The woman had discovered something that got her into trouble. Raven wondered if it had anything to do with the oil rig.
12
Raven was starving by the time they flew back to the cabin. “Let’s eat at the diner. I want soup.” They piled into the SUV. Thoughts of last night rolled through her head again.
When the men breathed deeply, she snapped out of the daydreaming, remembering they could smell her desire. Damn animal noses.
“Cut that out,” Frost said to her. “Don’t make me stop this car and come back there.”
Ice snapped off his seat belt. “Glad you’re driving,” he said as he leaned through the space between the front seats as if he were going to climb back.
“Would you stop,” Frost said, pushing him to the side. “We both play or no play. Besides, we’re almost there. Keep your pants on.”
Raven laughed at their antics. She loved the relationship the men had with each other. They seemed like brothers with different mothers. No, that saying wasn’t true with these two. They were closer than that. Much closer. Like two halves of a whole.
She could practically feel a bond between them. She knew she was imagining that. Humans didn’t feel metaphysical connections to others. At least, she never had. Then she dove into herself, curious to see if she had any links to either of the guys, or both, for that matter.
That thought didn’t settle too well with her. What would others think if she moved in with two guys? There was a TV show were a girl moved in with two guys. Maybe it would be acceptable. Eh, not to her traditional family. Her father would lock her in the main house when he found out. With that, she stopped her inner search. It was a bad idea.
Frost parked the SUV in the packed parking lot of the diner. “Wow,” she said, “guess everyone eats here.”
Frost chuckled. “They do when it’s the only place in town.” He opened the door and held it for her. When Ice stepped forward, Frost smacked him in the chest, telling him to hold his own damn door. Then he smiled. With a smile, Raven shook her head. What a comedian.
She took a seat at a booth at the back of the diner. All the tables were filled. Marge was out and about taking orders. Frost slid in next to her and Ice growled at him. When she was seated, Ice reached across the table and took her hand in his. She wasn’t sure how to view his touch. Was it just friendly or was there more to it?
She didn’t pull away. She liked his feel. He was warm and his skin scratchy from manual labor. He was a man’s man. No clean office job for him. He must’ve liked being in the field. “So, what do you guys do for the police?”
Ice said, “We have a place in New York where we help with investigations.”
“What kind?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Usually things humans can’t handle on their own or cases involving shifters.”
“Highly dangerous things, too,” Frost added, “since we are harder to kill.”
“What do you mean?” she replied.
“Being shifters, specifically dragon shifters, we have strong, tough outer scales that can take most bullets thugs use on the street without a scratch. The heavier ammo we can handle, as long as it isn’t to the heart and a lot of them.”
“What about your human bodies?” She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth thinking about their bodies. The guys groaned at her smell. She found teasing them hysterical.
Ice answered. “We can take more hits than humans, but not as much as the dragon skin.”
Marge finally made it to their table. Raven pulled her hand away and Ice met her eyes with a look she couldn’t interpret. Desire, slight anger, jealousy? No, it didn’t feel like any of those.
The guys ordered enough food for a frat party. She ordered her soup with extra bread and a diet drink. She leaned forward on the table, propping her elbow up and resting her chin on her hand. The people of the town today seemed like the normal, all-American small town. An older man went into a coughing fit and had to step outside. He sounded wheezy, like he had gunk in his lungs.
Paying more attention to the clientele, she noticed several of the men looked like they hadn’t slept for days. A few children too young for school sat staring into space while untouched fish sat on plates in front of them. Strange how they didn’t run around or bounce in their chair like most kids do. Raven noticed kids that age almost never sat still for more than a few seconds, and their hands were always moving. Not so with these children. Maybe they suffered from some disease or condition—she didn’t know.
One of the waitresses came their way with a large tray on one hand in the air and a stand in the other. She set the food on the holder and started placing items on the table.
“Excuse me,” Raven said, “will that gentleman who left coughing be all right? He didn’t look good.”
The waitress drew her brows down. “He’s had that cough for a while now and it’s not getting better. Several men have disgusting coughs. You’d think there was an epidemic of hooping cough going around or something. Marge told several to go to the doc, but of course, like most old guys, they refused.”
Raven smiled at the girl’s incorrect “hooping” instead of “whooping” cough and pushed for more information. “Several of the men look tired, like they’re not sleeping. They refusing to listen to the women, too?” She put it as a joke, hoping to not sound suspicious. She glanced a
t the waitress’s name tag: Annie.
