Whiteout

by Adriana Anders

  It was a lost cause, since he was only able to focus on one thing: her. Part of it was normal—the single-focus part. It went along with the other traits that separated him from the crowd, literally: his issues with outside stimuli, discomfort with closeness, inability to handle certain sensations or touches or smells. Not to mention the noise.

  It was a sensorial processing thing. He knew that, had spent ages researching it, since research was his solution to most things—how he grasped ideas, solved problems, answered questions.

  It was too loud and too crowded here, which was why he never came to the Nest with the summer crew in residence. He didn’t mix with the horde, didn’t even attempt to blend in.

  Out on the ice was where he belonged, his only company snow and sky. Not standing in a crowded bar, staring at a woman who might as well be a different species.

  He’d just decided to take off when she turned and caught his eye.

  Chapter 3

  In a split second, Angel went from breathless and happy on the dance floor, to…she didn’t know what to call the thing that Ford Cooper’s intense scrutiny did to her. Torn open? Seen?

  Her feet faltered, making her stumble and grab on to Pam, who giggled and helped her upright, saying something about mixing booze and tunes. But Angel’s reaction had nothing to do with either of those things and everything to do with the hungry look on the Ice Man’s face.

  She shut her eyes tight and felt the room spin around her.

  Oh, she thought with something like relief. Pam’s right. I’m drunk. That’s all this is. When she looked again, expecting him to have disappeared into the crowd, he was still there, head and shoulders above the others, eyes fixed on her, drawing her in with their tractor-beam pull.

  Instead of ignoring him as she’d done since her first week here, she let that now or never thrill take hold. She’d never seen anything aside from irritation on his face, but at this moment, he looked like he could consume her. For some reason, that hint of interest pushed her to forget every one of the unfriendly one-sided conversations they’d ever had. Every curt “no salt,” “too spicy,” or just plain “no” he’d thrown her way, without a single hint of a “please” or “thank you.”

  What if Pam and Jameson were right about Ford Cooper? What if he was misunderstood? A good man who deserved another chance?

  What if that thick veneer of cool disdain hid an actual person, with thoughts and feelings?

  Someone slid a drink into her hand—a clear liquid in a shot glass—and rather than worry about her 4:30 a.m. wake-up or the packing she still had to do, she let the unexpected thrill of the man’s interest goad her into toasting with the rest of the crew and slinging it back.

  She barely heard the round of cheers, barely felt anything but the sultry rhythm of the bass thrumming through her veins.

  This was it. One chance to scratch the Ice Man’s flash-frozen surface before she left this place forever.

  And because she never learned from past mistakes, Angel let the booze and the curiosity and the million foolish impulses drag her through the crowd toward where he stood, as tall and remote as an iceberg in a sea full of people.

  * * *

  “Missed you at dinner.” Jameson moved close again. “What convinced you to come out tonight? Was it the scotch or…” His eyes cut to Angel, then returned to Coop.

  “You, of course.” Coop finally pulled his attention away from her, blinking hard as he worked to remember just what it was that had made him stop in here. “Actually, it was Cortez.”

  “Yeah?” Jameson let out a sly laugh. “Somehow doubt that, man.”

  “You seen him?”

  “Uh. Hm.” Jameson ran a thick, blunt hand over his grizzly beard and cast an eye around the room. “Yeah. Feel like he was in earlier? Those are his students over there.”

  “Right. You see if he was injured?”

  Jameson gave him a funny look. “Pam didn’t mention anything.”

  “Hm.” Coop scanned the little huddle of students. No sign of Cortez there. Hopefully his colleague had gone back to his room, because he couldn’t take another minute of this suffocating heat. “Gotta go.”

  Jameson nodded and gave him space, knowing him too well to try to get in his way.

  With grim determination, Coop shoved his way toward the group.

  “Where’s Cortez?” he asked, ignoring the looks the students exchanged at his abrupt interruption.

  “I think he was in his room,” said one of the women. “Sick.”

  “I heard he hurt himself, out on the ice.” The voices layered up, two and three of them coming at him simultaneously.

  “Didn’t someone say he was—”

  “Phil talked to him. Nosebleed or something, he said.”

  “I heard him hacking up a lung in—”

  Okay. Okay. Throwing his hands up, Coop backed away. He’d heard enough. A quick check on the way to his quarters would put his mind at ease. But for now, it was time to get out of this swamp. What an idiot he was to have come to the Nest on the most crowded night of the year.

  He made it about halfway to the door when a hand landed on his arm, stopping him in his tracks.

  “Hi there.” Angel Smith smiled at him.

  Was she drunk? She must be, judging from the slight sway of her body, even standing still, and the stubborn thrust of her chin. It was tilted high, squared off like he was a challenge to her. A nut she wanted to crack. He imagined she wore that expression when faced with a particularly large fish to gut or…a wild boar to butcher or something.

  He lifted his own chin in a wordless greeting, but kept his eye on the coat pegs beside the door, wishing she’d go away.

  “Hold on.” Her voice, warm and rich, almost melodic, should have been too low to carry over the din, yet somehow he heard it perfectly. “Don’t go yet.”

  He blinked at the row of near-identical outerwear, then started pawing through the coats. His should be easy to find, since it was older than most, more worn. Bigger, too.

  Where was it? Behind him, Jameson screamed into the mic and everybody went wild.

  “Doctor Cooper?” Angel shifted closer. Too close.

  “It’s not ‘Doctor Cooper,’” he said over his shoulder, his voice cracking in a dozen different places. “It’s Coop.”

  He caught her wrinkling her nose. What was it about his name that made her do that every time? Or was it him? Probably him, though he’d barely said two sentences to her in the months she’d been here. If it was him, then why the hell was she bothering him now?

  He bent to retrieve a coat. Not his. Shoved it onto a peg and grabbed another. Shit. Another and another, all too small. Breathe, dammit. He was about 3.5 seconds from squeezing into somebody else’s Big Red when his hand found the familiar rough nap of his patches. Thank God.

  “Okay then. Coop. Wanna dance?”

  Arms halfway into his sleeves, he stuttered to a stop, turned fully, and squinted down at Angel Smith, his features tightening in disbelief. After their few stilted interactions, this woman wanted to dance with him of all people?

  He ignored the pull of that smooth stretch of lush-looking skin, the overly large dark eyes, and lips that had no right to be as plush as ripe fruit when everyone else’s were dry and flaky and shriveled up like old prunes.

  “Dance?” Why? he almost asked, but that would open the conversation up to more—questions, discussion, even intimacies—and that was the last thing he needed.

  She looked hesitant, like maybe she regretted whatever impulse had pushed her to ask in the first place. Good. Things were better that way.

  “Of course not,” he finally said, doing his best not to notice the hurt in her eyes. He nodded once.

  That done, he turned and pushed out into the cold night, where he blinked blindly at the sunlit sky and counted out his breaths,
waiting for a sense of relief that never came.

  It was Cortez, he thought. That was why he couldn’t seem to get rid of this tension.

  He tromped back to the dorms and straight up to Cortez’s door. If he’d been thinking clearly, he’d have knocked lightly, but his brain felt scrambled, his cheeks overheated. The spot she’d touched on his arm itched like a rash, so he made a fist and pounded. “Cortez! You in there?”

  “Who’s there?” The voice was scratchy and hoarse, the accent definitely English.

  Relief washed through him like sun after months of austral winter. “It’s Coop. You, uh…” He sniffed, suddenly conscious of how paranoid he’d been. “You okay?”

  A pause. “Why?”

  “The blood, on the ice.”

  “Nosebleed.” Another few seconds passed before Cortez coughed, hard, and went on. “Wouldn’t…stop.”

  “Lot of blood for a nosebleed, man.” He saw the stain again, blossoming on the ice. It hadn’t been all that big, he supposed.