Annie smirked. “I’ve heard several folks aren’t sleeping well. They’re here in the morning before we are. Talk about grouches without coffee.”
“Every morning?” Raven questioned.
“Not every morning,” Annie replied. “Most of them work at the rig, so those days they don’t show up.”
“How long have the guys been working there? Maybe they have a lot of overtime or something,” Frost said.
Annie lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “Mr. Riggs started drilling less than a year ago. I’ve been here for six months and it was in operation before that. Concerning overtime—all I know is that I’ve put in longer and longer hours since I’ve been here.” She’d finished transferring the plates and was packing up to leave.
“Annie,” Raven said, “I’m looking for my friend Juliet who has been working on the icebergs. Have you by chance seen her lately?”
Annie thought for a second. “Cute lady who works for the ice and snow people?”
“Yes,” Raven said, hope rising, “that’s her.”
“She used to come in a lot. The last couple days I saw her she’d ordered fish for every meal and taken it home with her. Our fish is fresh from the bay and the best around. Especially when deep fried. But still, it was weird. She ordered at least one of everything.”
“And has she been in lately?” Raven prompted.
“Oh, right,” the girl said, thinking hard. “I haven’t seen her in several days. I was thinking she’d was through with whatever she was doing and left.”
Raven smiled. “Thank you, Annie. If you see her, let her know I’m looking for her.”
“Sure,” the waitress said and walked away.
Raven couldn’t wait to dive into her soup. Her stomach hurt, it was so empty. She felt a vibration in her pocket and Elton John belted out the song to her mother’s ring tone. She quickly pulled her phone out and swiped to ignore the call. How embarrassing. She turned the ringer volume to low and stuffed it back into her pocket.
On Raven’s third spoonful of soup, the guys were halfway through their first plates. If the table had been any smaller, all the dishes wouldn’t have fit. It was good to know the guys had healthy appetites.
“What do you think we should do next?” she asked.
Ice asked, “Have you looked around Juliet’s work to see if anything looks odd or out of place?”
Raven nodded. “I briefly nosed through some things in the downstairs office, but I had no idea what much of it was. Juliet does all kinds of scientific experiments and things. You might know more about the things than I do, living up here and all. Especially the maps and places marked. We can take some time and go through it.”
“That sounds good,” Frost said.
Raven hoped that something in the house would tell them what happened to her friend. If not, she didn’t know what to do.
13
Raven pulled out the key to the company house and unlocked the front door. The silence she met before remained. It was a creepy, abandoned feeling.
“I definitely smelled her when we first were here,” Ice said. “Same as her jacket.”
“Not too strong, though,” Frost added. “It’s been several days since.”
Raven knew it. Her friend had been taken and held somewhere. There was no reason to have left the house for so many days.
Frost stepped on the stairs leading down. “Is the office you mentioned down here?”
“Yes,” she replied, “can’t miss it.” Raven draped her heavy coat on a chair and followed Frost. The room was just as she left it. She glanced at one of the maps and recognized the company name Riggs Oil and Gas across the top. Picking it up, she studied the shiny brochure.
As she thought, the corporation was into drilling rigs for oil and gas companies. They rented out a number of machines and pipefittings. Their locations where spread throughout Alaska, but not any near Antler. The waitress said they’d been drilling at least seven months. You’d think by then, they’d have updated their marketing materials.
Laying down the pamphlet, she searched for other Riggs material.
“Look at this,” Frost said. “It’s a map with a star on it where the iceberg is.”
“That seems normal,” Ice said.
“Yeah, but it’s not the iceberg she has circled in red pen. It’s the drilling site.”
Raven raised onto her toes to see the paper in Frost’s hand. It was a map of the glacier area with a line drawn down the middle and hash marks marked all the way to the bay. “Why is that line there and the diagonal lines?”
“Not sure,” Ice said, “but it matches about the same amount of land that had been burned.”
So there was something about the ground Juliet discovered that someone didn’t want her telling.
“This is interesting,” Ice said. He picked up a box that read “Caution. Dangerous materials inside.” A small bottle of liquid sat on the table close to the box along with deep purple cotton swabs.
Raven poked at one of the fluffy balls in a pile of dirt and dead ground cover on a table. “This is the same color as the Q-tips at the iceberg.”