  “Bloody Crud’s got me. I’m sick.” It was true, the Crud had hit Pole hard since the last group brought it from McMurdo. Out here, a simple cold could put a man down for a week.

  “Right.” More hacking had Coop cringing and backing up a step. “Sorry to bug you.”

  “No worries.”

  Coop walked back to his room, annoyed at himself for blowing this thing out of proportion. Still, it took him a little longer than usual to fall asleep—and not just because he couldn’t get Angel Smith out of his head.

  It wasn’t until hours later, just before his normal wake-up time, that his eyes popped open, the echo of two words running through his thoughts.

  I’m sick, Cortez had said. Not ill, sick. Which didn’t seem British at all. And, damn it, but even down with a cold, something had sounded off about his friend.

  He threw off the blankets, jumped from his bed, and dropped quickly to the floor to do his usual round of get-warm-or-freeze-his-ass-off morning push-ups before heading out to figure out what the hell was going on.

  Chapter 4

  Angel hated the silence.

  That was one thing she wouldn’t miss. Well, that and the cold and the ice and being surrounded by miles and miles of nothing.

  She hid her face in her pillow, the throbbing behind her eyes reminding her of everything she’d done last night. Drinking, dancing…embarrassing the living bejeezus out of herself.

  If only she could stay right here.

  Ugh, no. The whole crew expected breakfast and she’d stupidly told her staff to take it easy this morning, so she’d better get a move on. She groaned.

  A long slow stretch beneath the blankets popped her joints and pushed through her knee pain before she reached for the clothes she’d shoved under the blankets last night. The dry skin of her fingers caught on the fleece of her leggings as she slipped her feet into them, then yanked them up over her long underwear. She struggled into one layer after another—merino wool, fleece, Gore-Tex—all of it blessedly warm.

  Three…two…one. Now up. One cool lungful of air, then, as fast as she could, she added a second layer of socks, put her foot out, stuck it into a boot, then did the same with the other. She planted her feet firmly, tensed her thighs, and pushed to standing, gritting her teeth through the burn. Darned knee hated the cold.

  When, exactly, did I turn into an old lady?

  She huffed out a laugh, pulled her hair up, slid her chef’s coat on, followed by a puffy, lightweight inner jacket, then the massive Big Red coat she’d been issued at the start of this trip. Last, she slid her fleece gaiter over her head to protect her neck and the bottom half of her face, pulled on gloves, and grabbed her knives. She lifted the blackout blind—a nighttime necessity at the South Pole in summer, the land of the midnight sun—and sucked in a bolstering breath before opening her door.

  The long, brightly lit dorm hall stretched out in both directions and she shivered, not from cold this time but from the absolute dead quiet and the feeling that someone—or something—watched her, ever ready to spring out. From day one, trudging around Burke-Ruhe had spooked her in a way that was vague but bone-deep, as if she were always on the alert for…what? An alien attack? Jack Nicholson to pop out wielding a bloody knife? The abominable freaking snowman?

  As if anything could survive this continent.

  Even dry, her boots squeaked on the rubber hallway floor, then down a long set of metal steps. At the bottom, she pushed through a door into the chilly vestibule, then took a quick breath, counted down, and shoved the heavy outer door open, stepping into—holy crap—cold. Cold, cold, cold.

  Wind ripped the air from her lungs and shut her brain down, stunning her into momentary stillness. Everything was a shock to the system—the subzero temperature, the achingly bright daylight. Not to mention the place itself.

  Nothing lived here. No birds, no insects, not a solitary penguin on this most remote part of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. Just three hundred and sixty degrees of sky and ice—blue and white—fighting for dominance.

  Not to mention a sun that played its strange game of hopscotch, bouncing along the rim of the sky but never quite setting. Almost sunset, sunrise, almost sunset, sunrise.

  Thank God she wouldn’t be at Pole for that final sunset of the season, because she didn’t think she could handle twilight blending into months of eternal night.

  The wind whistled between the buildings in a ghostly catcall, and because she wasn’t about to accept that kind of disrespect, she whistled right back. The sound didn’t carry past the fine weave of her neck gaiter.

  Each exhale puffed loudly in her ears as she tromped across the snow, unwilling to glance again at the vastness beyond. It was too big, too scary. If she wandered outside the limits of the station, she’d become an insignificant blip swallowed up by the continent’s angry jaws. No, not angry. Aloof. Antarctica didn’t give a crap about her.

  Geez, she laughed at herself, this freaking place.

  Finally, she hauled open the door to the central building, which housed the gym and entertainment center, along with the lounge and communications office and—most importantly for her—the galley.

  Relief flooded her, along with blessed warmth.

  She’d never understand people who chose to come here and trek around, living in a tent out in that frozen wasteland, for fun. Explorers or adventurers, they called themselves, but she knew they were just masochists with too much time and money on their hands. Sunburn? Chapped lips? Frozen digits? You didn’t have to fly thousands of miles to find those.

  And the landscape? Well, it wasn’t even a landscape, exactly, since that insinuated actual land beneath a person’s feet, whereas Antarctica was an ever-evolving ice sculpture. A presence.

  Okay, Debbie Downer. Time to lighten this party up.

  After stomping the snow from her boots in the vestibule, she shed her coat, hung it on the hook, and beelined down the hall.

  Finally, in the sanctuary of the galley, she let the door close and flipped on the overheads, watching as they illuminated rows of white rectangular tables, each with their own napkin holder and salt and pepper shakers. The one at the front—Jameson’s table—held his requisite bottle of hot sauce.

  The view through the galley windows was different from the one outside. Beyond a few smaller metal structures—the ancillary building, Pam’s clinic, and a huddle of tents belonging to visiting scientists—there was nothing but white. But maybe the view wasn’t different. Maybe she was. With the glass separating her from the outside, she could appreciate the beauty.

  Would she miss more than just the Poleys—the people—once she was gone? Would bittersweet memory turn all that powdery, dangerous snow from a splintering wall of pain into a cozy wintry landscape, covered in a delicate dusting of confectioners’ sugar? Would she remember the marrow-deep ache of the wind as just a s
weet, mellow breeze?

  The sky was blue today and went on forever. No reason to cancel the flight with weather like this. Which was good, she mentally repeated for the bazillionth time—it was time to go back and face the music. But first, Angel reminded herself, she had to face breakfast.

  She went around the food service line into the bare-bones kitchen. Nothing, she decided as she got the coffee going, would ruin her last day at Pole. Not this cold seeping into every pore, not the lights flickering above, not even the hangover chipping away at the inside of her skull.

  Of course, there was the stupid thing she’d done last night. That might ruin today.

  Oh, shut your piehole, brain. She slid a mug under the first drizzle of coffee, which would be too hot and too strong, but she needed something to knock the stupid right out of her.

  Once her tongue had been scalded to her satisfaction, she shoved the frozen bacon into the microwave, pulled out the dough she’d thrown together last night, and punched it down with more vigor than usual. Then she went to work laminating the croissants—layering and rolling and layering and rolling. One advantage to cooking at Pole was that she didn’t need to refrigerate between stages. Until she turned the ovens on, the air in here was bracingly cold.

  After an hour spent julienning, dicing, sautéing, and baking the ingredients of her last meal in Antarctica, she savored the aroma of thyme-laced veggies, glanced at the clock, and pulled out the fresh buns before sliding the croissants into the hot oven.

  Soon she’d be snug in the cavernous belly of an LC-130 Hercules airplane, heading to McMurdo, then Christchurch, better known around here as Cheech. From there, she’d hop another flight to the United States, and finally, home to Pittsburgh.

  First, though, it was time to run the gauntlet of one last breakfast in this place, which would be an absolute pleasure if not for the presence of a certain man.

  Ugh.

  Dealing with the guy most days was a trial, but after last night, it was the stuff nightmares were made of. Well, high school nightmares anyway, when crushes made or broke you.