Frost picked up the box and read it. “It looks to be for mercury testing.”
“Mercury?” Raven questioned. “I’ve heard her talk about the greenhouse gasses, but not mercury.” A newspaper article looked to have been printed and highlighted. The headline said, “Mercury linked to fetal/youth brain complications.” She skimmed the words reading “respiratory illness in adults” and “brain damage” for children.
“Why would she have a bucket of dirt?” Frost asked.
Raven set the paper down and stared at the bucket. The indigo cotton piece sat in the middle of a mound of dirt on the table. She wondered. “Hand me that bottle with the clear stuff,” she asked Ice as she picked up a cotton ball from a stack.
She doused the white fibers with the liquid then scooped up a handful of dirt and rubbed them together. After a moment, the cotton started turning colors.
“Frost,” she said, “what does the box say on the back?” As he read, she snatched up another ball and squatted by the container of dry ground. Then proceeded to do the same with the dirt in the bucket.
Frost read, “Easy do-at-home testing kit lets you test for mercury anywhere. Simple-to-use swabs, included, will change color based on the amount of mercury present...”
Raven placed the second piece of cotton she had rubbed with the bucket dirt on the table. They all stared at it as if it were supposed to grow arms and legs. The white disappeared in blues.
“My conclusion,” Raven said, “is that there is mercury in the dirt somewhere.”
“That’s normal,” Frost said. “Especially in this part of the States. There’s more mercury in permafrost than most anywhere else.”
“Why?” Ice asked.
Frost answered. “Decaying plant matter releases several gasses and such. The frozen permafrost keeps those gasses from escaping, thus they build up over time.”
“So that explains the high amounts of mercury in the dirt,” she said.
Ice lifted a paper napkin from the table to his nose. “Fish,” he said. “Probably something she brought back from the diner for supper.”
“But she has meals prepared and labeled in the fridge. Why would she buy fish? She doesn’t even like most seafood from the ocean.”
“Marge’s fish come from the bay, not the ocean.”
“That bay?” Raven pointed to the map where the bay was drawn next to the land with the drilling site.
“Wait,” Frost said, “Labeled food? Way too organized for me.”
Raven laughed. “You should see her pantry at home. She has a basket for all the cans, a basket for all the baking goods, the cereal is in plastic containers. The woman is an organization freak.”
“Except for here,” Ice said, looking around. That fact worried her. Her pocket buzzed, but his time Elton sang at a lower volume. Her eyes roll
ed. She’d talk to her mother later.
Scooting around papers to get at things underneath, Raven dug up a desk calendar. Scribbled in Juliet’s handwriting was a note that said “Riggs 3:00 p.m.” It was on the day Raven last heard from Juliet. Could be coincidence, but she doubted it.
They needed to find out what all these things had in common. Time to come up with a plan.
Frost leaned against the doctor’s office receptionist window. Old Doc McLarty had been around for ages. He’d been here when Antler wasn’t much more than a nub. Frost didn’t know the man like most of the town, but they were acquaintances and Frost felt fine with the task he’d been given. Subterfuge.
It wasn’t much different from the work he and Ice did every day in the city. Search for clues without revealing what you’re doing and find the guilty. And in this case, find the missing.
Through all his years of being on this planet, he felt nothing as gratifying as helping others. Saving lives was especially rewarding. Seeing the look in a parents’ eyes when they were told their child was alive warmed his heart like nothing else. Of course, he wasn’t telling anyone that. He was a dragon, not a pussy.
Flashing his smile at the receptionist, he knew the effect he had on women, but hated to use it unless he needed to. His mate needed help, so this was a must do situation. He would do anything for her even though they’d known each other for only twenty-four hours. That’s how mates worked in the animal world.
“The doctor will see you now, Frost,” she smiled shyly at him and he winked at her. His dragon grumbled at the fact he was flirting with someone who wasn’t their mate. Then Frost reminded it this was for their mate and it sulked away.
He walked through the doctor’s open door into his office. Doc looked up and came around his desk to greet him.
“Frost,” Doc said, “good to see you again. How are you?” The men shook hands and the doctor closed the door behind them.
“Doing well, thanks for asking,” Frost replied.
McLarty chuckled. “Well, it is my job to know those kind of things. How can I help you?”
